WASHINGTON - It would take a miracle for him to win the Republican presidential nomination, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee isn't going away, at least not yet.
He headed to Wisconsin on Wednesday, hoping that his populist economic message will win votes from blue-collar workers in Tuesday's primary, and plans to campaign intensely in Texas, looking for support from religious conservatives in the March 4 contest there.
Yet even if he wins both, and other primaries through the spring, he's all but certain to fall far short of wresting the nomination away from Arizona Sen. John McCain.
An Associated Press count shows that enough delegates remain in play to keep Huckabee alive politically -- but barely. Even under that count, he needs to win 96 percent of the remaining delegates. To say that's unlikely is a large understatement.
So why does he keep running?
Perhaps he wants to show he can win voters that McCain can't, increasing his value as a possible running mate.
Or maybe because every win or strong finish sets Huckabee up as the next guy in line. And that, conservative strategist Keith Appell said, is a good place to be in a party that almost always nominates the next guy in line.
This time, though, it's all but over for Huckabee.
"The path to victory is a complicated one for me," Huckabee conceded Tuesday in Washington. "But the path to defeat is a real easy one. All I've got to do is quit."
But even if Huckabee is mathematically eliminated from winning the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination, McCain might not secure that number for weeks.
"I don't know if Senator McCain may have a stumble. He may. ... It could be that nobody ends up with 1,191 delegates prior to the convention and we go to the convention," Huckabee said.
Even if Huckabee can't win the nomination, he'd go to the convention with enough delegates and stature to command attention, if not respect.
He could use that position to help write the party platform, fighting, for example, to maintain its support for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, something McCain doesn't support.
How long before Huckabee distracts from the campaign against the Democrats?
"Soon" said Jim Greer, the Republican Party chairman in Florida. "But I don't necessarily think it's today."
