I’m not really sure what the expectations are on the Republican side, and thus I don’t have the secret decoder information that explains how a McCain loss is really a Giuliani win, but here’s Marc Ambinder’s early analysis:
As politics is a zero sum game, the better Mike Huckabee does, the worse Mitt Romney does… and so it doesn’t matter all too much…that McCain seems to be underperforming,as he is. (It’s going to be mighty hard for McCain to unite the party…but that’s not the story tonight.)
So far as I can tell, the majority of conservative elites have been on a jihad against him for a couple weeks. When does his underperformance among actual Republicans become the story? Relatedly, I keep seeing polls showing how many Clinton supporters would be unhappy with an Obama win, and vice versa. Are there any Republican polls showing how many Huckabee/Romney supporters would be unhappy with a McCain win?
