Barack Obama's career if he lost the 2008 nomination

[President Johnson]

If Barack Obama narrowly missed to become the Democratic nominee in 2008 to Hillary Clinton, how do you see his political career moving forward? Coming this close as an African American freshman senator would still have been impressing, far from ending his political career. I don't think Hillary would have picked him as vice presidential nominee because he would have taken too much spotlight on him during the general election.

From what I know, Obama disliked being a senator, so I could see him not running for reelection in 2010 and instead run for governor of Illinois. He would have won the nomination and election handily and succeeded Blago in 2011 (remember that Blago wouldn't have been impeached without Obama vacating his senate seat). Since Illinois has no gubernatorial term limit, Blago may have had a desire to run again but if Obama entered, he would have been pushed out. Subsequently, I think it's fairly reasonable to assume he wins a second term in 2014 and then goes for the 2016 Democratic nomination after Hillary is term-limited and actually win the election by running a much better campaign than Hillary did in our world. Governor Obama very likely would have defeated Donald Trump in case latter is the Republican candidate. In this timeline, Republican backlash against Hillary is just similar to Obama IRL and Trump exploiting sexism here instead of racism.

Being more experienced as incoming president in 2017 (compared to 2009), Obama may have avoided some mistakes and wins reelection in 2020 for handling the pandemic quite effectively.

Thoughts?