Somewhere between Super Tuesday and Valentine's Day, the world shifted a little. At first, it was just a welcome release of tension washing out from all the pre-super-duper hype. Alrighty, we did it. We voted and some guys dropped out and the brackets reset for the next contest.

The "Yes We Can" Obama video hit big and was immediately followed up by a hilarious McCain parody. It was also revealed that the famous Obama girl didn't bother to vote in the primary. Then over the weekend, Barack Obama won all five of the primary/caucus things in Maine, Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Now he's leading in today's contests in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C..

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is banking on wins in Texas and Ohio on March 4 to stop her loss of momentum. Over the weekend, she traded a Patti (her campaign manager) for a Maggie (the new girl).

But the LA Times' Jonah Goldberg warned that Obama's "post-racial" appeal only works in states farthest from the complicated realities of what that means. In other words, he does well in states that are mostly black or mostly white, but Clinton dominates in the big heterogeneous states, especially those with large lower middle class and working poor voters. Slate's John Dickerson also poo-poohed the notion that Clinton's campaign is on the skids.

McCain continued his courtship of the right this past weekend, with mixed results. Mike Huckabee took Louisiana and Kansas. Scott Ott at Townhall.com speculates that if McCain butches up his conservative speechifying, he could unify the party behind him, sort of.

 

Also the end of the writer's strike is happening this week. I'm wondering if this will result in falling cable news ratings and participation in the rest of the primary season. Will America go back to its regulary scheduled programming, or stick with the presidential reality show?

My shorthand for answering that question was to look at this morning's NY "Times Topics" page, which lists the current top ten most popular subjects. Heath Ledger is still, for some reason, No. 1. Obama comes in at No. 3 and Hillary Clinton at No. 4. John McCain barely cracks the list at No. 9, coming just after the Writer's Guild of America, but before the Federal Reserve.

I think it means that the candidates will have to throw in a few soap opera curves to keep us interested. Like if Obama got Natalee Holloway's killer to break down on Dr. Phil's show and Clinton leaked and then denied a story about Chelsea being a pill-popping S&M fanatic who wants to come back to God (big-g here for the red states), and then Huckabee challenged McCain to a roast squirrel-eating contest that ended with a duel.

That would take us right into the summer schedule. We might even tune in for the conventions.