premise: (Maureen Dowd nailed it last month.) Of course today we get an exquisitely smarmy op-ed from Mr Ford explaining that he's decided not to run because it would just be too destructive for the Democratic Party, because the Democratic bosses were determined to "bully" him, because he's too independent, and he would never do anything to indirectly help the Republicans, hence the decision not to run, even though, incidentally, <hypo> .
hypothesis: <hypo> should be "he would have won"