Can we put the "If Obama were behind he'd be doing everything Clinton is doing" meme to bed now?

OK. Let's take a look at this scenario in fiction and you tell me what is likely to have happened.

Let's say that Clinton (the front-runner) wins the Iowa caucuses by 9 points. Do you really think that anyone other than the biggest name in Democratic politics would come back to win New Hampshire? Obama needed to hit the ground running. If he didn't win Iowa then this campaign would have been completely written off and the Clinton Freight train would have kept on chugging along.

Let's even assume then that he managed to win some huge states on Super Tuesday, but then went on to lose 11 straight contests. That's a huge thing for an underdog to come back from. When you're the big player like Clinton has been you can blow off the calls to quit because you've built up a reputation and a name, but that doesn't work if you're a one term senator. Obama would have been forced to drop out or he would have been crushed by the DNC.

To actually flip where we are today and say that Obama would by clinging to the same straws that Clinton is is completely ludicrous.

I think he would have readily given up.