News Digest, 2/20/08: More Little Primaries, While Waiting For Texas

More primaries yesterday, and more sweeps for Obama and McCain. Obama won the Wisconsin Democratic primary and the Hawaii caucus yesterday, and McCain took the Wisconsin and Washington primaries on the Republican side. This makes ten straight victories for Obama in the primary season, and all by double digits.

All this primary action just serves to make Texas, as the next primary with a significant number of delegates, all the more important. SurveyUSA came out with another poll yesterday that matched CNN's earlier polling as far as showing Clinton with a slim lead in the state. Newsweek has more detail on how the Texas primary affects the presidential race, and particularly how critical it is to Senator Clinton's campaign. And Chris Bell offers up his views on how this "big mess" is actually big fun for a newly revitalized Texas Democratic electorate.

Yesterday was an eventful day for international news, what between Castro resigning the presidency of Cuba and Pakistani parliamentary elections leading to a decisive win for the two opposition parties to President Pervez Musharraf. Castro stated that he would not seek or accept another term in office, citing poor health. His assumed successor is his brother, Raul Castro, though exactly what that government would look like is unclear. As for Pakistan, neither of the two opposition parties seem to have been able to pull a decisive majority, so we'll probably be seeing talks of what the coalition government would look like very soon.