It's Not Over Until It's Over--Casey Stengel

You would think that taking six out of ten contests last night would be fulfilling for the Romney people. But this morning it became clear that he hasn't made the final sale. The Romney people believe that they will stand out in a contrast to President Obama but the primary contest has been corrosive, exposing him as a deeply flawed candidate. Romney can not seem to close the deal either in terms of ideology or even class. Basically, his core support remains white males who earn over $250,000 a year. He has done nothing to expand this group of people.

Last night it was obvious that the South can't stand Romney. He lost Georgia,Tennessee and Oklahoma because the Republican voters consisted of between 65%-75% evangelical Christians. Even in Ohio, it was 57% and Romney only won by a point--having won those earning above $100,000. In fact, Santorum was not on the ballot in three congressional districts, otherwise it was projected he would have won by 3%.

If you look closely at the Romney victories, they are less than impressive. Aided by Virginia's Governor Bob McDonnell,who wants to be Vice-President, Romney only ran against Ron Paul. It was the lowest turnout in the history of Republican primaries in the state of Virginia and Ron Paul still managed to win 40%. Romney virtually won no votes among those who earned $50,000 or less--in other words the average income of the average American.

In his victory in Vermont, the neighboring state to Massachusetts, he won with only 40% against Paul and Santorum, who split the other votes. A Massachusetts win was a given. The Mormons in Idaho gave him the large victory. But as of noon today, Alaska was still counting and Romney's lead there seemed to be jeopardized.

That Romney couldn't knock out Rick Santorum by now should worry the Romney people about the general election. In fact, as Steve Benen points out at his new home at Rachel Maddow's blog, Barack Obama steamrolled everyone last night in Ohio, outdrawing the entire Republican field.

Remember no Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio. And like everywhere, when Romney goes somewhere his popularity plummets. Romney now is double-digits behind Obama in both Michigan and Ohio, two must states for him. If President Obama is now climbing to 80% approval ratings among minorities, how sad is it that only 1% of the Republican voters in Ohio were African-American?

Republicans are arguing today that they can not stop the process or muscle the other candidates out of the race because the party is not top-down--hardy-har-har. They still believe that the races starts out 46-46 and the candidates will have to fight over the 8%. They believe that unemployment can not fall below 8% in time for the election and no President has ever won then. Actually FDR did. And they argue that foreign policy will play a greater role in the election than people thought. And that is why they argue that Romney is beginning to play the foreign policy card.

President Obama has begun to play his hand aggressively, scheduling his press conference on Super Tuesday so that almost all night on television he provided the filler between results. In other words, he dominated the airwaves and so far this season he has dominated the language.

Romney is basically throwing his strongest hand away--on the economy. Today, he claimed that you could not "score" his economic plan--which you can and it reveals that his plan creates much larger deficits than the Ryan Plan and gives the super-wealthy enormous new tax breaks and raises the taxes on the middle-class. At one time he said he knew how to create jobs, even bragging he would create 11.5 million new jobs. He has backed far away from this and doesn't talk about what he would do to create jobs.

Yesterday was a good day for President Obama. He received the endorsement of the Steelworkers Union , which will play a key role in organizing the Rust Belt. He also challenged the Republicans to honestly tell the American people they want war with Iran, since all the current candidates have made that a key point to their foreign policy. He also said that it is time to wrap up the Afghanistan conflict because that dog doesn't hunt anymore.