A big week upcoming...

Two big contests this week. In Michigan, the Romney campaign is making a desperate stand. His father used to be governor of the state and he needs a win badly. Huckabee and McCain have gotten stronger in a state that the rest have conceded to the former Massachusetts governor.

Huckabee again is finding support from the homeschoolers and evangelical network. Look for him to nail down at least 25% of the vote. McCain is a middle-ground choice for many Republicans and independents. Remember that this was the site of his last victory over GW Bush in 2000.

Michigan violated the Republican National Committee's rule against primaries before February 5th, so they have been penalized by only having half the delegates to award that they normally would have. (they will be awarding 30 to the winners)

The Democratic National Committee penalized the state for the same reason and it cost ALL of the states delegates. Because of that, only Hillary Clinton has gone to the trouble of getting on the ballot here. Edwards and Obama supporters have been urging Democrats to vote for "uncommitted" to hopefully have "none of the above" defeat Mrs. Clinton. It might be more tempting for Democrats who want to vote to cross-over to the Republican primary and mess up their results a little although news reports suggest that some Republicans may be returning the favor. In 2000, their support was enough to give McCain his victory over George W. Bush. In fact, one of the most read liberal bloggers is encouraging voters to do just that.

Meanwhile, Nevada will be having caucuses on Saturday the 19th. In the Democrat caucus, it has broken out into open civil war. The Culinary Union, which employs 60,000 casino workers, has shocked the party and announced for Obama. The senator also picked up the endorsement of the party's 2004 nominee.

Senator Clinton is trying to counter with a strong pitch for women and Latino voters and invited controversy when she announced "no woman is illegal." This is just the kind of interparty warfare that the party has tried to avoid in this primary process, but the worst nightmare has happened. Many suspect that race is having an impact on choices for the Democrat nominee.

The Teachers Union in Nevada has filed a suit in Federal court trying to prevent the party from having most of it's Las Vegas caucus locations down on the Strip. Since work goes on 24 hours in Vegas, the party had supported keeping most of the locations close to where the workers were: near the casinos. But now that the union has gone and announced for Obama, the teachers' union, whose leadership have declared for Clinton, has sued to get the venues changed.

Hillary has stated that she "has no opinion" about the lawsuit. The Culinary Union believes she is behind this and the acrimony of the situation has gotten quite heated in the past 48 hours. What is truly amazing, in a world where every little belch by a candidate is written about with great importance by our 24/7 newschannels, is that this whole situation has been hardly mentioned outside of Nevada. Curious...

On the Republican side, Romney has been working Nevada hard but we don't have any recent polling data to see if MCain's victory in NewHampshire has helped him in the Silver State. Voters also see the Arizona senator as a moderate, and a better known choice than the other Republican candidates. Continued reports that he was almost Senator Kerry's running mate in 2004 isn't helping him with the Republican base. Polling data continues to show that he does well amongst Democrats who do not like either of their two main candidates and independents and this morning a CNN poll shows him as the most competitive versus the two Democrat frontrunners.

Meanwhile, one of the big stories over the last several days is the near-collapse of the Giuliani campaign. He has pulled out of Michigan and South Carolina and seems to be betting all on a victory in Florida to re-vitalize his campaign. If he succeeds, he has always polled well in big states like New York and Ahhhhnold's "Cullyfoahniah". (even though rumors continue to circulate that the Terminator will endorse John McCain since McCain came to his aid when his re-election bid looked less than certain.)

In the news, the President is finishing up his tour of the Middle East and the Iraqis are at last making some political progress while the security situation continues to improve in the war. But all is not well on the economic front and Romney is using Michigan's "one state recession" and fears that it may spread to the rest of the nation to attack his rivals there.

It seems more and more likely as the days progress that the economy, not the war in Iraq, is likely to be the big issue, as it usually is, in this presidential campaign.

Coach