How Obama won

A very good analysis at Larry Sabato's blog, including this interesting graphic:

Sabato's guest-blogger Justin Sizemore writes:

Obama's principal rival, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, won most of the season's biggest prizes, states that awarded a total of 1,835.5 delegates, more than the 1,574 selected in states Obama won. If the Democratic Party allocated delegates on a pure winner-take-all basis, Clinton would have ended the season 261.5 pledged delegates ahead of Obama. . . .
February 5 -- Super Tuesday -- gave the candidates a shot at inevitability: with nearly half the total pledged delegates chosen on that day, a lopsided victory would have been nearly impossible to overcome. Hillary Clinton won the biggest Super Tuesday prizes, but Barack Obama won the day's delegate race by a narrow margin of fifteen.

The whole idea of Super Tuesday -- stacking up 24 states on one day in February, awarding 1,681 delegates in one fell swoop -- was to end the nomination contest early. The powers-that-be wanted a 10-month general-election campaign, which is just plain crazy.

The rise of the "permanent campaign" since the '90s has wrenched the political machinery from its framework. The media thrives on conflict, and the constant partisan back-and-forth is great for ratings, but such an approach has two equal and opposite effects:

• It causes a small number of political fanatics to descend into an Olbermannesque lunatic frenzy of hyperpartisanship; and
• It turns off normal people, who become bored and jaded by the apocalyptic rhetoric and constant drumbeat of talking points.

Traditionally, the general election campaign began on Labor Day, and thus consumed only about two months every other year -- plenty enough to satisfy the appetite of all but the most stone-cold political junkies. The "permanent campaign" (which is, to a great extent, a consequence of the rise of 24/7 cable-TV news) is beloved by the political elite, but detested by Ordinary Americans.

By preventing the elite from making their intended premature shift into general-election mode, the drawn-out battle between Obama and Clinton was a blessing for Ordinary Americans.