Why Is This Man Smiling?

I'll give you 32 million reasons... (Photo courtesy: New York Times)

Wow.

Obama's money

Campaign manager David Plouffe says he's raised $32 million this month.

That would be more than $1 million a day.

The Rules of the Game

Rules? We don't need no stinkin' rules! (Photo courtesy: New York Times)

Clinton thanks Floridians, promises to get delegates seated

Posted: 10:19 PM ET

(CNN) – Hillary Clinton held a victory rally in Davie, Florida Tuesday night — even though the Democratic National Committee has stripped Florida of all of its delegates to the nominating convention, and no Democratic presidential candidate campaigned in the state.

So Hillary Clinton won the Florida primary for the Democrats, which is considered meaningless because none of the candidates campaigned in the state because they violated the DNC's rules on the primary calendar. As punishment, the DNC is not going to seat any of Florida's 210 delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

Along comes Hillary after getting a run for her money from Barack Obama, including a routing in South Carolina last week, and now she wants for the Florida delegation to be seated.

Michigan also had its 128 delegates stripped by the DNC for the same reason, but Hillary Clinton was the only candidate on the Democratic ballot, unlike Florida where all four Democratic candidates appeared on the ballot. Not surprisingly, Hillary also wants these delegates seated at the convention as well.

If it remains a close race delegates-wise and Hillary is behind by 338 votes or less at the convention, Florida and/or Michigan could decide the Democratic nomination, depending on whether or not their delegates are ultimately counted. The Wall Street Journal has this interesting story about it, which I recommend reading. The two states combined account for roughly 17 percent of the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Florida and Michigan's delegates for the Democratic nomination, if they are seated, will be divided among the candidates in proportion to the outcome of the primary, as well as the superdelegates who choose candidates as they please regardless of who the voters pick.

It's going to be a wild ride between now and the convention....

Mr. Self Destruct

Rudy, we hardly knew ye... (Photo courtesy New York Times)

Here's the writeup on the Florida primary from the New York Times:

McCain Defeats Romney in Florida Vote

By MICHAEL COOPER and MEGAN THEE

MIAMI — Senator John McCain defeated Mitt Romney on Tuesday to win the delegate-rich Florida primary, solidifying his transformation to the Republican front-runner and dealing a devastating blow to the presidential hopes of Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Republican officials said after Mr. Giuliani’s distant third-place finish that he was likely to endorse Mr. McCain, possibly as early as Wednesday in California. They said the two candidates’ staffs were discussing the logistics of an endorsement.

This information is somewhat dated, since multiple news organizations have confirmed that Giuliani will drop out of the race and endorse McCain in Los Angeles tomorrow before the CNN/LA Times/Politico debate at the Reagan Library. Whether this will be a significant boost or not for McCain remains to be seen, although Huckabee's continued presence in the campaign hurts Mitt Romney more than Giuliani's did to McCain.

According to the most recently available exit poll data from Florida, Huckabee took 259,703 votes in the GOP primary. Romney lost to McCain by just over 95,000 votes, so Huckabee may well have played spoiler to Romney in this race, since they are both fishing in the same electoral pond for social and religious conservatives. Huckabee will probably concentrate his limited resources on social conservatives in midwestern and southern states like Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee on Super Tuesday next week. Whether he will play spoiler to Romney again remains to be seen, since Romney has more resources and needs to be competitive against McCain in bigger and more expensive states like California and New York.

Also worth reading is the NYT's post-mortem on the Giuliani campaign, which I suspect will be the subject of books, dissertations, and theses for years to come.

Update: The Los Angeles Times has this interesting note on Giuliani's campaign based on the latest campaign finance reports filed with the FEC.

Giuliani's $50-million delegate

The failed campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani can claim one distinction: the worst bang for the buck of any delegate winner in presidential politics history.

The former New York mayor, who dropped his Republican bid for the presidency this week, disclosed Thursday in a filing with the Federal Election Commission that he raised $58.5 million and spent $48.8 million in 2007.

With his donors' money, Giuliani captured a single national delegate, in Nevada. At that rate, it would have taken close to $60 billion in spending to capture the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination.

Dan Morain