At some point each consultant dreamed that his candidate would survive to go one-on-one in the campaign with Hillary Clinton. They had scenarios, strategies, and contingencies - all left on the shelf as their candidates dropped out.
Now, advisers to four Democratic candidates who have left the trail agree on one thing: They never imagined that Clinton would be struggling to stop Barack Obama, a neophyte in national politics, this late in the campaign or might need the party elders and apparatchiks, the so-called superdelegates, to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
And all four of the strategists believe that Obama, at this stage, enjoys more advantages, though no one is making any predictions. And none of the four believes it is likely that either candidate can win the nomination outright with pledged delegates gained in the primary and caucus season that ends June 7. Barring upheavals or a string of big upsets, the only way to reach the magic number of 2,025 delegates needed for the nomination, they say, is with a sizable chunk of superdelegates, who are free to back any candidate.
"It's really difficult to see a Clinton strategy that can emerge other than to dominate the superdelegates," said Joe Trippi, senior strategist for John Edwards's campaign. "I don't think she has that many other cards to play. Even if you give everything else to her, it's going to be very close."
Under party rules, 3,253 pledged delegates will be allocated through the five months of caucuses and primaries. Another 796 delegates to the party's August convention in Denver will be superdelegates - members of Congress, governors, party officials, and former top officeholders. Most have not declared an allegiance, leaving about 450 who are publicly uncommitted to either candidate.
"Clinton needs to change the underlying dynamic of the race," said Steve Murphy, top strategist for the campaign of Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. "The more she can get the race focused on the economy and convincing middle-class voters she truly cares about them, the better off she is. Obama's run a more substantive campaign than even he gives himself credit for, but he still has a 'Where's the beef?' vulnerability."
Jim Jordan, a senior adviser to Senator Chris Dodd's campaign, is impressed with Obama's ease in adapting to a high-stakes national campaign. "What's mind-boggling is that Obama hasn't done politics remotely at this level but he has been virtually mistake free," he said. "He has a nice instinctive touch for the ebb and flow of politics, which is astonishing for someone who has not been through this before."
Larry Rasky, communications director for the campaign of Senator Joseph Biden, said Clinton's command of issues and her experience on the national political stage are assets. Clinton "is deeply steeped in the substance of national politics and the political dialogue around every big issue, and when you're in a debate setting, you really can't fake it," he said.
"But Obama does things the rest of the candidates can just dream of with his ability to connect to the vision. . . . Nobody who was considering this race ever imagined what Barack Obama would become as a force, as a cash machine, as a winner."
Money may be Obama's most tangible advantage at this point. His campaign raises dollars by the millions, mostly through its network of 400,000 mostly small donors who contribute via the Internet.
Murphy said Obama will need that money to help level the playing field in states where Clinton has enormous institutional and demographic advantages, particularly in such states as Ohio and Texas, which will hold primaries on March 4 with a combined 334 delegates at stake, and in Pennsylvania on April 22, when another 158 pledged delegates will be up for grabs. A more traditional Democratic electorate, with a huge bloc of Latino voters in Texas and blue-collar Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania, plays to Clinton's strengths.
"There's a political component to that money," Murphy said. "Having that number of donors will beguile the superdelegates who are looking ahead to the November election."
With a stretch of contests in the next two weeks, Obama may have an edge, with his campaign's organizational strength in caucuses and the presence of large African-American electorates in several primaries.
His underdog status in the March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio and later in Pennsylvania offers Obama his best chance to change the dynamic, Trippi said.
"If he can somehow crack into that economically pressured group of working-class people and maybe win Ohio and Pennsylvania, given what else we think is going to happen, he's probably the nominee," he said.
Jordan said the calendar affords the Clinton campaign fewer opportunities to make that loud a statement. "It's harder right now to see Clinton breaking into states where he has the advantage than it is to see Obama breaking into states where she has the advantage," he said.
Everyone is looking closely at Ohio, where polling has shown Clinton now with a commanding double-digit lead. Ohio tipped the 2004 electoral college to President Bush.
"If Obama can demonstrate that he can appeal to those lower middle-class whites who have abandoned the Democrats in Ohio and cost us the election for a variety of reasons, it would say something to the party and the superdelegates who will have a huge say in who the nominee is," Rasky said.
In most of the nomination scenarios, the superdelegates loom large. But there are misconceptions about who they are, Jordan said. Most are party loyalists from all over the country who are "in touch with the preferences of the people where they live and have constituencies they don't want to get ahead of," he said.
Jordan suspects that the vast majority of superfelegates will express the will of the voters in their own states.
Trippi, however, sees the potential for monstrous irony if there is a brokered convention.
"For the first time either a woman or an African-American will become the nominee of a major party and it all could be decided in the back room somewhere," he said. "She's ready for change, he's running on a new kind of politics, and in the end, it'll be the old-style politics we haven't seen in like 40 years."
