Back to the game

Among the political cognoscenti, Barack Obama was widely seen as having waffled in front of Hillary Clinton's aggressive performance at last week's Las Vegas debate. Over the weekend, he got drawn into a tussle with the Clinton campaign in which he appears to have been used as a stalking horse in a scheme that employed Robert Novak--the man who outed Valerie Plame--to shop a fake story that the Clinton people had some scandalous info on Obama, but were holding it back. Obama fell into the trap and demanded that Hillary's people put up or shut up, getting some satisfaction by being able to say that it took three tries before the Clinton campaign said flatly that there was no damaging material. All in all, not a good week for the senator from Illinois when people question whether he's got the experience to be President.

But it's always darkest before they turn on the light, as Cole Porter had it. According to The Washington Post, Obama has moved ahead of Clinton in Iowa, receiving favor from 30 percent of "likely caucus voters," a shadowy category, to 26 percent for Hillary and 22 percent for John Edwards.

It's early, of course, and the poll shows the race still close, but coupled with other reports in the past couple of weeks, it looks like Clinton's aura of inevitability has been dented, perhaps badly. The challenge for her is to give voters another reason to support her. She's got time to do that in Iowa, and more time elsewhere, but she appears to be more vulnerable now than at any time in the past six months.

How important is "inevitability" or, perhaps more significant, how important is it if the aura has passed? We may find out in the next six weeks. Hillary has a very good organization and lots of dollars. She can run on more than just being the presumptive nominee. I saw one of her ads here in Boston yesterday (the Boston stations cover NH), and it was quite good, if not ground-breaking and filled with generalities--kind of like her campaign, but don't sell it short.

It seems to me that John Edwards is the one who's got to be worried: Iowa is pretty much win-or-go-home for his campaign, and he's now behind Obama at the outside edge of the margin of error, at least in this one poll. If other surveys show him losing ground, some of his voters are going to shift away from him for that reason; people don't like to feel that they are wasting their votes. I think most of those who drift away from Edwards (if it happens) will go to Obama if they go to the caucuses at all, but no one can say at this point.

I've noted that the media are also starting to pay attention to the second-chance votes--in Iowa, if your candidate gets less than 15% in the first vote, you get to vote again. Obama seems to be the second choice of more people than Clinton, at this stage, and commentators are noting that as a possible source of strength for him in the final results.

Interesting to see how the press plays the polls. The Post headlines, "For Democrats, Iowa Still Up for Grabs," while The Times reports the poll by saying, "The [WAPO] poll showed a statistical tie..." Maybe, but I'd rather be four points ahead than four points behind. Ah well, as the politicians always say--and sometimes mean--there's only one poll that counts.