Nate Silver has an interview with Ken Strasma, Obama's national targeting director during the campaign. Once you get past the geeky discussions of statistical modelling there's some interesting stuff in there.
Strasma says that Obama's victory in Indiana - hitherto a solidly Republican state and perhaps the most impressive win of the night - had a lot to do with the organisation he had left over from the primary (along with North Carolina it was the last of the primaries): it now seems indisputable that Clinton's determination to battle on to the bitter end reaped benefits for her party's nominee in the general. Not that this is likely to be of much comfort to her.
In response to a question about who he thinks would present the toughtest challenge to Obama in 2012, Strasma says Romney, if the economy's tanking and the voters blame Obama...
However, I expect that the economy will begin to
recover, and that Obama will continue to be a popular and successful
president. In that case, the Republicans will not win by nominating an
inoffensive candidate like Romney. In those circumstances, Newt
Gingrich is the candidate who worries me the most. Gingrich has new and
unusual ideas. While those ideas are usually dead wrong, and often
quite scary, he is something different. You don’t defeat a popular
incumbent with a conventional politician, so an unusual choice like
Gingrich would be what would worry me the most.
Um, OK. But surely the key point here is that popular incumbents...win.
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