2004 WAS SO LONG AGO: And so was my Howard Dean fandom. And I thought, "Let's say we click on this Joe Trippi interview and take a little trip down memory lane, hmm?" So I did! And it's from right before Super Tuesday and I was struck by this bit:

On Hispanics, I didn't know how he was going to undo what had been baked in cake in Nevada about his appeal to Latinos. There's no better name in the party [to help him with that] than Ted Kennedy. The Kennedy name, particularly Ted. Look at Massachusetts. He was 38 points down. Now he's got Kennedy, Kerry, Patrick. He's got a real chance. He can win. No way he can win California without a big shift in the Latino vote. If he could somehow pull out California and Massachusetts, he could be right back in it. If she wins California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arkansas, what states is he going to win? Illinois and Georgia? Then where? Alabama? Then where? She's way ahead in Tennessee, Oklahoma. You know what I'm saying?

And everything he was talking about came true--Obama lost CA and NY and NJ and even the hoped-for MA. And TN, and OK, and AR. But he still won the day, more or less, or at least tied it (tied in the popular vote it looks like, slight victory in the delegate count.) And I'm like--how did he do it, despite Trippi's points above?

My answers would be: 1. C'mon--it's Joe Trippi. 2. His "Then where? Alabama?" query was answered with CO, MO, ND, AK (sounds like Cthulhu's brother-in-law.....COMONDAK!), DE, CT, ID, UT, MN, and KS. Now--did Trippi forget about them? Not consider them a big deal since five are pretty tiny? Not think about CT or MO at all? Or think Clinton's Hispanic edge would give her CO, and so on. I don't know. CT and MO are ones he could have lost (or "lost"--proportional, proportional!) but won (or "won" in the sense that CNN will color them his color), and those were the only close races at all. That's part of the perception of Victory: Obama. 3. I'm taking Trippi out of context, he wasn't saying Obama was doomed, just sort of handicapping the race. Probably true. I was just struck by the (basically accurate) paragraph above in combination of what seems to be an Obama win. 4. Obama really is a media creation! Or an elite blog creation! (Like that would translate into actual votes.) Like the people at Talkleft keep saying. So of course the elite bloggers/talking head media think he won. I dunno, wouldn't the televised media prefer to keep the Clintons around? If they really are obsessed with them, which strongly suggests that Clintons mean RATINGS!!! 5. Trippi didn't realize the Obama caucus advantage. Which he wouldn't realize before yesterday

Eh, I'm rambling at this point. Trippi's larger point was that he thought Hillary had repositioned herself as the Change Candidate but I don't think she's going to convince the Obama fanbase of that anytime soon. And it's the same size of her fanbase at this point. Tie game! I am not looking forward to "smoke-filled rooms" being the catchphrase of the summer of '08.