Oh, for crying out loud

Responding to Howard Wolfson's assertion that the early revelation of the Edwards-Hunter affair might have boosted Hillary to victory in Iowa, Nate Silver writes:

It was also the case that Barack Obama appeared to get the lion's share of Edwards supporters once Edwards dropped from the race.

Talk about not getting it. Edwards dropped out after Obama won Iowa; it was Obama's Iowa victory that established him as a credible alternative to Hillary. What Wolfson was arguing was that, if the MSM had followed up on the Edwards scandal immediately after the Enquirer revealed it in October, this would have knocked Edwards out at a time when (a) the most recent polls showed Hillary well ahead, and (b) Obama still hadn't established his credibility.

What happened after Iowa was to a great degree a media-generated snowball rolling downhill for Obama. But if he hadn't won Iowa -- and if Edwards had been knocked out in fall 2007, a Hillary win would have been more feasible -- that snowball never would have started rolling. Democratic primary voters were looking for a winner, and the MSM hyped Obama's Iowa win as evidence that he was on his way to an inevitable November victory.