The 2008 presidential election has defied conventional wisdom. Few predicted John McCain’s Lazarus-like recovery. And certainly, most political observers — and the campaigns themselves — believed the race for the Democratic nomination would be settled long before the current sideshow.

Since Iowa and New Hampshire, state after state has become far more important than anyone had expected. Talk surrounds the upcoming primary in Pennsylvania.

North Carolina, like Pennsylvania, is delegate-rich, and Clinton hopes to capture it as well. But such a hope demonstrates a lack of understanding of the demographic and historical factors at work.

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has cruised to victory in states with high black populations, including Maryland and Mississippi. Comprising 38 percent of registered Democrats, blacks are the key voting block in the North Carolina primary. This gives Senator Obama an incredible head-start.

Clinton-style talk of general-election electability has not traditionally appealed to North Carolina black voters, who in 1996 renominated former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, over the well-financed and more-electable former Glaxo executive Charles Sanders, for an unsuccessful rematch against Sen. Jesse Helms. Gantt was black, and Sanders was white.

While countless campaigns have been sent to the political graveyard for an over-reliance on young voters, the youth vote really can play a major role in North Carolina. Here, too, Obama has the edge, thanks to a sophisticated effort at the grassroots and online levels. Young voters are especially well-organized in North Carolina, home to one of the largest public-university systems in the country and eleven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which will be Obama-turnout vehicles.

A third vital demographic blocking Senator Clinton’s hopes is military voters. With Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg, the Tar Heel state is home to the fourth-largest population of military personnel in the nation. These voters live in Eastern North Carolina which, while represented in many parts by Democratic members of Congress, is not Clinton country. President Clinton’s past troubles with military voters have been well documented; Senator Clinton’s recent visions of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire only compound the problem.

If North Carolina’s demographics are important indicators favoring Senator Obama, the state’s historical negativity to the Clintons is the most severe handicap.

North Carolina was not always an anti-Clinton state. In 1992, Bill Clinton lost to President George H. W. Bush by less than one percent. But after years of scandal and the war on tobacco, the state has an almost visceral reaction against both Clintons.

One need look no farther than the 2002 and 2004 North Carolina Senate races, when the Democrat in both races, the experienced and respected Erskine Bowles, all but denied any role in the Clinton administration.

Judging solely from the literature and advertising from the Bowles campaign, one would have been hard-pressed to realize Erskine Bowles had ever met Bill Clinton. A campaign ad touted Bowles’s experience as a White House chief of staff — including a picture of Bowles in the Oval Office — but left it to the voters to determine which president he had served under. Reagan? Carter? Nixon? McKinley? Indeed, it was up the campaigns of Sens. Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, Bowles’s 2002 and 2004 opponents respectively, to insert the word “Clinton” into the conversation.

Even Bill Clinton’s memoirs hurt Bowles’s campaign. A June 23, 2004 Charlotte Observer headline, “Clinton book full of kudos for Bowles,” was not a compliment. The Associated Press headline labeled it a “burden” and “doubled-edged sword.” (Bowles graciously inscribed this author’s copy of Clinton’s memoirs, “His life made mine interesting.” No doubt.)

Using either Clinton for public appearances was certainly out of the question for Bowles. But when a White House chief of staff does not use the former president or First Lady for fundraisers or direct mail, their names are more an albatross than a burden.

In the 2004 election, Bowles used Bill Clinton only once. On Election Day — too late to be reported in the press — the former president called local radio stations to get out the vote for Bowles. Clinton’s calls targeted the very black voters now drawn to Obama.

Despite rumors the North Carolina Democratic congressional delegation will endorse Obama en masse, the Clinton campaign’s targeting of North Carolina continues. The campaign recently told NBC’s First Read that while North Carolina is an “uphill battle,” they also “see opportunities” to win the state.

Senator Clinton has campaigned smartly in the state, visiting places like Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, demonstrating an understanding of the state’s emphasis on education and job training — a priority of Democratic governor Mike Easley.

But it may not be enough. With the demographic and historic obstacles facing the New York senator — and CBS’s invitation for a debate in North Carolina still not accepted — it is hard to see how, short of a scorched-earth “swift boating,” any Clinton map to the White House includes Tobacco Road.

– Doug Heye is a veteran of political campaigns and Capitol Hill. He served as communications director for Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) both in the United States Senate and during his successful 2004 campaign.