The Los Angeles Times’ Don Frederick claims Barack Obama has “disrespected” Kentucky by declining to campaign in the Bluegrass State. Does this mean he disrespected Guam too?
More interestingly – if no more usefully – Frederick asks what might have happened if Clinton had, as her then deputy campaign manager Mike Henry urged, simply skipped the Iowa caucuses entirely?
Well, yes, there’s something to that. At the risk of stating the obvious, Iowa was by some clear distance the most important state in the race. That seems clear now. But that importance is qualified: Iowa would not have been as significant if John Edwards had won. True, Edwards would presumably have done better than he did in New Hampshire and, equally plausibly, South Carolina might have been different too. But an Edwards victory in Iowa would have been ascribed to voter familiarity with him (having run in 2004 and spent more time in Iowa than either Obama or Clinton).
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