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Ditka Reconsiders Not Running For Illinois Senate in 2004

I love this kind of counterfactual hypothesizing.

Could Mike Ditka have beaten Obama for Illinois Senate in 2004?

?I don?t know what would have happened if I had run,? Ditka, 69, said. ?I really don?t. Could I have beaten him? Maybe. Maybe not.?

A lot of people in Illinois thought Ditka had a pretty good chance to win, had he accepted the invitation to run. Remember: four years ago, Obama was a relative unknown. He was back in the state senate after having been defeated badly in a 2000 primary in which he sought to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ditka, on the other hand, was one of the most famous? and in many, many places, beloved? people in the state of Illinois. He was controversial, yes, but that?s what his admirers liked about him. He was instantly recognizable in every corner of the state? he would have drawn enormous crowds to rallies. Mike Ditka, the icon, against Barack Obama, the novice?

It would have been a close race. We don't know how the campaign would have gone, whether the 2004 convention speech would have had the amazing effect it did, or whether Ditka could have even survived the campaign if there were skeletons in his closet.

But yes, Mike Ditka, just maybe, could have altered history in 2004.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on October 18, 2008 (boomark / email).