The Note: Super Hangover

Feb. 6, 2008 -- NEW YORK -- Rarely have so many winners won so little.

Befitting this chaotic, unpredictable race, five candidates declared victory Tuesday night. Four could do it with reasonably straight faces (and no, it wasn't the same four we thought were in play coming into the day).

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., slowed her opponent's momentum, her machine prevailing over his campaign's energy and late surge (and providing an effective answer to the question of whether Sen. Ted Kennedy's endorsement would swing votes). She won coastal anchors, including the big prize -- California -- but lost enough smaller states to empower a rival who's figuring out how to beat her, if slowly.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., saw his strategy largely work, sweeping most of the red states he counted on while picking up enough other delegates (and notching a win in Connecticut -- and maybe Missouri) to show he can beat Clinton on a level demographic playing field). But he's trailing in the race for delegates, and Clinton now has a smidge of time to make up fundraising ground.

Former governor Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., rose from the mat (again) with an improbable Southern sweep. But now he faces a stark choice he'd hoped to avoid: Get aggressive (maybe even a little mean) or see his prospects fade faster than Chuck Norris' acting career (for real this time).

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was surely the day's biggest winner, emerging as the solid frontrunner on the GOP side. Yet he need look no further than his native state to see the challenge emerging from the conservative base, and he wakes up Wednesday with twice as many serious challengers as he had 24 hours earlier (and becomes the latest to learn that whatever doesn't kill Huckabee makes him stronger).

Former governor Mitt Romney, R-Mass., wore the most strained smile last night. But even as he runs out of home states, he can easily go on (assuming Ann has given the go-ahead to keep writing checks.)

"Instead of producing nominees, Tuesday's voting revealed the fault lines for a continuing fight within each party," Doyle McManus and Peter Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times.

"The overall outcome: These primary races are not over in either party. The battle between Clinton and Obama will continue, probably through the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas and possibly beyond. McCain appears almost certain to win his party's nomination, but only after battling Romney and Huckabee for delegates in more states."

So it is that a day we hoped and assumed would sort things out only brings more of the same. The road ahead seems longer for the Democrats, with two evenly matched opponents set for a long slog that neither campaign is fully equipped for.

"Get ready for weeks -- if not months -- of a tightly fought Democratic presidential race, while last night's big winner on the GOP side, John McCain, could soon be sitting on the sidelines, secure in victory, trying hard to raise money and pull together a fractious Republican coalition," Peter Canellos writes in The Boston Globe.

The Chicago Tribune's Mike Tackett: "One clear verdict: The near-national primary of Super Tuesday provided candidates in both parties with enough ammunition to make plausible claims they had done well enough to move on to the next round of primaries. And make claims they did."

Next up: Some morning press availabilities followed by Senate business on Wednesday (body language alert), voting from Louisiana to Washington state on Saturday, a push to next Tuesday's "Potomac Primary" -- and yet another rejiggered set of plans and expectations.

The most important numbers, courtesy of ABC's political unit (with 28 percent of Tuesday's delegates still to be awarded): Clinton won 612 delegates on Tuesday to Obama's 593, leaving her with an 872-793 edge (43 percent of the way to the nomination) in a race designed in such a way where it's hard to make up big ground.

(The Obama campaign puts the delegate count at plus-9 for the night -- campaign manager David Plouffe on Wednesday morning declared it a "Super Tuesday victory over Senator Clinton in the closest thing we have to a national primary." Here's a debate that may not be sorted out by the time the next round of states vote.)

On the GOP side, ABC logs it as McCain picking up 468 new delegates, to Romney's 145 and Huckabee's 132. McCain's almost halfway home with a 561-222-172 overall delegate edge, with Kansas and Louisiana on deck for Saturday. (First sign of McCain's confidence: Is his trip to Germany still on? "It's always been conditional," adviser Mark Salter tells The Boston Globe.)

The Democrats traded victories in all corners of the country, with voters (again) mixing their messages. It was as close to a tie as you could imagine -- roughly 35,000 votes (less than 1 percent of the 14 million cast) separating the two remaining candidates.

"It was a night of drama as millions of Democrats cleaved sharply between two candidates offering them a historic first," Patrick Healy writes in The New York Times.

"Yet it was also a night when neither Mr. Obama nor Mrs. Clinton could decisively lay claim -- or even secure an edge -- to the nomination, assuring an electoral fight that will unfold for weeks to come."

Obama flashed his red-state appeal, but Clinton kept her edge among women and Latino voters --