Senator John McCain doesn’t have it in the bag but I bet he knows which bag he plans to bring with him. He emerged as the clear winner on Tuesday but is still shy of the required number of delegates to get him across the finish line.

Only months ago, McCain’s campaign was written off for dead, but on Super Tuesday he beat Mitt Romney in every big states he needed to, New York, New Jersey and California. The total victory was denied partly because of the unexpected strong showing from Mike Huckabee who took a big chunk of delegates from McCain’s reach.

Both Huckabee and Romney declared that they would fight on building on their marginal support. But the huge lead by McCain will most surely prove too much to erase. What Romney does have his money to keep on going and will be working Texas, Kentucky and Virginia exclusively.

By McCain not wrapping the Republican primary up on Tuesday, exposes his very soft right flank. This will only continue to give conservatives more time to rally against him in coming days. What’s working to McCain’s advantage in all this is there aren’t but two winner take all contest left, Virginia and District of Columbia. The remaining states allocate delegates by congressional districts making it harder to overcome McCain’s big lead. That and more than half of all delegates have been selected. From this point on, it’s more than winning states, the other two have to win delegates in big enough chunks to win or remain relevant at convention time if it goes that far.

This race will have to soon end if the Republican Party has a chance of jelling and getting a head start on the general election against a very determined and energized Democratic Party. The recent fighting between factions is zapping the energy from a Party with an already high energy deficit.