Should have said “can FRED take Arkansas from him”
I understand the miracle preferences, but all those states are not WTA. They are partial delegate awards. It is not those that will win the nomination. it is the BIG states.
NY is WTA. That is a really ominous thing and it occurs Super Tuesday, which is only 1 month from today. Thompson would have to elevate to first tier BEFORE then to win that state from Guilliani, and it’s just not going to happen.
CA and IL are also Feb 5. They are proportional and enormous and they are not an obvious place for Thompson to be strong, regardless of mojo — but the overall point here is there is no time for a change of mojo and no money to pay for it. Super Tuesday is only 4 weeks from now. Michigan is next week and is really the first of the major contests, and Thompson won’t even compete there. South Carolina will be diluted on its own day by Nevada — and SC is NOT WTA. Only a handful of delegates can be won there.
This is a delegates numbers game. If you don’t compete in California, Illinois and NY, there is no way to get big numbers. Worse still, perhaps worst of all, Texas doesn’t vote until March, and it is NOT WTA. The power of Texas will be spread out among multiple players.
You can’t walk into a convention in 3rd or 4th or 5th place in delegate count and expect to be annointed. There is just no mechanism for persuading the top 2 to backstab their own people so a 2nd tier candidate can have the nomination. It is conceivable this might have happened in the distant past, but there is far too much money involved in the process now for that scenario to make any sense at all. People will not tolerate having their money stolen like that.