The Dust Settles on Super Tuesday

Imagine three grizzly men standing in an open field as a scorching sun hits high noon. The crows are circling overhead. Each man has assumed a wide stance – much like Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) – at equal distance from one another, forming a triangle.

There’s the Good – a roving preacher with a soft spot for the poor. There’s the Bad – a traveling salesman running a carnival of frauds. And then there’s the Ugly – an aging veteran who likes picking fights better than making friends, whose face and physique show the marks of torture.

There’s a sudden flash as the three men draw.

Then dust settles, but something is wrong. None of the men is dead. All three were knocked to the ground, slightly wounded, but still alive. There you have it – the race for the Republican nomination on the morning of Feb. 6.

On a separate field somewhere, a camera crew is filming a black cowboy and a cowgirl. They sit facing each other on the same two-headed donkey, each digging their stirrups into its flanks, trying to get it to move.

According to the storyline, they have each been appointed to bring order to a dusty Western town threatened by bandits, whose residents will see their prejudice tested by their new sheriff. The problem is that the directors have shown up with two versions of the script, and no one knows which story is supposed to be told.

It’s the morning of Feb. 6, and both races for party presidential nominations have only become more muddied.

John McCain has won 682 delegates in the race for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney has 244 and Mike Huckabee has 187. McCain is clearly the front-runner, but he is a weak front-runner by historical standards, and still needs twice as many delegates as he currently has to secure the nomination. He has won a little more than half, 60 percent, of the delegates that have been contested thus far, and most of the big, Democrat-leaning states that support McCain have already cast their votes.

Huckabee and Romney both know this. They have won 17 states together so far, compared to only 12 that have been won by McCain. If things keep going the way they have, by March 4 – the date when 39 out of 50 states, including Texas and Ohio, will have expressed their preference – it seems unlikely that the Republican Party will have a front-runner with the 1,191 delegates necessary to wrap up the race.

What all this means is that some kind of alliance is very probable, and since both McCain and Huckabee despise Romney because of his brazen flip-flops and attack ads, a McCain-Huckabee ticket looks increasingly likely. The two men have won over 75 percent of the delegates so far. That’s the kind of margin that is likely to end the race by March 4, assuming the two campaigns come to an agreement. For McCain, choosing Huckabee as his vice president makes sense, since it would reassure the Christian Right, and help heal a fractured party that is divided over his candidacy.

For Democrats, who find themselves in the position of that two-headed donkey, the road ahead is looking painful. Barack Obama has won 778 of the contested delegates so far, compared to 763 for Hillary Clinton – basically a 50-50 split – not counting the superdelegates, whose ultimate allegiance is uncertain. They each need 2,025 delegates to win. If things continue the way they have, then Clinton and Obama may be locking horns for four more grueling months, until the last states – Montana and South Dakota – vote on June 3.

The longer the race remains close, the more likely it is that the race will turn uglier, and the party will become more divided. If the race has not been settled by June 3 – or if it looks like Obama might narrowly win – then Hillary will start to raise hell over the exclusion of the Michigan and Florida delegates. Both are states where she was the only candidate campaigning.

Then, there’s the issue of Democratic Party superdelegates, who are not elected and who account for 20 percent of the delegate total. Will the Democratic nomination be decided in a puff of cigar smoke, by a bunch of shady backroom deals? A prolonged and divisive primary that ends with such a result would not bode well for the eventual nominee in November.

Is there a way to prevent this? One of the candidates could surge ahead of the other in national polls. Barring that fortunate outcome, a ticket that has both candidates’ names on it would unify the party, combine the two candidates’ massive fundraising machines, and potentially give America its first woman and its first black man in the White House.

The two campaigns could possibly come to an agreement that whoever is ahead by March 4 becomes the nominee, the other candidate agreeing to drop out and accept the vice presidency in exchange. That would demonstrate incredible statesmanship – and for that reason, it seems unlikely that the two campaigns could come to such an arrangement, even though for many Democrats it would be a dream ticket.

If they don’t, the race ahead could turn into a rerun of the 2000 election in Florida, except with Democrats fighting Democrats.

If so, say hello to President McCain.