Here’s how things seem to look one day after the vote in Virginia, Maryland and D.C.

Republicans

If there was ever going to be a chance to stop John McCain, or force a brokered convention, it was here, specifically in Virginia. For part of the night, it looked like Mike Huckabee might actually pull it off but, as I expected, Northern Virginia came back heavy for McCain and he took the state, and all 63 delegates, by 9 percentage points.

McCain now stands just under 350 delegates short of clinching the nomination, and he’ll get it by March 4th.

Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul ? It’s over, guys.

Democrats

Not only did Barack Obama sweep the Potomac Primary, he did so decisively and, in Virginia, beat Clinton in almost every demographic category. That would seem to bode well for states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. More importantly, he’s ahead in the delegate count and, as Howard Fineman argued last night on MSNBC, there’s almost no way that Hillary can win based on the pledged delegates alone:

That leaves this nomination up to two things — how the DNC treats Michigan and Florida, and what the superdelegates do.

Questions For The Future

As we head into the third act of this campaign, this seems to be what people will be talking about

How will the DNC handle the fact that Michigan and Florida were stripped of their delegates ? Will the Democratic superdelegates go against the popular vote Who’s in the running for McCain’s Veep ? Will there be a big third-party run ?

Plenty to talk about, I would think.