Across the pond

While I was asleep the votes were being counted in three of the remaining primary elections in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia (which is the tiny area around the capital city, Washington, which has a large black population). According to the Washington Post, Obama has won Virginia with 64 per cent of the vote, in Maryland he is leading Clinton with 62 per cent of the vote against her 32 per cent, and he has accumulated an estimated 75 per cent of votes in Washington, D. C. That will mean he now has about 65 per cent of the pledged delegates, with only two big primaries left in Texas and Pennsylvania. They vote on 4 March.

The margin between the two is closer when the votes of those senior Democrats who have told Clinton they will support her at the convention. And there is a further complication in two states where Clinton claims a majority but whose votes were declared illegal because they brought their primaries forward against the wishes of the Democratic National Committee.

So Clinton is not yet showing any signs of withdrawing. And neither is Mike Huckabee. Though McCain won last night, the Republican turnout was only half that of the Democrats, which is pretty typical of the campaign so far. So Huckabee can claim that he might do better than McCain when it comes the real battle against the Democrats. Because he would attract the born again from both parties and those Conservative Republicans who have frequently booed McCain because of his liberal views.

If I was a betting man I would be putting my shirt on Obama. And in following the campaign I have got to like him and to feel that would probably make a  better President than either Clinton or McCain.

But there are many complexities in American politics and much can happen between now and next November. So I have asked Godfrey Hodgson to do a long interpretive piece, which I will post, hopefully on Thursday. Godfrey spent  some years living in Washington as a foreign correspondent. As a journalist he worked for The Observer, The Sunday Times, Channel Four News and The Independent. And he has written several books about American history and politics.