But if one wants to play anyway, be careful not to get any on ya. I think the most compelling reason why Clinton would have a harder time in fall is her much high negatives. It will be interesting to see what has been happening to her negatives over the last two months. My best guess is that they’re stable at a pretty high level on the conservative side, and that they’re growing on the liberal side. I feel very comfortable projecting that far more idealistic Obama supporters will stay home out of petulance than would be the case for pragmatic Hillary supporter should she come up short.

But more importantly, I think that judging who’d have a better is a bit foolish because the match-up will be sensitively dependent on conditions at the time. If foreign policy is for any reason a bigger issue in fall than it is now, that’s bad for Obama against McCain, not so much for Hillary. But if the economy is bad, I think that’s troublesome for McCain, and good for either dem, but especially good for Obama because of his especially optimistic message. If the economy turns very crappy, hope will be the drug we’re thinking of… .

However, looking at the exit polls, this does not appear to be the case. I’m yet to do a meta-analysis of just the extent to which primary voters are breaking for Obama and Clinton along ideological lines but my instincts tell me it’s not so straightforward as a liberal (Obama) vs moderate and conservative (Clinton) split.

Supporters of the two are, most definately, split along demographic lines – and the concern facing Democrats is that the longer this race plays out, the supporters of either candidate become so entrenched that there’s a greater risk of those who are candidate-exclusivevoting for Sen. McCain in November should their preferred candidate not be the nominee despite the two Democrats being closer on the issues than what either is to McCain.

In sum, however, that given there is no great ideological schism ripping the Democratic Party apart like in 1968, 1972 or 1980, the prognosis for November might not be so bleak as some think.

Independents will decide this election – and signs are that Obama appeals to this constituency more than Clinton. That is going to be important especially against McCain. On the other hand, Obama could, relative to Clinton, be at a greater disadvantage with her demographic base than she would be with his.

Indeed, the bad news for Obama is that the Clinton strategy of making him the ‘black candidate’, rather than the post-racial inclusive candidate that he is, seems to have worked in Ohio and with Latinos – a vital demographic to which McCain won’t be the anathema as other GOP nominees would be.

Although primary voters, clearly have their preferences, Democrats will be hoping that they are more generic in that they’d happily support either as nominee than exclusively for or against the other.

Should Obama be the nominee, a good choice for Veep would be Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia – the quintessential ‘Reagan Democrat’, who could shore support up for him in critical states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, among white blue-collar Democrats.

Except a good portion of them voted for Bill Clinton in ’92 and ’96 and they just helped the Democrats win back Congress in ’06. I guess we could call them blue collar/rural swing voters but they aren’t all blue collar or rural. Some are just independent moderates. Reagan Democrats is a label that still sticks although, yeah, it’s gettin outdated.

Reagan won election twenty eight years ago. If these folks are still voting Republican, that would make them Republicans, would it not?