Just 24 hours left until VOTR Day.

There are two polls out showing the results of early voting in Texas–depending on who’s right, Obama either has a slight lead or a big lead:

SurveyUSA. 3/1-2. Likely voters.

Clinton 50
Obama 48

Public Strategies (PDF). 2/27-3/1. Likely voters.

Obama 56
Clinton 44

That same Public Strategies poll has a gem for November:

McCain (R) 50
Clinton (D) 46

McCain (R) 49
Obama (D) 42

The Democrats are still trailing, but it’s mind-boggling that Texas could be competitive. It may not stay this way, but it shows us that–no matter how tomorrow goes–we should be ready to fight for the fall.

And all of the final polls out of Texas show the race basically tied:

Candidate	SUSA	Rasm.	PPP	Zogby	IA	Pollster	RCP
Obama	49	48	44	47	44	47.0	46.5
Clinton	48	47	50	44	49	46.0	46.8

Basically, Clinton supporters are hoping that tomorrow will be like New Hampshire, where they defy everyone’s expectations and pull out a big victory despite significant struggling beforehand. Obama supporters are hoping that tomorrow will be like Wisconsin, where it appears that Clinton has a foothold but Obama end up pulling off a big victory in the end.

Meanwhile, former Presidential candidate Bill Richardson came out and all but endorsed Obama–in an interview, Richardson said that the candidate with a clear lead after tomorrow should be the nominee, and he criticized the Hillary ‘red phone’ ad that widely panned for mirroring Republican fearmongering. Richardson has always been very cautious–it’s obvious he wants to get back in the White House, and I doubt he’ll endorse anyone until it becomes clear who the nominee will be.

For all the focus on tomorrow, though, the results may not entirely matter. The bar is extremely high for Clinton–she has to walk away with both Ohio and Texas, otherwise she’ll be portrayed as the loser and will be pressured immensely to step aside. The Obama campaign’s bar is lower–all they have to do is win one of those two major states to be seen as the winner and basically the nominee.

Even if Clinton pulls off big victories tomorrow, it may not matter. If tomorrow doesn’t resolve this primary, the nominee will be the person who ends up with the most pledged delegates–the superdelegates will face enormous pressure to obey the will of the people, and there will be a lot of fear of party disunity and conflict if the superdelegates throw the nomination to the person who lost the popular vote. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder crunches the numbers for the remaining states and comes to this conclusion:

So — under these most rosy of scenarios — since March 4, she’ll have earned 520 delegates to Barack Obama’s 461, having reduced his earned delegate total by about 80 — or — by about 60 percent — but he’ll still have a lead of approximately 100 delegates in total… and be that much closer to 2025.

Tomorrow may resolve a lot of our questions, but it might also not. It depends on whether tomorrow is New Hampshire or Wisconsin.

On the Republican side, John McCain had a rough February. Despite being crowned the GOP nominee, he’s been stumbling straight out of the gate:

McCain was accused of having a romantic relationship with a lobbyist by The New York Times (he vehemently denied it). The DNC filed a complaint against McCain with the Federal Election Commission questioning whether he is violating the spending limits imposed on a campaign that takes public funds.

[...]

At this point in the campaign, nothing seems to alarm Republicans more than the incessant sound of ringing cash registers coming from the other party. The jaw-dropping fundraising by Democrats — and Obama in particular — is leading Republican officials both in and out of McCain’s campaign to think that they’ll never be able to match the war chests of their likely rivals. And this from a party that traditionally has pummeled Democrats when it comes to fundraising.

Adding to his rocky start, McCain makes two major gaffes in a row. First, he pledges not to raise taxes, and then backtracks on his promise:

Two weeks ago, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took the “Read My Lips” plunge, proclaiming that as president he would not raise taxes for any reason. “No new taxes,” he declared twice in an interview with ABC News.

[...]

The Wall Street Journal reports today that McCain is now distancing himself from the pledge not to raise taxes, saying his statement was not a firm commitment:

[...]

McCAIN: I’m not making a “read my lips” statement in that I will not raise taxes. But I’m not saying I can envision a scenario where I would, OK? But I’m not making it a centerpiece in my campaign.

Second, he contradicts his own proposed plan for Social Security:

In 2000, he supported President Bush’s efforts to divert part of Social Security payroll taxes to fund private accounts. Asked about his current position, McCain said, “I’m totally in favor of personal savings accounts.”

On his campaign website, however, McCain offers a different plan. He proposes “supplementing” the system with personally managed accounts, which, as the Wall Street Journal observed, would not be financed by diverting Social Security payroll taxes

In other words, the official policy proposed on his website would act as a supplement and thus wouldn’t change the current system. Yet, on the stump, McCain advocates the Bush plan to privatize social security.

Meanwhile–perhaps explaining McCain’s trouble in Texas–Senator John Cornyn jumps on the anti-McCain bandwagon:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) lamented Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) ascension as the presumptive Republican nominee, saying McCain wasn’t his “first choice” or even his “second, third or fourth choice.” “I sort of liken it to a grieving process”

Will McCain ever have a good month? Or will his campaign continue to flounder, making mistake after mistake and continuing to run the Straight Talk Express (or, more accurately, the Double Talk Express) off a cliff?

UPDATED: Hillary tries to get a dig in on Barack Obama by–of all things–praising John McCain:

“I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002,”

I agree with Rachel Maddow’s interpretation of Clinton’s remarks:

“This is what you say if you want to be McCain’s choice for Vice President. It is not what you say if you are running for the Democratic nomination.”

And it’s ironic that Clinton would praise Sen. McCain, considering that members of his party won’t even go that far–witness former Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour castigate McCain’s pro-lobbyist corruption:

“Senator McCain says he’s going to break up all these lobbyists, these power brokers, and his campaign is full of lobbyists. Some of my best friends — There’s nothing wrong with it. What’s wrong is the phony baloney of being hypocritical about it.“

That’s always been the issue with McCain, even going back to the Iseman story–it’s the corruption and the hypocrisy. It’s McCain portraying himself–and the media going along with this–as some kind of clean government crusader, as some kind of campaign finance reformer.

Yet, he’s perfectly willing to hire and work for lobbyists, and he’s perfectly happy to weasel around campaign finance laws when it suits him (while trying to attack a Democratic candidate for not following the very rules McCain’s trying to break). It’s hypocritical, and McCain’s hypocrisy is going to seriously hurt him in this election.