RobertEmmet

By Robert Schlesinger

If Hillary Clinton can survive the Barack wave (tsubami?), this whole thing might end like it started: intense, intimate and retail.

Here’s how it would work. First the New York senator does better than expected in Wisconsin (and given the press she’s getting, placing second might exceed expectations). This gives her enough breathing room to await the inevitable O-backlash — is he specific enough? Can he take a political punch? Is rhetoric enough? (There’s a certain irony in his being rhetorically compared to JFK, as I note elsewhere here.)

As February turns to March, Hillary is back on the move, and wins big victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, enough that after the Mississippi primary a week later the race remains stalemated. And then … the primary dead zone. Six long weeks without a primary before Pennsylvania puts its 188 delegates into play. (And then two election-less weeks on the other side of Pennsylvania, just for good measure.)

It would be Iowa or New Hampshire all over again. As my friend (and Pennsylvania reporter) Jacqueline Policastro recently put it:

This could mean Iowa-style campaigning. With candidates at your local coffee shop, and television crews stomping through your neighborhoods.

Of course there are a couple of crucial differences between Iowa or New Hampshire and the Keystone State. With a couple of big cities and a wide swath of rural voters in between it kind of looks like … the country. It might actually be a nice way to wrap this thing up.