Searching for Winners

On MSNBC, ex-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said Bill Clinton would be blamed for his wife's Georgia loss. And Washington Post columnist Gene Robinson said, "This evening will end up being a repudiation of Bill Clinton."

The MS consensus: a good night for Huckabee. He was leading McCain in Georgia by three votes-- with 2 percent of the precincts in.

The first wave of 8 p.m. projections contained good news for McCain: New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois were all put in his column, with Mitt Romney grabbing only his home state of Massachusetts. (If he lost there, he might as well have started a hedge fund.) The networks had to settle for a split on the Democratic side: Oklahoma for Hillary Clinton, Illinois for the home-state guy, Obama.

Huckabee, meanwhile, was getting good buzz on Fox. "Remember all those times I said Mike Huckabee was dead? He's not dead yet," Fred Barnes said. "Huckabee has a hard time dying," MSNBC's Chris Matthews said, sticking with the resurrection metaphor and even asking a senator whether Huckabee should be McCain's running mate. (Hmm . . . Hadn't you gotten the impression from the media that we were down to a McCain-Romney showdown and Huckabee was a mere gadfly?)

Fox also explored the possibility of a McCain-Huckabee ticket. "That's called doubling your trouble," declared Fox's newest pundit, Karl Rove, saying it wouldn't satisfy the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Laura Ingraham said that even though McCain is "stubborn," it would make sense for him to pick her candidate, Romney.

"A lot of Republicans I've talked to are basically depressed about the race," Bill Kristol observed.

Despite McCain's early wins, ABC's Charlie Gibson asked: "Can he get conservatives enthusiastic about a McCain candidacy?" George Stephanopoulos said McCain benefited from Huckabee and Romney splitting the conservative vote.

No one seemed to care very much that Hillary won Tennessee. No one seemed to care that Hillary won Massachusetts. ("That was one she should have won," Matthews said.) Hey! What about the Ted Kennedy endorsement, treated by the media as making Obama the crown prince of Camelot? Not to mention that Gov. Deval Patrick was backing Obama. Haven't I said again and again that endorsements are overrated? Journalists love them, and most voters don't care.

"If the Kennedy endorsement doesn't work in Massachusetts," asked CBS's Bob Schieffer, "where does it work?"

In the same vein, no one seemed very excited that McCain won Delaware, his fourth state of the night, or Illinois, his fifth state, while Romney was being shut out everywhere except Massachusetts. There was more chatter about Huckabee winning Alabama along with his home state of Arkansas.

On newspaper Web sites, the early victories for Clinton and McCain were the lead story. But not on TV, where a pattern was emerging: Winning a state you were expected to win means bupkis. Only a surprise showing gets the pundits excited.

At 9:15, when ABC called New Jersey for Hillary -- Fox had projected the win minutes earlier -- Stephanopoulos said she had "hit a goal tonight" by winning that state, Massachusetts and New York. "Had she lost, it would have been a huge disappointment."