The following is so chock full of irony that it would’ve made Fellini blush. At this moment in time, when Democratic president Barack Obama is embroiled in a fight about US health care reform and memories of the botched attempt by the Clintons in 1993 hang over him like a dark shadow, Obama’s vacation spot is to be hit by…hurricane Bill.

Seriously, you can’t make this up.

Hillary Clinton should give up. She has lost. As predicted on this website before she got into the situation she’s in now, she cannot win the nomination without causing an implosion of the Democratic Party. The ‘Nuttyroots’ have hijacked the party; they are die-hard Obama fans, if only because most of the nutters are young and completely blinded by their love for Obama. Never mind that he’s just as much a calculating pol as is Hillary. (Christopher Hitchens has a fantastic article about that here.)

But now there’s another problem for the Democratic Party. Hillary’s die-hard supporters won’t jump over to Obama’s ship that easily, either. The Clinton campaign has succeeded in showing who the True Barack Obama is: a calculating politician. Doh. Those who believe that any politician can get to where Obama is now without culling dozens on the political battlefield need to go back to school.

And because of that, John McCain will win. Unless Hillary withdraws now.

As things stand today, Obama will in all likelihood never win the presidency. Not necessarily because he’s black, but because the Clinton campaign has succeeded so very well in shooting down in flames the fairy tale that was Obama’s campaign in the first 3 months. The Pope of Hope has been recast as the User of Dope. As a Wheeler ‘n’ Dealer who cuts deals with slumlords. As The Calculator, who – as Hitchens points out – knew full well that he’d have to one day ditch the reverend of his Trinity Church.

Obama’s problem is that without the fairy tale, there isn’t much to look at. Just another pol, albeit quite the calculating one, with a platform that really isn’t that much different from Clinton’s. And all that is exactly what the Clinton campaign in its last throes tried to prove.

In a warped feat of strategic, er, “thinking” they decided to show the Superdelegates that Obama is just like them. Just another politician. Ah, but…! A politician who cannot win Pennsylvania, or Florida, or Ohio. The Big Three states, of which a Democratic candidate needs to win at least two during the general election.

The Clinton campaign is hoping that, now that the shine has come off Barack Obama, the Superdelegates will in the end weigh Clinton’s “super status”, her being The Wife of Bill and all. And thus nominate her.

That’s why Clinton is so desperately trying to push her experience; to show that she has just that little bit more luggage than Obama has. But hasn’t anyone in the Clinton campaign HQ realised that they haven’t just pulled Obama of his pedestal, but herself too?

A recent poll showed that people who used to flock to Obama, are now having severe second thoughts thanks to Clinton’s succesful politics of personal destruction. So are they flipping over to Hillary? No. In fact, the poll showed that there’s a fair chance that the independent voters will just stay at home come November. Which is bad news for Clinton, as the next general election will be just as closely fought as any other election.

Of course, some nutters of the so-called ‘Netroots’ – the Obamajugend on DailyKos and TalkingPointsMemo (TPM), with whom there is no reasoning whatsoever – will also stay home should Clinton be the candidate.

Interestingly, though, the same applies for Obama. Die-hard Clinton fans are at best lukewarm about the idea of voting for Obama instead.

And therein lies the danger.

Those DailyKos / TPM Democrats are making the very same mistake they made in 2000 and 2004. They essentially wrote off George W. Bush, convinced as they were that smart Americans would never vote such an idiot into the White House. And now they’re convinced that the Republican candidate, John McCain, doesn’t stand a chance.

Wrong.

McCain has a 50-50% chance of winning the election. It’s going to be 51-49% for either candidate. Which brings me to the conclusion that Clinton will have to withdraw, now that there’s perhaps still time to do some healing and curing.

She will also need to stand behind Obama firmly and back him up with everything he does. She needs to campaign for him vigorously, and Bill too. She will never allow herself to be humiliated by taking on the veep-slot, but she will need to campaign for him.

Clinton will have to actively try to push her die-hard constituency to Obama. At the same time, Obama will need to come clean. He will need to take on some parts of the Clintonista mantle. He will have to be very honest and come clean about everything; Rezko, reverend Wright, shady deals. He will have to tell everything there is to know about him to his campaign people and to the leadership of the DLC.

And he’d also better ditch David Axelrod as chief strategist of his campaign. Unfortunately, Axelrod has proven to be a one-trick-pony; he’s good at promoting the change agent candidate. But that’s it. Obama will have to integrate some of Clinton’s campaign staff, and simply because some of them are truly the best in the business. I’ll repeat that: truly the best in the business.

The errors that lead the Clinton campaign into the doldrums were strategic ones, not necessarily executive ones.

The Clintons quite simply underestimated three important factors.

1. The level of Clinton fatigue among the Democratic Party’s leadership. The B-grade people want to move on to the A-level, but that’s still occupied by the Clintonistas, and so the Clintonistas need to be removed. They now plan to use Obama as their personal crowbar to force the Clintonistas off of their comfy leather chairs. Bill Richardson, anybody…?

2. Obama himself. His speechifying and the vibe that the campaign managed to build around it helped him to become a viable alternative to Clinton, which was all a considerable part of the Democratic constituency apparently needed.

3. Clinton herself. For all the stories about the fantastic campaign machine, the money, the professionalism, the speed and accuracy of the War Room, it was ultimately the candidate herself who failed. She failed to connect, she failed to excite. Stupid American Voter doesn’t necessarily want experience and knowledge to vote for. SAV wants an exciting, clean slate to vote for. Then, when the slate is voted into the White House, SAV expects him or her to be all-knowledgeable and have a 100 years of presidential experience. Clinton campaigned on a mirror image of that; knowledge and experience now, excitement and a fresh new start once she’d taken the White House. She had it the other way round.

And now the hysterical Obamazombies are screaming that Hillary and John McCain are essentially the same kind of people, with the same ideas. Ridiculous, of course; Clinton’s platform is worlds apart from McCain’s. She’s a die-hard Democrat, he’s a Republican. But not to Obamanazis.

Anyway, strategic mistakes, and now the very best in the campaign bizz are reduced to simple ant-like workers who are trying to stop the ant hill from flooding.

Withdraw, Hillary. Help the Democratic Party in regaining some of its unity; deliver Obama your voters. Because if the two of you go on like this, John McCain won’t even have to make his hands dirty.

“Amateur Hour in Blue

We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?

The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.

But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, “Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?

And then Obama weighed in, too.

I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists.

It’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.”

(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

Then there’s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, “Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,” presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.

But now our story gets tricky and icky.

The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”

McCain is the “pro” who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.

But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, “I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders – as well as the Ecuadorians – and relations continue to improve between the two.”

It’s not quite English, but it’s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it’s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia’s war on Ecuador.

Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates’ frightening desire to prove them right.” – Greg Palast

You can read it in full here. Harrowing. When will those Yankees learn that hypocrisy is not a virtue?

Barack Obama is destined to be the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. The young (46) Senator for Illinois has a number of advantages which he can exploit to the fullest. However, there are also two giant negatives that could pose severe problems for him during the general election — an election which will be just as closely fought as 2000 and 2004.

UPDATE: And now he’s starting to piss off the press corps.

The first negative which the Republicans will exploit to the fullest is Obama’s wish to make it a clean general election. Like Al Gore and John Kerry before him, Obama has a certain ego and from that strong ego he takes a moral high ground, declaring that ‘the truth’ guides him. He also believes that ‘the truth’ will guide the American voter.

Asked by a reporter on how he would push back against outright lies and distortions about him thrown at the voters by the Republicans during the general election, Obama said: “the way I will respond to it is with the truth”.

That’s what Kerry said before he headed into the elections of 2004. And before he got ‘Swiftboated’. Kerry and his campaign thought that the average voter would see the lies and distortions for what they were, and still vote for him. Big ‘oops’.

Obama seems to be making the same mistake. He has been hit by a number of sleaze stories but nothing seems to have stuck – so far, he seems blessed by a nice layer of Teflon. But that will change.

So far, he’s gotten away largely unharmed from all the sleaze that Camp Clinton and Camp McCain have thrown at him. But unlike with Clinton, there won’t be a party apparatus calling off the attack dogs during the general election. No Sir.

And that brings us to the second Big Negative for Mr Obama: SAV.

Stupid American Voter is the type that does not read up, has never combined the two words ‘research’ and ‘internet’ in once sentence, generally has an IQ that’s the size of your shoe, and will believe anything some face on a screen (we’ll call them ‘Screenface’) tells him.

To SAV, the difference between truth and perception is undiscernable. SAV uses news media as his source about what’s going on in the other state and that news media is oftentimes more interested in a good story than facts. Like in every election, it will be the perception voters have of the candidates that will be the deciding factor. Nothing else.

Unless Obama and his campaign response team wises up real soon, he won’t stand a chance in hell against all the smears and sleaze attacks that will be thrown at him. And which will be swallowed down like sweet nectar by SAV.

Barack Obama, the secret Manchurian candidate somehow planted by Osama bin Laden? There will be SAVs who will believe that crap. That’s why it will be repeated over and over and over again.

Barack Obama, the real estate peddler who’s in business with ‘slumlord’ Tony Rezko? There will be people who will believe it.

Michelle Obama’s words getting completely distorted? A lot of SAVs will be offended, even though what Screenface says is distorted nonsense.

It goes on. Obama had better be ready. Perhaps campaign manager David Axelrod will be allowed to do some shopping in Camp Clinton once the nomination’s settled. Especially the Clinton Fast Response Team would be a very good addition.

John McCain is destined to be the next nominee for the presidency on behalf of the Republican Party. Many Republicans don’t agree with him leading the pack, but votes are votes and all things being equal, McCain has decisively won most of the states during the Republican primary. And there are a number of traits and advantages that will help McCain in his fight against Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton. But there is also a very strong case against McCain; like Clinton, he carries a lot of negatives. And no, his age isn’t one of them.

One of the negatives is so glaringly obvious that it hurts the eyes: McCain is no Stetson-totin’, card-carrying member of the god-fearing Conservative movement. The people whom George W. Bush has been calling his Base for almost 8 years straight.

They are the people who make up approximately 15% of the American electorate that, in continuous polls, still backs Bush. Despite all his drawbacks, that 15% stands tall in the overall 30-35% of the electorate that staunchly stands behind the current occupant of the White House, and they are the very people McCain needs to court if he wants to stand a living chance in hell of winning come November.

That’s why McCain has shown himself to be remarkably elastic these past two years. He got trounced in the most hideous way during the Republican primaries in 2000 by Bush and McCain has been a staunch opponent of almost every decision Bush has taken in the 2000-2006 years. But McCain knows that he needs a large chunk of the Bush Base as well as the president’s well-greased fundraising machine by his side.

And so he has been pandering to the political demands of the Bush Base, which has in turn already started to anger the McCainiacs; the virulently independent, errr, Independents who want nothing to do with what they consider to be the Fundamentalist Nutcase Wing of the Republican Party.

These Republican-leaning independents are generally fed up with two things: the war in Iraq, Bushonomics, and the christian-fundamentalist new laws of the past 8 years. And they don’t want McCain to embrace neither.

So this poses a problem for the 71 year old candidate. He can’t move too much to the right or he’ll estrange the McCainiacs. But he also can’t move too far to the left, or he’ll estrange the Fundamentalist Nutcases.

Unfortunately for McCain, his Democratic opponent – Obama or Clinton – will have a pretty solidified Democratic base, including a lot of left-leaning independents. The latter group especially will be very receptive to Democratic arguments that McCain is in fact Bush-Lite. The hatred against George W. Bush’s politics is red hot among the people in this group and anything McCain does to appease the Fundamentalists will only serve as proof that the Democrats are right.

So with the left-leaning independents safely leaning over to the left and the McCainiacs left in doubt, unless something dramatic happens – to which I’ll get in a sec – my prediction is that it is going to be a very close election once again. (As I already wrote here.) Democrats and the independent voters leaning towards the Democrats will rally to Obama or Clinton, and a lot of Republicans will rally to McCain’s flag. George W. Bush has already voiced his support for McCain so unless that dramatic thing happens, I’m convinced that a fair number of the Bush Base will back McCain. Reluctantly, sure, but they will; “Anyone But Obama / Clinton / a Democrat in the White House”, will be their motto.

But about that dramatic thing… The Fundamentalist Fringe has grown very smart over the years. The banner organisations acting as unofficial leaders of the pack – like the Focus on the Family sect – have already said publicly that they will not endorse McCain. They’re playing hard to get, for the moment. But the question is what they are really after.

Conventional wisdom among the right had it that after Super Tuesday, organisations like Focus on the Family would come out and bless the Republican candidate, whoever he is. But they haven’t so far, and it seems unlikely that they will, no matter what Bush says or does, as long as Mike Huckabee stays in the race. But even if he doesn’t withdraw, he will have to concede defeat – and then what?

Well, then it will come down to the test. The Fundamentalist Fringe will force McCain to convincingly and very publicly embrace their values and ideas, and basically adopt their platform. They will want such a litmus test because of their absolute distrust of McCain, who has been quite blasphemic over the years. Bush had it easy; McCain will have to go the distance to earn the Fundamentalist’s trust.

But it is a trap, a step McCain knows he cannot take. And he will refrain from doing so. As a result, the leading Fundamentalist organisations will not formally endorse him, leaving the door open for a right-wing third party candidate to step in. Possibly Huckabee, or maybe some other fringe-nut. This is McCain’s all too real worst case scenario.

So even if the election will once again be 49 to 49%, with the election decided once again by just one football stadium in either Pennsylvania, Ohio or Florida, it is very likely that the crowd in that stadium won’t be in McCain’s column.

Unless he shows that he is the best politician in the field by being able to unite all Republicans behind him, which would be a feat of such monumental proportions that he should be made president just to honour him.

The prediction still stands. It’s over. And yes, this had a LOT to do with it. (But then again: I basically wrote that story already on January 28.)

The media folks simply wanted a fresh body to suck on.

Hillary Clinton is going to lose the nomination battle. If not the delegates, then most certainly the Democratic ‘hearts and minds’. Should she win the battle, it will be because what Obama did and got was too little, too late. But once the Democratic convention comes rolling along in 6 months, most Dems won’t want her to lead the party into battle with the Republicans — even if she’s got most delegates. However, it may not even come to that; Obama is getting a LOT of traction as his momentum keeps building, and he just might be able to tip the scale. Clinton may win New York, but if Obama wins California, then that will be the ‘watershed moment’ Team Clinton won’t be able to explain away, much less spin. Then it will be over.

And guess what? Zogby et al are already polling an Obama win in California.

Observing the media coverage of the primary war for the Democratic nomination, I can’t help but watch in amazement how the collective mainstream media press has apparently decided to dance around candidate Barack Obama, singing ‘Kumbaya’ loudly and farting in the general direction of the Clintons and John Edwards in the process. Amazement, because it won’t last.

Right now, any attack by the Clintons (or Edwards, or anybody else for that matter) is either completely ignored, or berated as something close to Pure Evil by the MSM. Whatever Bill Clinton says, it is now ‘racist’ or meant to ‘damage Obama’. Even when Clinton calls Obama’s candidacy so far “a fairy tale”, by which Clinton obviously means the non-critical, out-of-this-world aura the MSM has bestowed upon the Senator from Illinois, Clinton is attacked by hissing snakes. The Obama campaign doesn’t have to do squat.

Sure, now you’re thinking that I believe that Bill Clinton isn’t purposely throwing in the race-thing. Of course he is, but get this: that’s not my point. The point is that if/when Obama (or one of his surrogates) throws in some coded sentence that could be interpreted as racially tinged, but also could not, Obama is left alone.

But whenever Clinton says something that could be racially tinged, oh boy – there comes the Cavalry of the 1st Hypocrites Regiment, stormin’ out Fortress Moral Outrage!

Yet what I want to know is: will the press corps still defend Obama against the attack of Republican X during the general election campaign? Will the same press people hiss and harr-umph against a Republican campaign surrogate if/when he says that Obama may have a hidden agenda? Will the same press corps storm out of the fortress again to bash the GOP candidate?

Of course they won’t. As with every long-winded campaign, the dynamics in this campaign will have changed as well within three months or so. Why? Because journalists are human, believe it or not.

Right now just about every journalist who has seen Obama on the stump is impressed by the man’s oratory and rhetorical skills. That is very understandable because he has that gift. I’ve read stories and snippets in the past weeks where editors have said that they’ve had to take junior reporters off the Obama beat because they were clearly on Obama’s side, after visiting just one of the Senator’s campaign events. Veteran journalists come out of an Obama event completely puzzled and confused, asking themselves how in hell they are supposed to write an objective, possibly even critical article about the man.

But give it three months. Like with Bill Clinton in 1992, who was equally able to mesmerize journalists while on the stump, the effects of Obamania will wear off. So will the present knee-jerk reaction towards anything Clinton. Remember, dear Old Timers, how you and your buddies tried to tear down Clinton from the moment he hit the White House? Sure, he may have had the wrong approach towards the press once he sat down behind his desk in the Oval Office but the MSM didn’t exactly give him the time of day either.

So what I’m going to say now is what Bill Clinton has basically argued already – and he should know, because he’s been there, right in the middle of it.

To the Democratic voter who doesn’t want another Republican in the White House: if Barack Obama is nominated as the Democratic candidate, the press will no longer give him quarter. As soon as the ticker tape falls on the Convention in Denver, the very same press corps that danced Kumbaya around Obama will switch to a very different set of priorities.

It will be somewhat like this, straight out of a George Romero movie. The lights will be on and Obama will be looking at the MSM representatives, smiling as they smile back. Then the lights will fail for a second, and when they’re turned back on, he’s suddenly facing a bunch of evil vampires. And they will be out for blood – any blood.

Because political, thick, scandallous blood is the colour of the ink that sells newspapers. It is the drug that powers TV broadcasts, pays salaries, and is the only kind of blood that makes a sound: that of falling coins. Dollar bills will no longer be a grayish-green but rather printed in blood ink, and the owners and shareholders of the media companies can’t wait to rake in the piles.

The very same journalists that are now slamming the Clintons in a fit of fake moral outrage will cry out for racial slurs, and they’ll claw at the target candidate to get even more pungent ones. News must sell, not inform; elections are big moneymakers for advertising departments. All bets will be off, today’s sheep will be wolves, and unlike most Democrats, most Republicans won’t be wagging their moral fingers at their candidate. On the contrary.

Suddenly, Obama will find that he can no longer rely on the vampires to sing Kumbaya, keeping his enemies at bay. Instead, he will find that he’s in dire need of a thick skin and a really good War Room for some heavy duty fast responses. He will find that his one-time friends are not keeping the lions away from him, but are actually pushing him towards the GOP werewolves.

Mark Halperin and John F. Harris got many things right in their book ‘The Way To Win’, which is about campaigning, but they were really right on the money with this advice to any aspiring political campaigner:

“Journalists are never your friends.”

Halperin and Harris should know. They’re vampires.

The number of Democratic politicians that is lining up to endorse Barack Obama — and not Hillary Clinton — is impressive. Despite Clinton’s surprise win in New Hampshire, which must have caused a blow to confidence in Camp Obama, some pretty high-ranking Democrats are leaning to endorse Obama. John Kerry was the latest high-profile Democrat to throw his support (and sponsors!) to Obama. So what’s going on? Why is Hillary, a prominent Democratic Senator and wife of the man who is seen as the virtual leader of the Democratic Party, suddenly the least popular gal on prom night?

Well, quite simply because the Democratic fat cats seem to have had it with the Clintons. There were signs before, most notably in 2004. Bill never kept his trap shut when he had the opportunity to criticise fellow Democrats, and he has never been able to suppress the urge to try to control or influence the Democratic Party whenever he could.

The Clintons and their surrogates have effectively been dealing the cards within the Democratic Party since 1992. That’s 16 years. Sixteen long years of one couple essentially calling the shots, being the powerbrokers, trumping all the other factions that each political party has. Sixteen years of always having to watch your back as a Democrat to make sure that the Clintons weren’t conniving, sixteen years of having to get down on the knees and kiss some feet to receive The Blessing.

Like the conspirators that made up the Roman Senate of yore, Democratic fat cats waited. When asked to jump, they did, and kept quiet for 16 years as getting the Clinton Machine to back you was a guarantee to extend your political career.

But the senators knew that they never needed to share their opinions with each other. Just a knowing look and perhaps a short, muddled whisper in the Turkish baths was enough to know when the right moment came to jump at the Emperor, and cut him down with small yet deadly knives that had been hidden in their thick clothes for so many years.

(Former) Senators, ditto House Representatives, (former) Governors, you name it — they can’t wait to give the Clintonistas at the top the boot.

Right now, Barack Obama needs all the endorsements and party support he can get and the fat cats know it. At the same time, they know that Obama could very well be their personal mop that will clean the Democratic Party of the Clintonistas. Of course, the fat cats are also hoping that betting on the right horse will also gain them more powerful positions within the party.

So deals are inevitably being made. Sometimes, all that is needed is a knowing look, and sometimes a short, muddled whisper in a private backroom will do, or perhaps just an email to the right BlackBerry.

Tectonic plates are shifting within the Democratic Party and the Clintons must by now realise that they’re not just fighting the enemy at the gate, but also the not-so-new enemies that are now coming out of the kitchen cupboards. If they want to hold on to their power over the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton will have to win a lot more states in the primary process, and win them by large margins to succesfully re-establish herself as the one, all-powerful shining sun in the Democratic universe.

The problem is: will she be able to pull that off without big endorsements…?

As predicted (read here), Team Clinton has started talking down the importance of Iowa. On ABC with George Stephanopoulous, Clinton said that she never really expected to surpass Barack Obama and John Edwards, who had double-digit leads over her in the local polls for the Democratic caucuses, to be held there on January 3. On Iowa, Clinton now says “I’m not expecting anything.”

Truth be told, though: the rationale to talk down expectations seems a little different from my earlier prediction. That rationale centered on Clinton throwing all her weight into the New Hampshire fight — a state that is very much in Clinton’s strategy — but with some polls now carefully showing Edwards gaining on Obama while other polls put Clinton ahead of the pack, the rationale is more likely based on a two-pronged offensive, instead of simply talking down Iowa and winning big in New Hampshire instead, after sapping Obama’s and Edwards’ strength as the two men go head-to-head in Iowa in the last days before the Iowa caucus.

The first is that Clinton, in the last days before the caucus, is seeking the underdog-mantle. It is always handy to bring down expectations, especially when you have the idea that you may actually win; it gives great momentum in terms of press coverage if you’re considered the loser, but manage to end first in the marathon.

The second is that Team Clinton is obviously hoping that, by sort of stepping out of the dogfight arena, the two pitbull terriers Obama and Edwards will go at each other with a vengeance. Edwards has been gaining in several polls and was even placed ahead of Clinton and Obama in this one. That will reinvigorate an Edwards who knows that it’s “Iowa or bust” for his campaign. With the Clinton-Obama competition of the past weeks, Obama knows he can’t lose Iowa either (it’s gotta be either first or second place), and so he’ll be trying to tear Edwards apart. The past 48 hours or so already saw Obama retuning his stump speech to include some of the anger Edwards has been throwing at his audience.

This would leave room for Clinton to basically resume her ‘above the fray’-stance which she had up until about a month ago, when she started slipping versus Obama. Or so Clinton hopes. One thing’s for sure, though: the campaign would never take such a risk (because it is certainly that) if it didn’t think it was sensible. Perhaps the vote for the caucus-goers’ second choice is what Team Clinton is after.

Another interesting tidbit: according to an overview of these polls, Obama’s momentum seems to have faded. For almost a month Obama was riding high and with each step Team Clinton undertook to bruise him, he seemed to only gain. He had the usual Momentum, which ordinarily lasts for a maximum of three weeks, sometimes four if the direct opponent makes big mistakes. Those days are in the past now and Edwards seems more determined than ever to at least get second place. And he won’t be doing that without drawing blood, so Obama had better prepare.

Another certainty is after January 3, the endorsements game will begin, and it could very well be that Clinton will be the one to go into the New Hampshire arena with most endorsements.