The Nash equilibrium in this case is putting both Clinton and Obama on the same ticket -- and getting both to stop denigrating the supporters of the other.

While A Beautiful Mind made the term "Nash Equilibrium" trendy, you could at least use it correctly, instead of using the complete opposite definition of it.

You're own link to Wikipedia makes this clear to anyone reading the first paragraph in that definition.

By everyone agreeing to a single solution (e.g. the dream ticket) that is the OPPOSITE to a Nash Equilibrium.

The Obama campaign's leak of the delegate count spreadsheet was both a deft move to manage expectations, and a way of boosting his support among voters and superdelegates by showing that, even given the best case Clinton scenario, Obama has a strategy for victory. The whole point of the leak, in other words, was to shred the last remnants of the Clinton inevitability argument, and to attract supporters whose only psychological barrier to switching to Obama has been their desire to stay with the person they had up to now believed to be the eventual nominee.

But here's what the Obama people are too coy to mention in those official projections: The Clinton path to the nomination increasingly appears to require something like a version of the "Giuliani strategy". A Clinton victory requires her to sweep the late big state primaries following a string of Obama victories in February, and then rake in a substantial majority of the superdelegates. For that to happen, one must imagine that even after a month of losing and bad news, her current supporters in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania - which includes many people who have barely begun to think about their votes - will all stay on board.

Recall that Giuliani led in Florida polling for many months. But what happened to that support after a few weeks of failure in early primaries and caucuses? It evaporated. Now Obama already has a significant lead in pledged delegates. If Obama does indeed mount the string of February victories that began last night, the bandwagoning effect is going to be too strong for the Clinton campaign, and their big state electoral levee is going to break. Large numbers of voters in those late states will switch to the person who will increasingly appear to be the party's nominee. These voters are also going to be exposed to a month of media reports that Obama shapes up much better than Clinton in head-to-head matchups with McCain. And finally, pressure is going to begin to mount soon inside the party leadership to settle on a nominee to begin to fight back against a McCain campaign that has already begun, to make sure the nomination is not deferred absurdly until the convention in August, and especially to make sure that superdelegates don't controversially give the nomination to a candidate who trails in pledged delegates.

I see little value in the so-called "dream ticket" of Obama and Clinton or Clinton and Obama. Someone is going to win this nomination and someone is going to lose this nomination. If Obama is the nominee, I see no electoral benefit to putting Clinton on the ticket. It might satisfy some Democrats, but does absolutely nothing to help the ticket attract Independents or Republicans. Rather, Clinton's baggage, high negatives and established polling ceiling among the general public would weaken the nominee, be an anchor that the Democratic ticket has to drag around, and not help in securing the electoral votes of even a single state that the Democrats are not already poised to win.

I hope everyone who reads Mr. Clemmons post will click through to the Ben Smith commentary and, when there, will open the Obama campaign's Excel spreadsheet, upon which Mr. Smith reports.

It seems that the Obama campaign has been prudently conservative in its projections.

While I don't suggest that after all is said and done one or the other of the candidates will have wrapped up the nomination, I think it quite possible for Obama to have more delegates than his campaign has projected. The campaign has projected a 2% victory in VA and 7% in MD and 4% to 7% losses in OH, TX, and PA.

Like everyone else, I'll just have to wait and see.

Steve,
I appreciate you taking a big-picture view of the campaigns considering the drivel we get from our press and the stakes in this election. You’re right of course that they need to combine forces to ensure a Dem victory in November and both campaigns have been making nice lately towards that end. Until a nominee is decided though, the campaigns will fight for their own. I think some of the most vocal supporters on blogs and in the media will continue to attack the candidate they have decided is anathema to the country.
Do the media lead this subtle denigration of the candidates? Do the campaigns encourage supporters to attack the other? Absolutely, on the first and maybe at times on the second, but I think the electorate has once again fallen into the paradigm that the media promotes for our elections (horse-race, tempest in a teapot scandals, distorted quotes and sound-bite cardboard characterizations).
TPM is part of this game-playing; generally sustaining the caricature of HRC created by the MSM while at the same time criticizing the worst offenders like Tweety, Limbaugh, Fox News, etc. Look at the typical TPM front page today (2/10). Images lead in every media and here we have a great picture of a beaming, victorious Obama with the big banner- “Sweep…” Below that is a picture of a “calculating” Hillary next to a pleasant-looking Shuster who is now the victim because “Hillary [demands] Shuster Must Be Fired” (while, in fact, it is not clear as Josh claims that Hillary asked that he be fired).
There are positive stories of HRC to be found, too, but they are usually dominated by this kind of swipe. Edwards was treated worse when he got any press at all (ditto Kucinich, et al). For the most part, Obama is given a pass by the media. Criticisms are framed as strictly political or racist or sour grapes and brushed aside. I think the subtle demonization of a candidate over a long period does set in, in voters’ minds and will make it difficult for Clinton to either take a second spot to Obama or will lessen any mandate if she wins.

It seems it's far more often Hillary Supporters who are happy to denigrate Obama supporters.

They're rich.
They're young.
They have too much time on their hands.
They don't have a family.

I think HRC would make a very good VP, but I don't think she'd ever accept it.

People have already dealt with Clinton's negatives. She actually overcame much of those within New York as well.

Odama's negatives were often hidden with facing canddiates such as Alan Keyes(R-looneybin).

The fact he had 37% negatives witrh almost name recognition in early evaluations indicates there's something beneath the hype that will shadow his political days for want of being addressed.

Thus, the more people find out Obama the more doubt they'll have. It's been a case of the opposite for Hillary.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/10/virginia/

In reality, her hopes of averting a wipeout Tuesday depends on that half-forgotten demographic group in the Democratic Party -- Southern white men. Buried in the exit polls from last Tuesday's orgy of primaries was the conversion of south of the Mason-Dixon Line male voters into ardent put-a-woman-in-the-White-House feminists. On Feb. 5, Clinton carried white men in the Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas primaries by a combined margin of 59-to-34 percent. She repeated that pattern Saturday in Louisiana (the only state with exit poll data) winning this group 51-to-31 percent.