The McCain campaign has posted an on-line "strategy briefing," in which campaign manager Rick Davis uses a series of charts and maps to paint a rosy picture of the G.O.P. candidate's fall prospects.

About five minutes into the slideshow, Davis turns to the electoral map and highlights what are matter-of-factly labeled the "solidly Republican states."  read more »

There were 116 total delegates at stake in the Republican presidential race tonight, and John McCain has apparently won all of them—terrific news for a candidate who began the day about 400 delegates shy of the magic number needed to clinch the nomination.

And two of his primary wins were by convincing margins—in Maryland, where he led Mike Huckabee by a two-to-one margin, and in the District of Columbia, where he was the overwhelming choice of the approximately 4,000 voters who took Republican ballots.

And now the bad news: McCain got a serious scare in Virginia, finally pulling out a high single-digit victory after trailing Huckabee in the early returns. McCain had been the runaway leader—by about 30 points—in polls taken just last week in Virginia.  read more »

The losing streak has hit eight for Hillary Clinton, but that's hardly the worst news to come out of Chesapeake Tuesday for the former first lady.

Nor is the fact that she now trails in most every independent delegate count—even the counts that include the non-binding pledges of superdelegates. And nor, for that matter, is the likelihood that her skid will reach double-digits a week from tonight, when Wisconsin and Hawaii vote.

No, the most troubling development for Hillary Clinton is that—for the first time—Barack Obama has demonstrated an ability to eat significantly into her base of support while retaining his, creating the possibility that the Democratic race is shifting decisively in his favor and that it is no longer a clash between opposing and immovable coalitions.  read more »

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—John McCain just rounded off his victory speech here by cheekily appropriating one of Barack Obama's signature lines.

"I promise you I am fired up and ready to go," he told a cheering crowd.

The Arizona senator's speech seemed to target Obama more than Clinton, in yet another sign of the shifting dynamics of the Democratic race.

At one point he suggested that Obama's candidacy offered "not a promise of hope but a platitude."  read more »

Signs point to a very long night for Hillary Clinton. Polls are still open in Maryland and in the District of Columbia, but they have just closed in Virginia—and news outlets have already declared Barack Obama the winner by a wide margin.

Virginia was Clinton's best chance of scoring an upset victory, or at least keeping the race close enough to declare a moral victory. If she has lost lopsidedly in Virginia, it points to even worse defeats for her in Maryland and D.C.  read more »

Here’s what’s at stake in today's primary contests:

Democrats

Barack Obama is supposed to go three-for-three on the day. Short of engineering an upset victory—which would represent a campaign-changing development—Hillary Clinton’s best hope lies in containing her opponent’s victory margins and keeping the delegate race close, possibly positioning her to declare some kind of moral victory. On the heels of her weekend drubbings—and the news that she is replacing her campaign manager—the risk for Clinton tomorrow is obvious: Three more unspinnably lopsided defeats could create the impression that her campaign is in a tailspin, and that Obama is beginning to pull away.

Maryland:  read more »

RICHMOND, Va., Feb. 10—If the receptions Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton respectively received at a gathering of influential Democrats last night in Richmond is any indication, Clinton is in for another tough result when Virginia holds its primary on Tuesday.

The stark difference in enthusiasm was noticeable even in passing. Outside the Stuart C. Siegel Center, which played host to the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, a couple hundred of Obama supporters beating drums, wearing paper Obama masks and holding giant white letters spelling Obama’s name urged passing cars to honk. Many of them did.

A quieter group of Hillary supporters had less success.  read more »

This vision of intermarriage is offered by Commentary in its December issue, in a piece about Leonard and Virginia Woolf (based on the new biography of Leonard by Victoria Glendinning).

These statements are not "casual 'drawing-room' anti-Semitism." Gross can halfway excuse that. They reflect Virginia's hatred for her husband, Gross says; for she suffered from the racist view that "all Jews are interchangeable." And when Leonard married Virginia, he "was made to feel like a true outsider."  read more »