On the Democratic side:As expected,
Clinton won the West Virginia primary yesterday, 67-26. While this was her biggest blowout so far, it does little to affect the race. One thing that it does highlight is how much effort Obama will have to spend shoring up low-income working class Democrats before the general election.
On the Republican side:The biggest news yesterday in my mind was
Democratic win for the special election in House seat MS-01. This is the third special election in about as many months won by a Democrat in a Republican district (The other two were in Illinois and Louisiana). This seat in Mississippi has been held by the same Republican since 1994 (he was appointed to fill the rest of Trent Lott's Senate term), and the district went for Bush in the last election with 62%. Further, unlike the previous 2 special elections, the candidate, Greg Davis, was a good candidate, a solid Republican who wasn't especially controversial. Despite all this, he lost to Travis Childers by 8 points, 54-46, with a larger than normal voter turnout. The Republicans House election committee spent $1.3 million in a year that sees them way behind on fundraising compared to the Democratic House election committee. They even tried to nationalize the race by attempting to use Obama (and specifically the Wright controversy) against Childers, all to no avail. As I saw in the article, an aide in the Republican House leadership thinks that we will "see a lot of people running around here looking for windows to jump out of."
As for the Presidential election, the most interesting news I have seen is that Bob Barr, a former Republican congressmen from Georgia, has thrown his hat into the Presidential ring as
candidate for the Libertarian Party. Barr is a social and fiscal conservative, and may be appealing enough as a candidate to cost McCain a few percentage points. In Red states, he could be just enough of a spoiler to tip the balance to Obama. Of course, Barr first has to secure the party nomination, running against Mike Gravel.