** Hillary Clinton is looking forward. Her campaign has begun to promote rallies and events in New Hampshire. Surrogate visits are being planned for Feb. 5. states. (Even Clinton's campaign manager and national political director will spend time on caucus day briefing reporters in states like Nevada about the campaign). Yesterday, some Clinton allies tried to claw back the conventional wisdom that Clinton has to win Iowa to survive; I do not believe the clawback is going to work, based on the campaign's own trajectory here, based on the fact that they're imported almost a thousand friend of Hill to the state, have spent millions, and have not disputed the notion, internally, that a third place finish in Iowa would be devastating. Perhaps not fatal, but devastating. After all -- she is the national frontrunner. Frontrunners are supposed to win everywhere. On ABC this weekend she said: "When I started here, I was in single digits. I mean, nobody expected me to be doing as well as I'm doing in Iowa." Nobody, meaning, almost everybody, unfortunately. (The campaign can't point us to a poll where she was ever in single digits.)
** Clinton has around 5000 volunteers; for every "hard one" who can't drive themselves to the caucus -- think elderly folks with oxygen tanks or mobility problems -- the campaign has drivers for them. Obama has "several thousand"; Edwards has several thousand; Romney has "hundreds."
** Obama's campaign spend yesterday telephoning and door-knocking all of their "ones," and they claim that their "flake rate" -- the percentage of confirmed attendees who suddenly say they can't go -- was low. Obama is said to be very tired, very pumped, a little on auto-pilot, and confident.
** If John Edwards doesn't finish first, he's going to have a tough time getting the attention of the media, but he is not going to drop out, and he has the capacity as a candidate who continuously surprise everyone. He's strong in New Hampshire -- stronger than he was in 2004 at this point, and has a real staff there who can catch whatever momentum he has. His populism is popular among a certain smaller segment of New Hampshire voters -- working class folks in towns like Berlin and Rochester -- but the winning Democratic candidate has always managed to put together a coalition of working class voters and professionals from cities like Nashua and Merrimack -- something Edwards has not shown an ability to do.
** If there's a three-way tie -- and Hillary Clinton winds up on the lowest of the three rungs -- then watch to see how eagerly the media is to declare the End of the Clinton Era in the Democratic Party, even though, by rights, she deserves to continue.
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Clinton may be well-financed, but a loss today is going to get her about $1 billion worth of negative publicity. Hard to fight that with money.
As for Obama, unless the headlines out of Iowa are 'BLACK MAN BEATS WHITE WOMAN', I don't see how the press fails to completely swoon for him.
Posted by lampwick | January 3, 2008 10:23 AM