Romney's Last Stand?

Michigan holds it's primaries today. On the Democratic side of things, because both Edwards and Obama have had their names removed from the ballet while Clinton has not (all over a dispute on Michigan moving it's primary date earlier than the national committee desired), Clinton is expected to gain the majority of the delegates in a walkover. Supposedly, those delegates won't be counted in the nomination race. Yeah, right.

Because of that, all the interesting going-ons involve the Republican race, where McCain and Romney are essentially neck-and-neck, Huckabee trailing them by a little over 10 points. If McCain were to edge Romney here, the consensus seems to be Romney's campaign would be effectively over.

This seems odd on one level - after all, if Romney runs a close second he would have had a 1st and 3 seconds in the initial primaries, which would be a series of successful results in most endeavors. Given the current allocation of delegates it is very likely a close second by Romney would see him actually leading the totals at the end of the evening, and still be considered a dead candidate.

Of course, logic has nothing to do with a political campaign ... it's all about perception, and finishing second is simply being the first loser. All that seems to matter is actually winning a state, no matter how small the margin. If McCain were to edge Romney out again, after doing the same in New Hampshire, McCain would be perceived as having all the momentum while Romney would be seen as a lost cause after not taking any of the three states in which is heavily invested his efforts.

Some subset of Democrats, led by Markos Moulitsas, have reached the conclusion keeping Romney is the race is good for Democrats, and since the Dem primary has no real meaning this year are advocating progressive voters in Michigan take advantage of the state's open primary laws and vote in the Republican primary instead (someone even created a Democrats for Romney YouTube video). Given how close the polling shows the race to be, a few thousand liberal voters crossing over as a bloc to vote for Romney might be sufficient to push him past McCain.