Bite-sized presidential trail mix

Just because I haven't written about the presidential primaries here in a few weeks, that doesn't mean I haven't kept up with them. Here are a dozen full-blown posts I've neglected to write on a timely basis -- each conveniently condensed into a single (though occasionally long) sentence.

• Democratic delegates are awarded not in a winner-take-all style, but proportionally in a quasi-Electoral College format, which means Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who are virtually tied in national polling, can stay in the race well after Super Tuesday.
  
• John McCain has emerged as the likely Republican nominee, much as I predicted, though Mitt Romney probably will continue burning through his millions for a while to try avoid the fate that befell his father when he sought the White House a generation ago.
• John Edwards, who set the substantive tone for the Democratic race before dropping out last week, probably still has the power to swing his party's nomination with an endorsement of Clinton (less likely) or Obama (more likely), but barring an 11th-hour press conference, it appears he'll refrain from doing so before Super Tuesday.
• Romney won the Maine caucuses Saturday, but sadly for him, the Pine Tree State has joined Wyoming as a place where the election was built, but the media just didn't come.
  
• What does it say about our nation that Bill Richardson, the only candidate in any party who has spent multiple years as an executive, legislator, and diplomat, couldn't even attract enough support to stay in the race past early January?
• What does it say about Rudolph Giuliani's $50 million campaign that he went, in three months, from national GOP frontrunner to an ignominious third-place finish in Florida that led him to leave the race with just a single delegate?
• It looked good for him after Iowa, but in the end, Mike Huckabee's down-home populism and Chuck Norris friendship simply won't be able to overcome his lack of campaign funds, his call "to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards," and his recently adopted desire to put all of the federal government's revenue eggs in the inherently regressive and volatile sales tax basket.
• Yes, Ron Paul was right on the Iraq war, but if someone (he says it wasn't him, and I believe him) managed repeatedly to slip racist tripe into his eponymous newsletters over the course of several years without him noticing, then why -- aside from an indefatigable urge to turn your dollars into gold! -- should he get to oversee the entire country?
• As Massachusetts senators' endorsements go, Ted Kennedy sure has garnered a lot more attention and impact than John Kerry, who probably should have considered beating the guy who already had an approval rating slipping below 50 percent in 2004 if he wanted his opinion to mean much to this year's Democratic voters.
• It's good to see Joe Lieberman finally letting his inner Republican roam free in public.
  
• It's good to see Fred Thompson finally getting to enjoy that afternoon nap he's been wanting to take for so long.
• In case this happens to be dispositive in your electoral decision-making, the muscleman endorsements look like this: Huckabee has the Nature Boy and Walker, Texas Ranger, McCain has the Governator and Rocky, and Obama has the power of Hulkamania running wild for him.
  

Stay tuned for more fun facts and actual, substantive discussion of the White House race -- or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.