Hello from Mike Huckabee's victory (er, loss) party at the Metropolitan Convention Center in Columbia. I'll have more on why Huck lost and McCain won later tonight or tomorrow, but the party itself reveals the way Huckabee's campaign just isn't a real campaign: Throughout the night, as grim numbers posted up on the big screen in a corner of the ballroom, there was no effort to keep the crowd cheery, play rousing music, have surrogates maintain people's spirit, as one might imagine would have happened at a Romney event. Instead, sad and confused volunteers just ... waited, biting their nails.
You know how, when ill people begin to die, doctors say you can see it on their faces -- they kind of give up? The same thing happened at the Huckabee party after Huck gave his (gracious) concession speech. The pop-country song "Only in America" played five consecutive times. Nobody was paying attention to the soundtrack anymore.
-- Eve Fairbanks