If Clinton Had Only Transformed Earlier...

Ben Smith:

Here's a budding storyline you shouldn't buy: Hillary could have won this race, if only she'd cracked the code earlier on how to stop Obama. It's an appealing notion, but one that ignores the force that's driven her transformation: The calendar.

I think is the correct, but I want to add an important caveat: if Clinton had cracked the strategy code two months earlier than she did, then it's very possible that the course of the race would have progressed very differently. Clinton's central strategic failing was her seemingly inexplicable decision to cede major, populous states to Obama solely because the states chose delegates via caucus. If Clinton had competed in Minnesota, in Colorado, in Maine -- if she had spent time and money and effort to contest those states, she would have not won them, but she almost certainly would have picked up hundreds of thousands of additional votes and dozens of additional delegates. Indeed, she might have even per herself in a position to tie or match Obama in the pledged delegate and popular vote counts. Clinton advisers will say to this argument, "well, we only had a limited amount of time and resources, and so it's not fair to say we should have gone into the caucus states." Well, that's the choice, isn't it?

OBAMA's MOMENTUM was also resource-driven. He had raised more money than Clinton and had more money to spend after Feb. 5. He won eleven states in a row -- five of them were real primaries.

Only two of those primaries -- Wisconsin and Virginia -- were states where an on-message Clinton -- a stoic appeal to the white working class -- might have given her enough to win (WI) or almost win (VA).

Smith argues, I think, correctly:

Clinton couldn't have run as this candidate at the beginning of the cycle. John Edwards occupied that space, with biographical authenticity, through January. February was a month dominated by coastal elites -- New York City, Boston, Los Angeles -- and African-Americans. Clinton could plausibly have done even worse if she'd run around talking about abandoning Nafta and protecting gun rights.

Then, in March, Clinton's transformation was driven by the calendar. (Just as Obama's redevotion to clean coal has been. This is normal politics.) The final quarter of the delegates are to be won in states where working-class white voters provided the key to victory. And Obama has always won enough of those -- from Iowa to Indiana -- to put together a very slightly bigger coalition than Clinton, a coalition which hasn't changed much, despite both candidates' best efforts.