Interesting academic exercise: Obama was on the cusp of losing the nomination [View All]

[Tropics_Dude83]

I think a lot of people in the media and elsewhere got too wrapped up in the math and believed that Obama was inevitable because of his pledged delegate lead. My opinion is that Senator Obama was on the verge of losing the nomination at this time last week. His lead in North Carolina was alleged to have been under 5 points. His deficit in Indiana was apparently 10+. Now, imagine if he had only won North Carolina 51-49 or if Clinton had somehow won it 50.5-49.5? Now, imagine if she eked out a win in North Carolina and won Indiana as she was expected to by 10 points.

So, the narrative out of February was that Clinton was on the ropes after Obama won 11 contests in a row. Then, Clinton began her comeback by winning the Texas and Ohio primaries. Then, the Wright fiasco and "Bitter" hit. While Obama seemed to be struggling and "tired" on the campaign trail", Clinton had "found her groove" as a "populist fighter' and was "having fun." Then Obama lost Pennsylvania by a significant margin. Just days after that, Reverend Wright decides to go on a freak show tour including putting in a spectacular performance at the national press club. Fortunately, Clinton made her gas tax pander and Obama was able to pivot off of the Wright mess and kind of revive his candidacy by reminding so many of why we like him so much. It reminded me so.

Imagine if there had been no gas tax mistake and Clinton had won some sort of moral victory in North Carolina and won Indiana by 12? The media would have gone crazy discussing all of his alleged problems with "key constituencies." So a disappointing IN/NC primary result for Senator Obama would have been followed up just a week later by a huge loss in West Virginia where again the media could spin itself silly saying that working class people didn't vote for him. So we now have 3 months of unrelenting negative press coverage of Obama. His losses in all of the key primaries since March 4th help Senator Clinton narrow the gap in Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. Maybe she wins Kentucky by 50 points and has a close finish win or loss in Oregon. The media narrative gets even worse. "He can't even win one of his base states" they would say. Then Puerto Rico votes and gives Clinton a huge win.

So yeah, Obama would have finished the primary almost certainly with more pledged delegates but his candidacy would effectively have been crippled and Hillary Clinton would have had huge momentum going into the convention. The media would be eating him alive and who knows if she'd be able to start a superdelegate flood towards her since if that happened she probably would have taken a popular vote lead. She then would have pushed HARD to seat Michigan and Florida exactly as is, which may even have given her an overall delegate lead.

Obama is on track for a narrow win in Denver of around 100 delegates. It is tenous.

Let's be thankful that he put in a stellar performance exceeding all expectations and won Indiana and North Carolina big (He won Indiana IMO because we have to discount the Limbaugh effect).

I guess the point of this post is that the math wasn't and isn't everything. I was thinking to myself last night how different things could have looked. It was a mistake to assume that everything was locked up. It wasn't. Plus it's always fun to do what-if scenarios.

Do you think my scenario outlined above was realistic if Obama hadn't performed in such an outstanding way last Tuesday night? It's easy to see how it could have slipped away.