Sen. Barack Obama’s wave of momentum grew even bigger on Tuesday with wins in all the Potomac primaries, while Sen. John McCain also scored a hat trick and continued inching toward the GOP finish line.

After these three routs, Barack Obama has now won 23 of 35 matchups and leads in total delegates for the first time since Iowa on January 3.

He defeated Hillary Clinton in Virginia and Maryland by more than 20 percent, and in Washington, D.C., by nearly 3-to-1.

With support from young, high-income, and African-American voters, Obama has been formidable. But by eating away at a coalition of the former First Lady’s support - lower-income voters and women - he has surged of late.

Yesterday, Barack Obama won the female vote. The white vote. The elderly vote. The Latino vote. He even won among every income level.

Reeling from the string of resounding defeats, Hillary Clinton is already looking to the Texas primary March 4 to mount her comeback.

On the GOP side, John McCain scored a narrow, but still critical win in Virginia, and more convincing triumphs in Maryland and D.C.

Although he holds an insurmountable lead over Mike Huckabee, McCain still hasn’t turned the corner with many of the party’s conservatives.

While John McCain continues to battle Huckabee, he has already turned his attention to another front - the candidacy of Obama.

“To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope,” McCain told supporters. “It is a platitude.”

Ironically, it was that very rhetoric from Obama that delayed McCain’s speech last night, as it was being broadcast by all the major networks.

Such is life for the GOP front-runner these days.

McCain is fighting wars on two fronts, facing a conservative who won’t call it a campaign in Huckabee, then onslaughts from Democrats like Obama, who spoke last night Wisconsin of the “Bush-McCain Republicans,” tying McCain to the unpopular U.S. president and his failed war strategy.

The Arizonan hit back, though, closing his speech with a Barack Obama signature lines, proclaiming he is “fired up and ready to go!”

Yet for John McCain, it comes off as a statement of hope, not fact. With Obama’s star rising, and Huckabee more resilient than planned, the GOP nominee-to-be is still waiting for the moment his campaign takes off.