Snagging an Obama campaign report that wasn’t intended to be circulated, Bloomberg News reporters Catherine Dodge and Alex Tanzi are reporting that Obama advisers have privately projected a “virtual delegate draw” at the end of the campaign trail.

This means that the final outcome may hinge on how the entrenched-machine super delegates vote, which could potentially result in a truly ugly scenario (i.e., the white-wine drinking, better-educated, African-American, under-40 Obama contingent feeling a horrific sense of electoral betrayal if the dug-in, boomer-aged Clintonistas, friendly to the hamburger-and-burrito-eating-blue-collar-faithfuls, snatch it away in some smoke-free back room) at the Democratic National Convention in Denver next August.
This morning’s First Read summary, quoting the Bloomberg story: “Obama’s advisers are predicting victories in 19 of the remaining 27 Democratic primaries and caucuses, with Clinton winning the big states of Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to the scenario attached to a spreadsheet showing the campaign’s Super Tuesday delegate breakdown.
“The analysis envisions an Obama winning streak over the next 12 days. It projects victories in the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state on Feb. 9 and a narrow loss to Clinton on Feb. 10 in Maine. Obama is looking to sweep the Feb. 12 primaries in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., and get victories in Hawaii and Wisconsin a week later.”
“Normally, we’d assume this was an expectations-setting game. And maybe it is. But the Obama campagin analysis seems to be based on the number of working class and/or Hispanic Democrats in various states; check out the states Obama’s team believes it will lose: Maine, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Kentucky. All of those states have a lot more blue-collar Democrats than white-wine drinking Democrats. So it’s a very realistic” assessment.