I'm enjoying reading the Sunday Kos symposium on the primary season post-mortem. It's clear from this - and the Sunday New York Times Op-Ed Symposium on the same topic - that there are a thousand reasons why things resulted in the way they did.
Borrowing a line from my fellow Central Floridian DarkSyde, let us not forget the criticality of the fourth dimension...
...timing! As they say, timing is everything. The primary season is a dynamic, evolving creature with lots of positive-feedback instabilities built in. So let me just make one point regarding a crucially-timed decision.
The Gallup daily tracking poll numbers for the Democratic primary contestants are as follows:
Look at the end of January. Edwards drops out, and where does his support go? To Obama, about 4 to 1 at least. Crucially, this is just before Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), and there is just enough time for Edwards's supporters to get over the loss and make the switch. Would Clinton have won more states if Edwards had decided to stay in a dozen or so more days until Super Tuesday - which would have netted him perhaps a hundred or more delegates? I think so.
Now, I'm not saying that all the other factors that the editors are pointing out are irrelevant - not at all. But the chance of timing regarding Edwards is significant too.