How Dean could win - and lose

DailyKos has been running a series of analyses on the major candidates and how they could win the Democratic nomination. Today he has posted his analysis of how Dean could win, and it's notable because he also throws in an alternate scenario of how Dean could lose. This is an essential post and comparing the two scenarios only underlies how important the fund-raising effort will be.

Kos goes into a chronological detailed list of each state's primary dates. For brevoty, I'll just excerpt the summaries. Here is Scenario 1, a Dean win:

Dean wins the nomination if he takes California, Connecticut, Maryland, Mass, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii and Washington. He could lose Georgia, North Dakota, and Texas, and still sew up the nomination. The "moderate's" task will be to steal at least two of those states.

Bottom line: My scenario is fairly CW, not too controversial. It assumes that the NH loser in the Dean/Kerry battle will be forced to drop out because of waning media attention. Remember, the media has every interest in culling the field as quickly as possible in order to save money. It's expensive to cover so many candidates.

Scenario 2 is where Dean loses New Hampshire, and cannot raise funds. In that case the campaign remains competitive but operating a a sever disadvantage. It would all boil down to Super Tuesday:

Super Tuesday is a money day, and it's hard to see how Dean could pull it off. His candidacy would probably die in a flood of Kerry money.

But here's the kicker -- as Kerry and Dean split the lefty vote, the "moderate" candidate has an undivided share of the centrist vote. He wins the election right here and now.