I’m with Yuval on assessing the relative significance of the two outcomes tonight. Neither nomination was settled, but the big news is Barack Obama’s win. It’s historic in the obvious, lead-paragraph sort of way. He’s new and interesting. Hillary Clinton’s stumble is of great interest to people across the political spectrum. Obama’s picture will be bigger than Mike Huckabee’s in most morning newspapers, and his win will lead off most newscasts. That’s correct news judgment.
It’s also one of the only good pieces of news that Mitt Romney got tonight. Romney’s going to have five of the most hair-raising days in recent American politics. He has to sizzle in the coming debate, somehow take the Wyoming caucus on Saturday and get people to care about that, and then beat back McCain’s surge in New Hampshire. If Huckabee and McCain are Rudy Giuliani’s best political friends right about now, which I think likely, then Romney’s only political friend is the junior senator from Illinois.