Conventional wisdom is dogged and determined  or at least its purveyors are. And even as “widely held beliefs” keep succumbing to reality, new ones flower like artichokes in spring. This year has brought a particularly brutal harvest. What follows is a crop report. And remember, it will all be settled by Feb. 5 or, at the latest, March 4.

Image Credit... Elliot J. Sutherland/Ottawa Herald, via Associated Press





What Proved to Be False

 Bill Clinton will be a great asset to Hillary. For all we know, the former president has been showering his wife with brilliant strategic advice in the background. But as a public surrogate, Mr. Clinton has run disastrously off the tracks at times (see Carolina, South), engaging in red-face tirades on camera, offending black voters, infuriating party leaders and generally consuming way too much oxygen. He has gone conspicuously Off-Broadway since South Carolina  no sign of him (only Chelsea) at Mrs. Clinton’s victory speech last Tuesday.

 Money is everything. Certainly, it’s better to have it  lots of it  than not. But there have been numerous examples in this campaign of candidates with no money (John McCain last year) or little money (Mike Huckabee this year) surviving, even thriving.

Inversely, the stout coffers of Mr. Obama did little for him in Texas (where he spent about $10 million in television advertising between early February and early March) and Ohio ($5.3 million). And despite spending $42 million of his own money, Mitt Romney developed little traction beyond his actual and adopted home states of Massachusetts, Michigan and Utah.

“That’s amazing,” the comedian Jimmy Kimmel said after Mr. Romney dropped out. “I was able to not win the presidency for free.”

 Barack Obama has a glass jaw. For many months last year, it was assumed that Mr. Obama would be too soft, or timid, to endure the attacks to come. “Obambi,” he was dubbed by a Chicago Tribune columnist. A parallel assumption emerged that the 46-year-old Mr. Obama was merely running in 2008 to sow good will for a campaign in 2012 or 2016. As it turned out, Mr. Obama has proven adept at deflecting punches, shrugging off criticism from opponents as “the same old politics.”

Caveat: Mr. Obama has gotten bad reviews in recent days for his ability to parry attacks from Mrs. Clinton and tougher questions from the news media in the run-up to Texas and Ohio. “He may have a glass jaw,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said last week. He was one of many media types to raise the suspicion anew.