May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Right after the Super Tuesday presidential primaries on Feb. 5, Barack Obama's campaign strategists projected the outcome of every subsequent election. Of the 18 primaries and caucuses held since then, they were right on 17, missing only Maine, where Obama won a squeaker.

These strategists were so good that they even correctly called the vast majority of the 128 congressional districts that were in play within the states. The internal document -- whose lead author was chief delegate hunter Jeff Berman -- also shows they have been almost dead-on in delegate counts. They have run circles around Hillary Clinton's team.

Whether this is political genius or a mere footnote to history may depend on whether the winning streak continues this week; that Feb. 8 document predicted Obama victories in Indiana and North Carolina.

If Obama wins those contests on May 6, the Democratic nomination will be over. There are scores of so-called superdelegates waiting to embrace the Illinois senator. Victories in the two states will open the gates, even Clinton supporters acknowledge privately.

Conversely, if Senator Clinton, 60, of New York wins in both states, that would take the odds of an Obama nomination from near certain to merely even.

If as the polls, and conventional wisdom, suggest, Obama, 46, wins North Carolina and Clinton captures Indiana, the long slog will continue. Although Obama will remain the favorite to win the nomination, he may appear weakened when he runs in the general election against Republican John McCain.

Prescient Document

That three-month-old document is instructive in both looking forward to the two important tests this week and back at Obama's Pennsylvania loss.

Clinton's victory in Pennsylvania has been largely credited to the support she got from Governor Ed Rendell and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Yet a look at the returns shows Obama actually did better than anticipated in Philadelphia and its populous suburbs -- the heart of Nutter's and Rendell's appeal.

Further, the first serious African-American presidential candidate did better than expected in Republican areas like Lancaster County, which he carried.

Yet statewide he was defeated by almost double the 5-point loss his strategists envisioned in February. That was due to the huge margins Clinton rolled up in white working-class districts. In the former mining and textile regions of northeastern Pennsylvania, places like Scranton and Wilkes- Barre, they expected to lose by about 10 points. Instead they were defeated by better than 2-to-1.

Elements of Racism

Likewise, in the industrial towns of western Pennsylvania, like Johnstown, home of U.S. Representative John Murtha, a powerful Clinton supporter, Obama lost not by the eight-point margin his team had anticipated, but by 46 points.

There may have been some element of racism among these culturally conservative voters, who support Democrats if they think the politician is strong and empathetic toward their struggles; Obama appeared neither.

This makes his camp nervous about this week. In the Feb. 8 document, his team projected four-point Obama victories in two Indiana districts; the overwhelmingly white 8th district bordering on Illinois, and the 3rd, a middle- and working-class area of northern Indiana.

North Carolina

If Obama holds his own there, he'll either carry the state or come close, which would be tantamount to victory. If the vote is more like Scranton or Johnstown, look for a double- digit Clinton win and trouble for the front-runner.

In North Carolina, one-third of the voters will be African-American, and Obama will carry more than 80 percent of them. If he's clobbered among other voters, he could lose here, which would turn the nomination contest upside down.

This is a campaign that hasn't won anything in some eight weeks; it's a candidacy and message that seems tired.

Some of this is beyond their control: Who could have predicted the candidate's own narcissistic pastor would do such harm -- it had to be deliberate -- to a congregant?

Obama looked almost like a victim. That's not where an American presidential candidate wants to be.

To be sure, some of the Republican glee over Obama's discomfort and difficulties should be discounted. When Karl Rove says Obama's Columbia and Harvard degrees show how out of touch he is with average Americans, he seems to forget that George W. Bush went to Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School.

Obama's Villains

Still, the cool, cerebral freshman Senator Obama needs to reemphasize his uniqueness.

It's fine to be a uniter who shuns old partisan divides. But successful American politicians invariably build capital with voters by targeting villains, from Franklin Roosevelt's ``economic royalists'' to Ronald Reagan's ``welfare queens.''

Obama's villains are vanilla: K Street lobbyists.

Now, Clinton has given him a tangible target, one she believes is key to success on May 6: her embrace of McCain's ``gas tax holiday'' for this summer.

Even in a cynical world, this is a notable fraud. It's almost impossible to find a serious economist who thinks this is a good idea. It is bad tax policy; it is bad conservation policy; and it would line the pockets, not of struggling consumers, but of rich oil companies. This is pure pandering.

Heart of Difference

Obama has taken the right position by opposing it. David Axelrod, his chief strategist, says this issue ``goes right to the heart of the difference'' between the candidates, demonstrating the old-school politics the Clintons practice.

The test, though, is how Obama opposes it these next several days. If he coolly and dispassionately discourses on the impracticality of this inane idea, he'll get some nice editorials and lose Indiana; in a one-sided demagoguery, the panderers win.

The other possibility is that he seizes the moment and shows how this is a case of politicians deceiving voters for their own personal gain; this proposal wouldn't only lead to a loss of jobs but a loss of intellectual integrity for its advocates. He may still lose Indiana, but a message like that would reinvigorate his campaign.

(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Albert R. Hunt in Washington at ahunt1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 4, 2008 12:54 EDT