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  Gary Hart: Obama Won't Fade
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ContributorThomas Walker 
Last EditedThomas Walker  Feb 29, 2008 01:41pm
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CategoryOpinion
News DateThursday, February 7, 2008 07:40:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionThe Super Tuesday stalemate has only reinforced comparisons between the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama contest and the fight for the Democratic nomination 1984, another one-on-one race that pitted an insurgent against the party establishment -- and one that wasn’t settled until the party’s July convention in San Francisco.

In that ‘84 campaign, the Obama role was played by Gary Hart, whose “new ideas” fueled a stunning 13-point victory in New Hampshire that rocketed him to the top of the race and, within weeks, brought Walter Mondale -- who had entered the campaign as the most prohibitive favorite in primary history -- to the brink of capitulation. A Hart sweep of Super Tuesday in early March 1984 would have flushed the former vice president from contention, but when Mondale narrowly won two states that day (to Hart’s seven), the press declared him reborn. When the primaries and caucuses finally finished in June, it was a draw: Both men had won about the same number of pledged delegates and Hart had even edged Mondale in the combined popular vote.

But the nomination was Mondale’s because most of the superdelegates -- party leaders and elected officials who account for 20 percent of all convention votes -- had been with him from the start, long before Hart had emerged as a viable option.
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