I think we can all agree with the Clinton campaign that there are some states that Obama won that the Democrats just won't win in November. Idaho. Alaska. Wyoming. Etc. Not that they shouldn't campaign, but that they have no chance of winning.
I would hope, however, that we could also agree that there are some states that Clinton won that the Democrats are virtually guaranteed to win this November. California. New York. Massachusetts. Etc.
Because November's election will yet again be one about electoral votes, Clinton and Rendell's argument about "big states" has little to do with the actual numbers that matter this fall. Instead, we should be looking at (shudder) "swing states".
So I ran some numbers.
Based on the 2004 election, there were 19 states in which neither Bush nor Kerry was victorious by more that 10%. For the purposes of this diary, we'll call those our "swing" states: AR, CO, DE, FL, HI, IA, ME, MI, MN, MO, NH, NJ, NM, NV, OH, OR, PA, VA, WA, and WI.
Of those states, we have results from all but OR and PA (and FL and MI of course). And the result? Striking!
Obama wins the "swing state" delegate count 434-374!
He wins the so-called "popular vote" 3,932,644 - 3,402,811!!*
*Of course, given that caucus states like vastly underestimate support for a candidate (Obama got more "votes" in Arkansas, a state he got trounced in, than in the larger state of Colorado, in which he demolished Clinton), the "popular vote" is a useless metric.
Also, and more to the point, Obama gets 82 Electoral votes from his swing states; Clinton gets 55 from hers.
Now, if you assume Clinton wins Pennsylvania, and Obama wins Oregon, Obama still wins the delegate count by a lot and the EV race 89-76. It's true that if you give Florida to Clinton as-is, she goes ahead in EVs 103-89 but is still behind in delegates 501-481. That would leave Michigan, where polls have the candidates tied. If this election comes down to a Michigan re-do, I'm confident Obama would win; plus he currently leads McCain in head-to-head polls there, while Clinton trails McCain. But regardless, this analysis blows to bits the argument that Clinton has any advantage in the general election due to her wins in "big states." And I personally don't want to see the general election come down to the Dems needing to win Florida, as it does in most Hillary (but not Barack) scenarios.
I would like to add that of the 19 states I mentioned, all but NJ and HI were also swing states in 2000. Assuming both will be safely blue this year, that's a net EV gain for Obama. The three states in 2000 that were swing states that weren't in '04 were AZ (we've got no chance), LA (very unlikely to go blue, but leans Obama) and TN (was only swing because of the Gore factor).
In summation: "Big state" wins aren't nearly as important as "swing state wins" and I think any honest Clinton-backer should agree to that. And since Obama wins or is close in the overall swing-state battle, arguments that superdelegates should willy-nilly ignore the primary electorate and impose her as the candidate are disingenuous at best, and more likely intentionally dishonest.