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Over at The New Republic, Noam Scheiber has a terrific postmortem interview with Joe Trippi. Here's Trippi, for instance, on what went wrong:
In the end, it was just impossible to break through against these two. "Letting history blaze its path," that line in his [final] speech, that's really true to how it felt inside. We felt we had better positions, stronger positions, better thought-out positions. We were talking about things no one else was talking about. Ending poverty, to give one example. The press was interested in history. The electorate was interested in history. This isn't to blame the press. You have two historic candidates, that's not the press's fault. Not voters' fault. That's the way it was. Increasingly, we were having to be more strident. We had to be more aggressive to become heard. As the cycle moves on, it got to the point where we could have gotten more attention if we set ourselves on fire. But as much as people may think that's a page in my game plan, none of us wanted to do that. That's not what Edwards wanted to do. When it got down to it, we could get 300 delegates, play the role of spoiler, or kingmaker at the convention. But that wasn't the reason he got in the race.And on the primary calendar:
He's got a good set of states coming up. February 9, Louisiana. He should do well in Nebraska and the Virgin Islands. I don't know if Nebraska is a primary or a caucus. If it's a caucus, he has a shot. [Note: It is.] The twelfth, you've got Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, where Doug Wilder was governor. So he could sweep those. He could be right back in it. The door slammer could be March 4: Ohio and Texas on the same day. So, she starts, has a great Super Tuesday, but it appears he's coming back because of Louisiana, the Virgin Islands, Virginia, D.C., Maryland. Then does she slam the door shut in Texas and Ohio? I don't know. Texas is a tough one for me. I don't know which one they [the Obama campaign] go for. It's not a natural place for either one. Ohio--she's got Governor Strickland.There's much more...
