DES MOINES -- Hillary Clinton will close out nearly a year of campaigning in Iowa with a New Year's Eve rally in downtown Des Moines late Monday night. It will be glitzy and splashy and will feature her most significant surrogate, her husband the former president.

But what is striking about the final days of one of the most fascinating campaigns any of us have witnessed here in Iowa is how Clinton has avoided becoming the focus of attention. The national front-runner has become, if not invisible, virtually ignored -- and that seems just the way she wants it.

Barack Obama and John Edwards have zeroed in on one another. Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd hunger for attention. Clinton is methodically moving around the state, saying the same thing at virtually every stop. She has given a few interviews, but made little news.

The style is classic Hillary Clinton, the girl with the responsibility gene, the always-prepared student who never skips her homework. Her final days in Iowa are as disciplined as they are unexceptional -- except perhaps where it counts, in reaching out to Iowa voters. (But that we will not know until Thursday night.)

The campaigns are drowning in data but no one is certain about where the Democratic race is heading. Everyone here awaits the release of the Des Moines Register's final poll, which historically has been accurate in the order of finish, if not always the margins between the candidates.

But polling here is more treacherous than ever. Christmas interrupted opportunities to poll early last week. The weekend is never a good time to poll and particularly difficult between Christmas and New Year's. And the last days of the caucus campaign will be overtaken by celebrations ringing in the election year.

Beyond that, Iowans have stopped answering their phones. One Democrat estimated that proven caucusgoers are getting as many as 15 telephone calls a night from campaigns and pollsters. A young man I spoke to on Sunday night, who said he has attended more than 50 candidate events over the past year, said he gets about half a dozen each evening. Conditions for polling, as a result, couldn't be worse.

The campaigns are making their own phone calls to supporters and to undecided voters. They are working off elaborate and sophisticated targeting projections. The campaigns have their vote goals and all claim to be on track to meeting them. But all are based on assumptions of how large the turnout will be on Thursday -- and there the range of estimates is so large as to be laughable.

Eight years ago, just 59,000 Iowans participated in the Democratic caucuses. Four years ago that doubled to 124,181. This year estimates run to 140,000 or 160,000 -- or in the guesstimate of former Iowa Democratic chair (and Obama senior adviser) Gordon Fischer, up to 200,000 -- an astounding figure, but one which Fischer believes is plausible given the intensity that has been evident here for a year.

So campaign vote goals could be rendered virtually useless if there is an enormous surge in turnout on Thursday night. Everyone could hit their targets and find the numbers meaningless. In the face of that uncertainty, having a game plan and executing it is crucial, which is what all the campaigns believe they are doing.

But who would have guessed that Clinton would have avoided becoming the target in the final days in Iowa?

It has been long assumed that a victory here by the former first lady could start her on an unstoppable march to the nomination. In truth, the Democratic campaign has been surprisingly lacking in attack ads and negative campaigning. The Republican contest between Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney has become far more negative in tone than the three-way battle among Clinton, Obama and Edwards.

One reason is that the risks of launching attacks in a three-way contest are far greater than in a two-way battle. Another is that Iowans genuinely like all the Democratic candidates and aren't anxious to see someone begin tearing down the others.

Bill Clinton made that point again Sunday night when he spoke in Carlisle, Iowa, just outside Des Moines. He likes all the candidates, he said, but Iowans have to decide which of them they think would make the best president.

There is a workaday quality to the Clinton message -- to the messages of both Clintons actually. Call it bread-and-butter or kitchen-table economics, but the Clintons have never forgotten what got Bill Clinton to the White House.

What got them there was a relentless focus on the middle class and a list of programmatic solutions aimed at easing the economic anxiety that many Americans felt then and feel today -- and the Clintons are still focused on such concerns.

Bill Clinton spoke for an hour on Sunday night, weaving together his wife's accomplishments (with some embellishment) over 35 years and his own record as president. He talked for 45 minutes before he managed to get to his wife's years in the Senate.

His speech was laced with policy past and future (he described how he and his wife solved so many problems that it begged the question of why there is still so much left for a Clinton presidency to do).

Hillary Clinton is doing the same in her own way at stop after stop in Iowa, head down, avoiding the chattering class. "We're locked and loaded on our message," said Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director. "Other candidates are making news by attacking other candidates. They're going to run their race. The race we're going to run is focusing people on who's ready to be president."

Clinton took hits earlier in the race and suffered from her own missteps. She and Obama have sparred over the past week on the questions of experience and change. Obama has tried to engage her further but has been distracted by the rise of Edwards -- leaving Clinton largely free to move through the state without distractions.

Who would have guessed that the person everyone wants to beat in Iowa would be finishing 2007 this way?

By Dan Balz, The Washington Post, December 31, 2007

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has widened his lead in Iowa over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards heading into Thursday's nominating caucuses, according to The Des Moines Register's final Iowa Poll before the 2008 nominating contests.

Obama's rise is the result in part of a dramatic influx of first-time caucusgoers, including a sizable bloc of political independents. Both groups prefer the Illinois senator in what has been a very competitive campaign. Obama was the choice of 32 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers, up from 28 percent in the Register's last poll in late November, while Clinton, a New York senator, held steady at 25 percent and Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, was virtually unchanged at 24 percent.

The poll reflects continued fluidity in the race even as the end of the yearlong campaign nears. Roughly a third of likely caucusgoers say they could be persuaded to choose someone else before Thursday evening. Six percent were undecided or uncommitted.

The poll also reveals a widening gap between the three-way contest for the lead and the remaining candidates. No other Democrat received support from more than 6 percent of likely caucusgoers.

The findings mark the largest lead of any of the Democratic candidates in the Register's poll all year, underscoring what has been a hard-fought battle among the three well-organized Iowa frontrunners. It is also the only recent poll of Iowa caucusgoers showing Obama with a lead larger than the survey's margin of sampling error, which is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The telephone survey of 800 likely Democratic caucusgoers was taken Dec. 27-30.

In an indication of the Obama's appeal in Iowa, Democratic caucusgoers say they prefer change and unity over other leadership characteristics. Selecting a candidate who represents a sharp departure from the status quo is 56-year-old Lansing Democrat John Rethwisch's priority, and his main reason for backing Obama. "I have been seeing more and more something Kennedy-esque coming from Obama," said Rethwisch, Lansing's water and sewer administrator. "But it's always a gamble when you get somebody in there who hasn't got a proven track record."

Thirty percent of the poll's respondents said a candidate's ability to bring about change is the most important, followed by 27 percent who said their priority is choosing a candidate who will be the most successful in unifying the country.

Asked which candidate would do the best on these themes, caucusgoers most commonly name Obama. The first-term U.S. senator has argued in the closing weeks of the campaign that his newness to Washington, D.C., would help him bridge a politically divided nation and improve its standing overseas.

Having the experience and competence to lead, which has been the crux of Clinton's closing argument, was seen as the most important to 18 percent of caucusgoers, with Clinton as the candidate most commonly rated best on this trait.

The candidates routinely argue they are the best able to win in November, although only 6 percent of the poll's respondents identified being best able to win the general election as the top priority.

Rethwisch is also part of the majority of caucusgoers who plan to attend their first caucus Thursday. Sixty percent would be attending for the first time, reflecting the emphasis the campaigns have put on expanding the pool of participants.

All of the three leaders in Iowa draw a majority of support from new caucusgoers, although Obama benefits the most with 72 percent of his support coming from first-timers compared to 58 percent of Clinton's and 55 percent of Edwards'supporters.

Longtime Democrat Darlene Inman, 72, is a first-time caucusgoer who supports Clinton. The Mason City retired homemaker represents the heart of Clinton's support base, older women who are registered Democrats.

"She talks straight about helping everybody. She tells it like it is," Inman said.

Inman said she first motivated to participate in the caucuses because of dissatisfaction with President Bush. But she said she hesitated to back Clinton until she settled on her as the most qualified, in part because of her association former President Clinton.

"I was kind of doubtful, but then I stopped and thought that when Bill Clinton was president, jobs were plentiful and the country was running well," Inman said. "With Bush in there, it's been very worrisome and I think she can get in there and turn it around."

Clinton has made an aggressive effort to court female, first-time caucusgoers, especially younger women and those who are retired. Women account for 58 percent of caucusgoers, according to the survey.

Clinton has rebounded among female caucusgoers in general, pulling even with Obama at 32 percent after losing her edge among this key group to him in the previous Register poll.

Clinton receives more support from women 55 years old and older than her rivals, and she and Obama draw evenly from the pool of female caucusgoers between 35 and 54 years old.

However, she trails Obama badly among women under 35, with just 15 percent to his 57 percent.

Obama's advantage among younger women reflects his decided advantage among younger voters in general. A majority of caucusgoers under 35 support Obama, more than three times the support Edwards receives from them and five times Clinton's.

Caucusgoers under the age of 35 represent 17 percent of likely attendees, higher than any Register poll this year but lower than any other age group.

Clinton led narrowly in the Register's October poll, but slipped in the survey taken in late November. During that period Obama and Edwards sharpened their criticism of Clinton, who has led in national polls of Democratic preference. Likewise, Clinton went on the attack in November, questioning Obama's experience and characterizing his health care proposal as less than comprehensive.

Clinton remains the favorite of the party faithful, with support from a third of self-described Democrats. However, Obama is the clear choice of caucusgoers who affiliate with neither the Democrat or Republican parties, with roughly 40 percent of them backing him in the survey.

The support from non-Democrats is significant because a whopping 40 percent of those planning to attend described themselves as independent and another 5 percent as Republican. Only registered Democrats can participate in the caucuses, although rules allow participants to change their party registration on their way in to the caucuses.

He remained the choice of older men and drew evenly with Clinton from caucusgoers 55 and older.

One such Democrat, 84-year-old Ruth Paulsen of Milford, said Edwards' charisma and message of economic fairness appeals to her. "I like the way he speaks, with energy and enthusiasm," said Paulsen. "The others are all right, but I like Edwards because he talks the most about change."

Despite aggressive campaigns in Iowa by Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, none has been able to break into the pack at the top. In fact, support for Biden and Richardson slipped somewhat in the new poll.

An analysis of likely caucusgoers' second choices showed that the results would change little if the votes for the lower-rated candidates were redistributed among the front-runners.

By Thomas Beaumont, Des Moines Register, December 31, 2007

They are all running their personal best. But Thursday night, only one will come in first, and every poll shows it is too close to call.

These political Olympians have field and marketing organizations that have crunched data to death to pinpoint and turn out their likely supporters at these very peculiar public exercises of democracy called Democratic caucuses.

The battle is on the ground and in the air -- Iowa television is saturated with Democratic and GOP ads.

That allies of the cash-strapped Edwards are paying for spots helping him has increasingly become an issue for Obama, as the two battle for the same change-oriented, anti-Clinton, undecided voter. Edwards is on the uptick, some surveys suggest, with the race essentially a tie.

Edwards was on the defensive over those ads when pressed Sunday why he couldn't -- as a candidate running against corporate and special-interest money in politics -- do more to tell his friends to stop. His friends bankrolling the pro-Edwards ads include labor unions and a woman in her mid-90s, an heir to the Mellon fortune who donated $495,000 to one of those independent groups bolstering Edwards' candidacy, with the help of her lawyer, a long-time Edwards booster.

"I don't have control over them," Edwards told Bob Schieffer, host of CBS' "Face the Nation." Schieffer disagreed.

Meanwhile, on NBC's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert was grilling Obama over a debatable claim in one of his television spots that his health insurance plan will "cover everyone."

Clinton and Edwards have health insurance plans with mandates. Obama's does not -- his relies more on market forces and government bullying to lower the costs of insurance. It has been a big issue.

Obama sidestepped whether his spot was a stretch. He said that under his plan, if people waited to buy insurance until they got sick, they should pay a penalty.

On ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Clinton was lowering expectations in case she stumbles in Iowa. She's in the race for the "long term," she said.

After the shows, Edwards, Clinton and Obama barnstormed through Iowa.

The Obama and Clinton campaigns worked to crank up black voter turnout in Des Moines. Clinton visited an African-American church with daughter Chelsea. Both teams dispatched African-American surrogates to black churches.

At Union Baptist Church, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) delivered a stem-winder for Obama.

"It is real easy for me to come to Iowa and say we can win this little ol' state. And we can win New Hampshire and we can win South Carolina. We can elect us a president. All we got to do is believe. All we got to do is show up on time and caucus with someone," said Jackson.

I'm writing this at an Obama rally, in the gym at the Nathan Weeks Middle School here, in a delegate-rich part of Polk County. The precincts around here are supposedly Clinton turf. The place is packed as Obama is doing his stump speech for the fourth time today.

Earlier, I went to a rally for Edwards at another school here, and the hall was full.

Today, the front-runners will campaign up to and including New Year's Eve. This morning, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe will hold a conference call to assess the campaign, no matter the Iowa outcome.

"Seven days from now, we'll be at a rally in New Hampshire," Plouffe said as we talked in the gym. New Hampshire votes Jan. 8.

By Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times, December 31, 2007

DES MOINES - Just before the stroke of midnight on Monday, Senator Barack Obama will gather his Iowa staff members and volunteers from across the state, so they can all celebrate the new year together.

On a conference call.

So goes this New Year's Eve in Iowa, at least among the thousands of campaign staff members, volunteers, contributors, journalists and other hangers-on hunkering down in anticipation of the caucus here on Thursday. With many polls showing both the Democratic and Republican races as true tossups, 2008 arrives amid grueling last-minute campaign sprints. And instead of new beginnings, the turn of the calendar could mean, for some campaigns, the beginning of their ends.

The result is likely to be the most bizarre New Year's Eve many here can remember. There is a veneer of festivity - not every campaign's approach is as ascetic as Mr. Obama's - but it is a thin and transparent one. For many, the holiday feels cruelly ill-timed: How can they gaily celebrate the start of 2008 when in fact they are consumed with anxiety about what happens two days later?

"No one knows what 2008 will bring in terms of the political process," said Carolyn Weyforth, deputy communications director for former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, whose once-comfortable lead in the Iowa polls has been erased by former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. "The rest of the country is worried about whether they are going to lose weight this year, and our immediate thought is what's going to happen Jan. 3 and Jan. 8," she said, referring to the dates of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

While the campaigns took a mutually agreed-upon timeout for Christmas, New Year's Eve could play host to crucial developments in the race. Candidates will be campaigning up to and even throughout the evening, meaning that a major gaffe or verbal fusillades among contenders are possibilities. And The Des Moines Register is planning to release its final precaucus poll in its Jan. 1 issue, which will hit the paper's Web site in the final hours of Dec. 31.

There will be parties, of course: the campaigns of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Romney are holding events in downtown Des Moines; the campaign of former Senator John Edwards is having one at its office in Mason City; and Senator Christopher J. Dodd is holding one in Dubuque. It is a chance for the campaigns to thank their troops and rally them for the complex get-out-the-vote operation to come, but also to maintain some control of their mostly young staffs and volunteers on a night known for too much revelry. Campaigning will begin again early the next morning, and everyone must be ready for cheerful knocks on doors and articulate phone calls.

"No campaign wants to wake up on Jan. 2 with a D.U.I. story," said Jenny Backus, a longtime Democratic strategist with no ties to any of the contenders.

For the candidates with the lowest standing in the polls, the parties will probably have an elegiac air. Mr. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, has pinned his primary hopes on this state - he even moved here - and polls suggest he has virtually no chance of winning on Thursday. So his party sounds much like a goodbye-and-thank-you affair. "We're going to be celebrating all the work the senator and the volunteers have put in over the last year," said Colleen Flanagan, his press secretary.

Usually there is an elaborate social pecking order to those who descend on Des Moines right before a caucus, from the top strategists and donors mingling at downtown restaurants to the humble college students who bunk on sleeping bags in church basements. But this year, the former have become a lot more like the latter, with some of the powerful, influential types doing the lowliest of volunteer tasks.

Bettylu Saltzman, a Chicago philanthropist, spent her last New Year's vacationing in the Dominican Republic, and the one before that at her ski house in Colorado. This year, she has come to Iowa to canvass for Mr. Obama and has little idea of how she will spend the evening. "We're taking a Scrabble set," she said, to use at her hotel room.

Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic consultant who served as deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry in 2004, is volunteering for Mrs. Clinton in Waterloo - not commanding others, but doing the knocking and calling himself. Asked how he would spend the evening, he couldn't quite say. "Maybe back in my hotel room at the Ramada?"

While the top Des Moines restaurants have been booked for weeks, many of the political and news media celebrities who usually occupy those tables before the caucus are not arriving until Tuesday. The reporters and consultants who will fill those establishments, meanwhile, face the prospect of spending the most social night of the year with colleagues instead of loved ones. It's not quite spending Valentine's Day with co-workers, but it's close.

"Even the best work party is still work," said Jay Carson, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, who said he would try to slip away with his girlfriend but would probably spend most of the evening at campaign events instead.

The transformation of New Year's Eve into a work night seems like the logical, inevitable conclusion of a race that has swallowed the personal lives of everyone involved in it.

Take Jamie Smith, a member of Mrs. Clinton's traveling staff. Before she was hired or the caucus date was set, she planned her wedding for Monday night in Chicago. The wedding will last until 2 or 3 in the morning, she said, and a few hours later, she and her new husband will drive west so she can rejoin the campaign.

What about connubial bliss? Her new husband?

"I want Hillary Rodham Clinton to win so much," explained the bride, "and I love her tons."

By Jodi Kantor, The New York Times, December 31, 2007

Illinois senator Barack Obama is second with 27 per cent, followed by former North Carolina senator John Edwards with 26.8 per cent, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson with 7.7 per cent, Delaware senator Joe Biden with 5.6 per cent, Connecticut senator Chris Dodd with 1.9 per cent, and Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich with 0.8 per cent.

Since 1976, the Iowa caucus has kicked off the process of finding presidential nominees for the two major political parties in the United States. The caucus differs from a presidential primary because the casting of ballots in favour of a particular candidate is preceded by a "gathering of neighbours" where specific platform issues are discussed.

In 2004, Massachusetts senator John Kerry won the Democratic Iowa caucus with 38 per cent, followed by Edwards with 32 per cent, former Vermont governor Howard Dean with 18 per cent, Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt with 11 per cent, and Kucinich with one per cent.

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Hillary Rodham Clinton is leading the United States presidential race among Democratic Party supporters in the Granite State, according to a review of the last four publicly released voting intention surveys. 34.2 per cent of decided voters would support the New York senator in January's primary.

Illinois senator Barack Obama is second with 32.4 per cent, followed by former North Carolina senator John Edwards with 21.6 per cent, followed by New Mexico governor Bill Richardson with 5.3 per cent, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich with 3.5 per cent, Delaware senator Joe Biden with 2.3 per cent, and Connecticut senator Chris Dodd with 0.6 per cent.

New Hampshire traditionally hosts the first presidential primary in the United States. Since 1952, 11 Republicans and eight Democrats have won the Granite State contest and later earned their party's presidential nomination. New Hampshire allows independent voters to take part in primaries.

In 2004, Massachusetts senator John Kerry won the Democratic New Hampshire primary with 38.4 per cent, followed by former Vermont governor Howard Dean with 26.3 per cent, retired general Wesley Clark with 12.4 per cent, and Edwards with 12.1 per cent.

The Democratic New Hampshire primary will take place on Jan. 8, 2008.

DES MOINES - Iowa is packed with presidential candidates and hundreds of campaign aides, advisers and contributors. Twenty-five hundred representatives of news organizations have been granted credentials to cover the caucuses on Thursday night, twice as many as in 2004. Rarely has a political event been so intensely anticipated as a decisive moment, at least on the Democratic side. (It is different for Republicans since many of their major candidates are not competing fully here).

What if at the end of Thursday, the three leading Democrats - John Edwards, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama - are separated by a percentage point, or even less, leaving no one with the clear right of delivering a victory speech, or the burden of conceding? A number of polls going into the finals days that of have suggested that after all of this, the Democratic caucus on Thursday night will end up more or less as a tie.

In truth, amid all the endless permutations of possible outcomes that are being discussed - can Mrs. Clinton survive a third -place finish, or Mr. Edwards a second-place one? - aides are beginning to grapple with the frustrating possibility that all the time, money, and political skill invested here might prove to be for naught when it comes to identifying the candidate to beat in the primaries and winnowing down the top tier.

Rather than clarify the state of play and consolidate this crowded field a bit, an outcome like that would almost certainly muddle it further and potentially extend the time before Democrats know their nominee.

Since none of them would be judged a decisive loser, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama would all be able to go on to New Hampshire, no questions asked. It would be hard for any candidate to play the "I beat expectations game" and claim some sort of chimerical victory, much the way Bill Clinton proclaimed himself the winner after coming in second in New Hampshire in 1992. And you can bet this: the other Democrats in the race - Christopher J. Dodd, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich - would feel less of the morning-after-Iowa pressure to pull out.

New Hampshire, which for Democrats has seemed something like a stepchild in this year's nominating process given all the attention being paid to Iowa, would get a chance to have some real influence over the nomination. For 25 years, there has been debate and study about how the outcome in Iowa affects New Hampshire voters. This time around, because of the decision by the state's secretary of state, Bill Gardner, to set the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8, voters would just have five days to examine the candidates and make their decision.

One of the bedrock political assumptions of the year - and certainly one that has informed Mrs. Clinton's campaign - is that winning Iowa and New Hampshire would set the table for sweeping the 20 or so states that vote or hold caucuses on Feb. 5, the day when many Democrats believe that their contest would effectively be decided. But if Iowans ended up being equally divided among what many party leaders view as an unusually strong cast of candidates, who is to say that voters in the Feb. 5 states will not be as well?

None of this is meant to suggest that an outcome like this would mean that what has taken place here over the past year was insignificant. Quite the contrary. Watching these candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, deliver their final speeches, take the last round of questions from Iowans and shake hands of supporters, it seemed hard to dispute that most of these candidates are much better at this than they were a year ago.

Mr. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, an old Iowa caucus hand who has moved here to help out in the final days, said as much in explaining why he would be comfortable with even an inconclusive outcome. "The experience here in Iowa has been tremendous for the entire campaign," he said.

Republicans and Democrats Have Three Days Until the Nation's First Caucus

While many potential ballot casters are preparing to usher in the new year, the candidates are putting up their last-ditch efforts to woo Hawkeye State residents.

"I think every candidate who wants to be president is desperately doing what ever they can to get that final margin in a race that can be decided by 200 votes," said ABC News political contributor Matthew Dowd on "Good Morning America" today.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has former first lady Hillary Clinton leading her Democratic rivals with 29 percent. But she can hardly be considered a sure thing, as Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards have 26 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

"I think Barack Obama needs to win Iowa. He has to show Hillary is vulnerable," Dowd said.

Clinton, who visited nine towns across the state during the weekend, repeated the same message at each stop: It takes experience to make a change, and she's the candidate who can win.

"A lot of people are deciding what is the most important issue of all; who can be the president; who is ready on day one. I have taken the incoming fire for about 26 years, and much to their dismay I'm still standing," Clinton told supporters.

Dowd said former President Clinton has given the New York senator a boost on the campaign trail.

"I think her husband being president has provided her a great asset to a degree," he said. "In the end, people are going to vote on whether Hillary Clinton can be president or not."

Other Democratic candidates, like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, have received much less press during the lead-up to the caucuses. "You know, if you listen to national media, the pundits in New York, there are only two or three candidates, but we are going to show them. We are going to shock the world," Richardson said.

Richardson had his biggest rally ever during the weekend at a Des Moines restaurant, while Sen. Joe Biden discussed murmurs that he would be a good secretary of state, asking Iowans if they were ready to vote for someone who wanted more than that.

In Edwards' final appeal to voters, he pressed the issue of fighting special interests, saying the Democratic nominee should have guts and determination.

The Republicans

While the top three Democrats remain within striking distance of one another, the Republicans find two former governors as the front-runners in Iowa. Polls show Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney running neck-in-neck in Iowa, as Romney's last-minute attack ads have seemed to chip away at Huckabee's lead.

"I think at this point, Mike Huckabee has to win," Dowd said. Dowd added the attacks have hurt Huckabee in part because until a few weeks ago, voters knew very little about him.

The former Arkansas governor hasn't been content to merely sit back in response to the negative advertisements. Huckabee has released a new ad.

"If you love negative campaigning you've got to be loving the last few days of this election," Huckabee says in the ad. "But if you love our country, you've got to be thinking enough is enough."

Huckabee has pushed honesty as part of his closing arguments and suggested Romney lacks the quality.

"He will likely not start being honest on the job, if he had to be dishonest to get there," Huckabee said.

Despite his attack ads, Romney's closing message to potential caucus goers was one of optimism.

"I'm convinced that what makes us the strongest nation on Earth is the heart and values of the American people," he said.

And while the men duke it out, Fred Thompson has set his expectations high, saying he needs to come in second to stay in the race. The former Tennessee actor has offered consistent common sense conservatism as his final pitch.

Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain are expected to make no closing arguments at all. The men have set their sights on other states, whose primaries come later in the year. They'll be happy with whatever they can get in Iowa.

ABC News, December 31, 2007

Candidates Hit Different Notes on the Same Theme in Iowa

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards wants to usher in change in drastic fashion, with a populist wave he wants to use to swamp special interests. To New York Sen. Hillary Clinton - and to several second-tier Democrats who are fighting to make their voices heard - change is a more gradual process, requiring deep experience and expertise to massage a complicated process.

Obama Touts 'American People' as Change Agents

"Ultimately it is the American people who are the real change agents in this country," Obama said Sunday in Newton, with a banner behind him reading "Change We Believe In," and a huge sign off to his right stating "Jasper County Stands for Change."

"We can't afford a politics that spends all its time tearing opponents down instead of lifting the country up," Obama said. "The real gamble in this election is having the same old folks doing the same old thing over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result."

The Democrats' intense focus on change taps into deep-seated anger among party activists at the Bush administration. All of the Democrats regularly rail against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, even though Bush and Cheney have appeared on their last ballot.

Candidates Showcase Personal Histories

In appealing to the desire for change, the candidates are using different elements of their personal histories to present themselves as the person who is best prepared to deliver.

Edwards cites his working-class background and refusal to accept money from political action committees to craft a populist appeal that angrily denounces special interests. His central claim: that it's impossible to negotiate with "the big corporations and powerful interests who control Washington."

"I want to be absolutely clear that the corporate greed that is destroying the middle class of this country and stealing your children's future, it is stealing the future of Democrats' children, Independents' children, Republicans' children," Edwards said at a campaign stop Sunday in Boone, Iowa. "This is a message and a cause we can unite America around."

Clinton talks about her experience in the Senate and as first lady in arguing that she could handle the job as president immediately upon taking office. Her closing argument is more subdued than the fiery appeals being offered by Obama and Edwards.

"It is time to pick a president; the stakes are high, the job is hard," she said Sunday in Vinton, Iowa. "We know there are challenges we can't foresee. We know we have to pick a president who is ready to lead on day one."

Selling an Alternative to Partisan Politics

Meanwhile, the other Democrats who are struggling to register in Iowa - Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, and Gov. Bill Richardson - are portraying themselves as alternatives to the partisanship that has long defined presidential politics.

"John Edwards and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - all really good people, but everyone knows that that's going to spark a really spirited, spirited fight that's not likely to change in tone from the last election," Biden said Sunday on CNN. "Whereas if I were nominated as the Democrat, or Chris Dodd for that matter dominated as the Democrat, you would see the boiling point lower a great deal. And we both have long records of cooperating extensively with Republicans, without yielding one bit on our principles."

Negative Campaigning and the Caucuses

Candidates in Iowa are often careful not to engage in overtly negative attacks on their opponents. Caucus-goers are known to bristle at negative campaigning, and the Byzantine rules of the Iowa caucuses make second choices important, meaning no candidate wants to alienate another candidate's supporters.

"What you enter that night [with] in that caucus room is not going to be your final tally," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. "There's a remarkable amount of fluidity in the race right now."

Questioning Opponents in a Fluid Race

But the Democrats are finding ways to question their opponents' ability to bring about change. Obama, who has made change central to his argument from the start, is calling into question the other candidates' backgrounds in building himself up as the candidate of change.

"I think it's good that Democrats and Republicans and independents recognize that it's time for change. I think the question you ought to ask yourself is, who can best deliver such change? Who is best equipped to make change happen?" Obama said in Newton on Sunday.

"We don't need somebody to play the game better in Washington, we need to put a new game plan in Washington," he said.

By Rick Klein, ABC News, December 31, 2007

Most of the top Republican and Democrat candidates have been crisscrossing Iowa for days, pushing their message home.

The caucuses - simultaneous meetings held at 1,784 locations across the state - will be held on 3 January.

Thousands of political activists have been dispatched by both parties to attend political meetings in the state.

On the Democratic front, a Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll released at the weekend gives Hillary Clinton a slight lead in Iowa, with Barak Obama and John Edwards fighting for second place.

Mrs Clinton was scheduled to spend New Year's Eve at a late-night rally with her husband Bill in Iowa's capital Des Moines.

Mr Obama was to cross the state attending a total of five rallies on Monday.

Momentum

Mr Edwards, who polls show has gained momentum in Iowa, was sending out hundreds of volunteers on a state-wide canvass.

The same Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll also suggested a tight Republican contest between former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

"It's about as close as you can get at the top in both races," pollster John Zogby said. "But it's still very uncertain."

Republican John McCain solidified his hold on third place, with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has maintained a low-key presence in Iowa, some way behind.

A McClatchy-MSNBC poll, also released over the weekend, gave Mr Edwards a single percentage point lead in Iowa over Mrs Clinton, while Mr Romney was just ahead of Mr Huckabee.

On Sunday, Mrs Clinton said that even third place in Iowa would not spell disaster heading into the New Hampshire primary on 8 January.

"I believe that this campaign will be bunched up, I think the history out of Iowa shows that a lot of people live to fight another day," Mrs Clinton told ABC News.

Other leading candidates took to the airwaves on Sunday, with Mr Huckabee using the opportunity to lash out at his nearest rival.

He accused Mr Romney of trying to mislead voters with adverts targeting his record on taxes, illegal immigration and foreign policy views.

Experience

"Mitt Romney is running a very desperate and, frankly, a dishonest campaign," Mr Huckabee said on NBC. He also questioned whether Mr Romney could be trusted with the presidency.

For their part, Mr Romney's team accused Mr Huckabee of "testiness and irritability".

In his closing message on the NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday morning Mr Obama acknowledged that the criticism about his lack of experience in Washington might be taking a toll.

"That may have some effect, but ultimately I'm putting my faith in the people of Iowa and the people of America that they want something better," he said.

Mrs Clinton, on the other hand, played on her experience, telling This Week that she had once been "intimately involved in so much that went on in the White House, here at home and around the world".

Candidates who do well in Iowa and New Hampshire can gain momentum and media attention, establishing themselves as front-runners.

BBC News, December 31, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - For presidential candidates in Iowa, it's not just about winning or losing. It's how you play the expectations game.

The big winner of Iowa's kick-off presidential nominating contest on Thursday may not come in first, and the big loser could be a candidate who finishes ahead of most of the field.

The goal is beating expectations -- and every four years the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire elevate or doom candidates who confound predictions and pull a surprise.

"It's not like a football game where you look at the scoreboard and see who won," said Dennis Goldford, a political analyst at Drake University in Des Moines. "Politics is like judging ice skating -- it's interpretive."

Iowa has produced some memorable examples of the expectations game at work. In 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter was a largely unknown governor who finished second to "undecided," but it earned him enough good publicity to launch a run that put him in the White House.

In 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale trounced Democrat Gary Hart in Iowa, but Hart's second-place finish drew enough attention to propel him to a New Hampshire win and put a scare into Mondale, the ultimate nominee.

Aware of the risks, politicians work hard to keep expectations low. Democrat Hillary Clinton, who led Iowa polls for months, frequently emphasizes what a difficult challenge she faces in the state.

"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," Clinton, one of the best-known politicians in the United States, said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

Clinton is in a three-way fight with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. One of them has to finish third -- a spot that will be hard to spin in a positive light.

TWO TICKETS OUT OF IOWA?

"The old saying is there are three tickets out of Iowa, but this time there might be only two," said Gordon Fischer, a former Democratic state party chairman and an Obama supporter. "Barring a really, really close finish, third place is going to be very damaging."

Edwards could have the toughest expectations in Iowa, considered a make-or-break state for him after he finished a strong second during his failed 2004 campaign and essentially kept on campaigning after the November 2004 election.

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, entered Iowa with perhaps the most to lose. He led polls in the state almost all year until former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee recently shot past him.

Romney's recent struggles have reduced expectations of an easy victory, making an eventual win now seem more impressive.

"Huckabee has done Romney a favor by giving him a serious challenge," Goldford said.

Even the battle for lower spots could offer solace for some lucky loser. A strong fourth-place finish by a second-tier Democrat like Biden, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson or Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd could keep them going.

Among Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have largely bypassed Iowa to focus on later states, and third place could give them a boost there.

But McCain faces a must-win in New Hampshire, where he has put all his focus and which votes just five days after Iowa. He won the state during his failed 2000 presidential bid.

"Sometimes you can come in not first and still, quote, 'win,' because of the expectations game," McCain said on Sunday on NBC. "But we have to do very well here in New Hampshire."

By John Whitesides, Reuters, December 31, 2007

Clinton's advisers worry what will happen if Edwards were to falter in Iowa, according to sources in the campaign. His collapse could deliver his supporters, overwhelmingly anti-Clinton, to Obama in numbers great enough to push deadlocked New Hampshire and South Carolina into the Illinois senator's column.

The former North Carolina senator is locked in a three-way tie with his two rivals and a Mason-Dixon poll here released yesterday has Edwards leading with 24 percent, with Clinton and Obama at 23 and 22 percent, respectively.

"We're surging at exactly the time we need to be surging," says Edwards' top adviser, Joe Trippi, who said his candidate's gains have largely been drawn from Obama.

Redlawski says recent polls show Edwards gaining an edge over Obama among Iowa's crucial "second-choice" voters - Democrats who switch candidates after the first round of balloting in the caucuses.

Not surprisingly, Edwards and Obama are rediscovering their mutual animosity after a year of ganging up on Clinton. Obama has even begun attacking Edwards as unelectable, comparing him to his 2004 running mate, John Kerry.

"Part of the problem that John would have in the general election is that the issues that he's talking about now are not the issues or the things that he said four years ago, which always causes us problems in general elections," Obama told supporters in Keokuk on Saturday.

For weeks, the Clinton campaign has been quietly downplaying its own chances of winning, while pushing the idea that Edwards would win the caucuses.

But her pump-up-Edwards strategy goes only so far.

"If she finishes third, how can she recover?" asks Redlawski.

And that strategy can't compensate for her high negative ratings or her inability to encourage defections from Edwards and Obama.

"The people who love her aren't going to leave her, but she's also not able to move beyond her base of support," said Rachel Caufield, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines. "Hillary's frozen in concrete."

Edwards’ surge may pull votes from Obama

Third-place finish would hurt Clinton

Three front-runners in virtual three-way tie here and here and here.

By Glenn Thrush, Newsday, December 31, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton holds a slim lead in Iowa over Barack Obama and a rising John Edwards, who are tied for second place three days before the state opens the presidential nominating race, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Monday.

About 6 percent of likely caucus-goers in each party remain undecided of their choice in Thursday's contest, the first big test in the state-by-state battle to choose Republican and Democratic candidates in November's presidential election.

"It's about as close as you can get at the top in both races," pollster John Zogby said. "But it's still very uncertain."

The poll of 899 likely Democratic caucus-goers and 902 likely Republican caucus-goers was taken Thursday through Saturday and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points for each party.

Most of the top candidates in both parties have been crisscrossing Iowa for days in a late hunt for support that could give them an edge and momentum for later contests.

The poll showed Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, leading Edwards and Illinois Sen. Obama by four points, 30 percent to 26 percent. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, gained two points overnight to pull even with Obama.

Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson were at 5 percent. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich were at 1 percent.

GOOD DAY FOR EDWARDS

"Edwards had a good day by virtue especially of increasing support among independent voters," Zogby said. Edwards led narrowly among independents over Clinton and Obama.

The poll found Clinton's supporters remained the most dedicated with 73 percent saying their support was "very" strong, compared to 66 percent for Edwards and 63 percent for Obama.

Under Iowa's arcane caucus rules, candidates must receive support from 15 percent of the participants in each precinct to be viable. If not, their supporters can switch to other candidates.

Edwards was the most popular second choice with 28 percent, while Obama had 25 percent and Clinton 14 percent.

In the Republican race, Huckabee held on to his slim two-point lead despite an Iowa ad campaign from Romney attacking Huckabee's record as governor of Arkansas.

McCain solidified his hold on third with his two-point gain to 13 percent. Three Republicans battled for fourth, with former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson at 8 percent and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 7 percent.

A third-place finish for McCain, an Arizona senator who has largely bypassed Iowa to concentrate on the next contest in New Hampshire, would give him a small measure of momentum going into that state's January 8 primary.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has been running hard in both Iowa and New Hampshire. His top rivals in each state have concentrated on just one -- Huckabee in Iowa and McCain in New Hampshire.

"The only real movement for Republicans was with McCain," Zogby said. "If he continues to climb it could hurt Romney because he is pulling support from independents, moderates and others who are essential to Romney's support."

The rolling tracking poll will continue each day through the Iowa caucus on Thursday. In a rolling poll, the most recent day's results are added while the oldest day's results are dropped in order to track changing momentum.

By John Whitesides, Reuters, December 31, 2007

The results in the state of Iowa could have a significant effect on the neck-and-neck contests for both Republican and Democratic nominations.

In the Democratic fight, Senator Hillary Clinton has a four-point lead - described as "statistically insignificant" by pollsters - over Barack Obama, with Senator John Edwards just three points further behind.

On the Republican side, there is a "battle of the Bible-bashers" between Mike Huckabee, the guitarplaying Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, who is a single point ahead of Mitt Romney, the Mormon former governor of Massachusetts.

Thursday's Iowa caucuses - votes among the party faithful that are similar to the primaries held by most other states - have been the first major test on the path to presidential nomination since 1972.

A win there can give candidates vital momentum for later state votes.

The Democrat contest centres on the candidate who would be America's first woman president and the man who would be the first black in the White House.

Mrs Clinton leads Mr Obama among women and older voters, who are the most likely to turn out.

Mr Obama has a big lead among younger voters, but they are considered less reliable.

The wild card for Mrs Clinton is her ever-popular husband, former President Bill Clinton, who has been campaigning for her.

She said this week: "He will not have a formal, official role, but just as presidents rely on wives, husbands, fathers, friends of long years, he will be my close confidant and adviser as I was with him."

The Republican race has already taken a sour turn, with Mr Huckabee slamming TV "attack ads" from the Romney camp criticising him for being weak on immigration and crime, foreign policy and taxation.

Mr Huckabee accused Romney of running "a very desperate and, frankly, distorted" campaign against himself and another candidate, John McCain.

He told a TV chat show: "If I believed half the stuff Mitt's saying about me, I wouldn't vote for myself."

McCain, asked if Romney was a "phoney," declined to use the exact word but said: "I think he's a person who changed his positions on many issues."

Romney is fighting hard in both Iowa and New Hampshire, where there is a primary next week.

He believes victories in both would vault him to the nomination, but his campaign team are worried that he is widely seen as too calculating.

By Barry Wigmore, Daily Mail, December 30, 2007

CLINTON, Iowa - On the final weekend before Iowa's presidential caucuses, the Democratic contenders tangled over electability Saturday as the leading Republican candidates delivered fresh attacks on their rivals, hoping to nudge undecided voters to reach a decision in an extraordinarily volatile campaign.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois took the rare step of mentioning his leading rivals by name. He pointedly told voters he believed that Mrs. Clinton would "start off with half the country not wanting to vote for her."

Asked about Mr. Obama's comments, Mrs. Clinton named Democrats supporting her, including Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, who traveled with her Saturday. "They are not on a political suicide mission," she said.

But it was the new rhetoric on the Republican side of the ticket that drew the fiercest spark, as former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas hurled a barrage of attacks at the credibility of his chief rival here, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

"If a person is dishonest in his approach to get the job, do you believe he will be honest in telling you the truth when he does get the job?" Mr. Huckabee asked voters in Osceola, Iowa.

Mr. Huckabee said he was escalating his criticism in part because of Mr. Romney's recent disparagements of a third Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, whom Mr. Huckabee called "an American hero."

"It is enough to attack me," Mr. Huckabee said. "But now to attack John McCain, it is like Mitt doesn't have anything to stand on except to stand against. And I am saying enough is enough."

Three Republican candidates - Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain - are fighting for primacy here and in the New Hampshire primary, which takes place on Jan. 8, five days after the Iowa caucuses on Thursday. (On Saturday, The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire announced that it was endorsing Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain.) For his part, Mr. Romney did not mention Mr. Huckabee on the second day of a bus tour across the state.

In their closing tours of rural eastern Iowa counties, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina largely mimicked one another's travel patterns, each hoping to have the final word with undecided voters.

Locked in a competitive three-way fight, their messages also showed similarities. Mr. Edwards vowed Saturday to ban former lobbyists from being employed in the White House; Mr. Obama announced a similar proposal earlier.

Still, by contrast, the Democratic candidates on Saturday engaged in far more polite campaigning, hoping to end a bruising yearlong contest on a positive note.

While the Republican campaign here has often appeared sleepy, with several candidates focusing their efforts elsewhere, several candidates began broadcasting their final commercials, and new criticism emerged from Mr. Huckabee, who had pledged to maintain a positive tone in the campaign.

Mr. Huckabee accused Mr. Romney of fabricating elements of his personal history, alluding to an exaggeration that Mr. Romney made about his past as a hunter. "You are not going to hear me making up stuff about my biography," Mr. Huckabee said. "I don't go around saying I was a lifelong golfer because I once rode in a golf cart when I was 8 years old."

"You aren't going to hear me talk about how I once was a person who was on the other side of the issue when it came to the Reagan-Bush legacy and didn't believe in it, was an independent, but now I love Ronald Reagan," Mr. Huckabee continued, alluding to Mr. Romney's declaration during the 1994 Senate race in Massachusetts that he was not a Reagan Republican. "I voted for Ronald Reagan when Reagan first ran for office."

In response, Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, said in a statement that his campaign had been calling attention to "substantive and relevant differences that Governor Romney has with Mike Huckabee on big issues," including taxes and spending policies.

After enduring weeks of criticism from Mr. Romney for granting clemency to a prisoner who committed new crimes after his release, Mr. Huckabee accused him of refusing worthy pardons for political expediency. Mr. Huckabee told the story of a decorated Iraq war veteran, Anthony Circosta, who could not get a job as a police officer because of a blot on his record for harmlessly shooting another boy with a BB gun at age 13.

"He was in Mitt Romney's state," Mr. Huckabee said, "and Mitt Romney twice said no because Mitt Romney wants to brag that he never ever gave a pardon. I wouldn't be bragging about not giving a decorated soldier a chance to become a police officer."

By Jeff Zeleny and David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, December 30, 2007

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has picked up the backing of Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the 10th Senate endorsement Clinton has received in her presidential bid.

The campaign was set to announce Cantwell's endorsement Monday.

"Hillary is ready to address our energy challenges on day one with a bold, comprehensive plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and move America toward a renewable energy future," Cantwell said in a statement.

In the closing days before Iowa's caucuses Thursday, Clinton has been addressing questions about her electability in the general election - in part by touting endorsements from leading elected officials.

Campaigning with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland on Saturday, Clinton said he and other high-profile backers aren't on a "political suicide mission" and are supporting her because they believe she can win Republican-leaning states.

Caucuses occur only at a fixed time at night, so that many people working odd hours can't participate. They can easily exceed two hours. There are no absentee ballots, which means the process disfranchises the sick, shut-ins and people who are out of town on the day of the caucus. The Democratic caucuses require participants to stand in a corner with other supporters of their candidate. That eliminates the secret ballot.

There are reasons for all this. The caucuses are run by the state parties, and unlike primary or general elections aren't regulated by the government. They were designed as an insiders' game to attract party activists, donors and political junkies and give them a disproportionate influence in the process. In other words, they are designed not to be overly democratic. Primaries aren't perfect. but at least they make it fairly easy for everyone to vote, since polls are open all day and it takes only a few minutes to cast a ballot.

Little wonder that voter turnout for the Iowa caucuses is extremely low--in recent years about 6% of registered voters. Many potential voters will proclaim their civic virtue to pollsters and others and say they will show up at the caucus--and then find something else to do Thursday night.

Smart voters tune all this out and screen their calls, making it difficult for pollsters to reach them. Even when they do answer the phone, many people refuse to participate in surveys. Pollsters can't call people who only have cell phones. So you get implausible results like last Friday's Los Angeles Times survey that found Barack Obama in third place on the Democratic side and Mike Huckabee running away with the GOP contest. The Times's pollsters surveyed just 174 likely Republican voters and 389 Democratic one, with a whopping margin of error of plus or minus seven percentage points among Republicans and five points among Democrats.

Iowa voters' allegiances are notoriously volatile. A new Associated Press poll of a large sample of voters estimates that 40% of GOP voters had changed candidate allegiances since November. In 2004, polls a few days before the caucuses suggested suggested Howard Dean would be a shoo-in. He finished a distant third, behind John Kerry and John Edwards.

Then there are the problems of reporting the results on election night. At least the Republican caucus is a one-man, one-vote affair where people write their preferred candidate's name on a slip of paper, and whoever gets the most votes wins.

Democrats have a mind-numbingly complex system in which participants divide up into "candidate preference groups" by standing up. No paper ballots are used. Those candidates who don't get support from 15% or more of those attending a local caucus are deemed not to be "viable," and their supporters have to realign with some other candidate.

"That's when it gets kind of crazy," says Mark Daley, a former spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party. "There will be people screaming back and forth . . . and senior citizens with calculators trying to do the math." Only after all this are county convention delegates allocated among the candidates and the results phoned in to the state Democratic Party. Delegates aren't actually allocated until the Democratic county conventions in March.

Not all local caucuses are equal. The "entrance" polls of voter preferences that you will see reported Thursday night are likely to be from urban areas, which may shortchange candidates like John Edwards, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson, who have campaigned more heavily in rural areas. "It's entirely possible that John Edwards could come in a stunning second when all the votes are in, but the country will have gone to bed thinking he only took third place," says Howard Fineman of Newsweek.

Rural Iowa matters for another reason in the Democratic contest. In order to encourage candidates to campaign in farming areas, state Democrats have tilted the delegate allocation so that rural areas are disproportionately represented in the final results. This sometimes can lead to bizarre results. As Roger Simon of Politico.com notes, "the turnout in some precincts is so small that a single family--let's say four people--can determine the winner. In other precincts, only one person will show up and win for his candidate by being the only person in the room." In small-turnout caucus meetings, ties are resolved by a coin toss or drawing lots. In 2004, four precincts saw literally no one show up to vote in the Democratic caucus.

There are other anomalies on the Democratic side. Some precincts use a different threshold level than 15% for the viability of a candidate. "Residency" rules are incredibly elastic. No one checks identification, and anyone who claims to live in the precinct is allowed to vote. In other words, very little prevents the unscrupulous (such as out-of-state campaign workers who have "lived" in Iowa for a few weeks) from having a role in the process. Each caucus also elects a "permanent chair," who can have an outsize role in the process. Ned Chiodo, who has been appointed temporary chair of his local caucus by the state Democratic Party, told Politico.com that a permanent chair "controls the flow of the meeting. You have influence. You may be able to pick up a vote or two here and there for your candidate."

All of these arcane rules, combined with the fixed time and place voters mush show up in order to influence the result, make the Iowa caucus a test of organization as much as actual voter support. "The candidate that provides the most babysitters or literally drives older people to the polls the most can have a real edge," Tom Tauke, a Republican former congressman, once told me.

"Do you think your dad would be a good 'first man' in the White House?" Sydney asked, but Chelsea brushed her question aside.

"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," Chelsea told the pint-sized journalist.

Such is the paradox of Chelsea as she campaigns across Iowa in the closing days before the state's caucuses Jan. 3.

Tall and attractive, Chelsea cuts an impressive figure on the campaign trail; she plunges enthusiastically into the crowd after her mother's speeches, shaking hands and posing for pictures while asking, "Are you going to caucus for my mom?"

But onstage, Chelsea never speaks; she stands next to her mother and applauds but utters not a single sentence and doesn't even say hello. And reporters covering the campaign have been put on notice that Chelsea is not available to speak to them. An aide follows the former first daughter as she works the crowd, shushing reporters who approach her and try to ask any questions.

Famously protective of their daughter's privacy, Bill and Hillary Clinton have taken pains to shield Chelsea from the harsh glare and rough edges of presidential politics. She stayed largely absent from her mother's campaign until December, when she made her first visit to Iowa.

For her part, Sydney looked a bit crestfallen after Chelsea turned her away. But luckily for Hillary Clinton, Sydney's mother has made up her mind to caucus for the former first lady.

"I like her position on family values and health care. And I think it's time we have a female president," Robyn Rieckhoff said.

By Beth Fouhy, Associated Press, December 30, 2007

DES MOINES - Senator Barack Obama is on the hunt for Iowans who have never participated in the state's presidential caucuses, including independent voters under 50 and students who will be 18 by the general election.

The ground war - the laborious, unglamorous process of identifying supporters and making sure they show up to make their preference known when it counts - has always been a critical part of the contest in Iowa. But the turnout effort among Democrats this time around has exploded into the most ambitious and costly in the history of this state's presidential caucus system, and it puts on display the sharply diverging strategies the candidates are pursuing as they hurtle toward the first real test of the 2008 campaign.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are trying to expand the tiny universe of caucusgoers, a fundamental shift in the way candidates have approached the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Edwards is focusing mainly on voters who have reliably voted in the past.

"I've never seen anything like it," Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat who has not endorsed anyone in the race, said in an interview in his office on Friday. "The get-out-the-vote efforts are going to be the best ever."

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney is also making an intense effort to turn out his supporters to stave off Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who polls suggest has made a late surge that gives him a chance of victory. Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has spent more than a year building a turnout organization that proved its effectiveness at the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames this summer and that he is now counting on to turn back a stiff challenge from Mr. Huckabee, who is relying largely on word-of-mouth and a network of volunteers, his aides said.

Many of the other Republican candidates are making only token efforts here. So most of the on-the-ground organizing is being done by the leading Democrats, and that was becoming increasingly visible as the candidates and their supporters fanned out across the state this weekend.

Mrs. Clinton's office here is filled with hundreds of new green snow shovels that were being strategically distributed on Saturday to precinct captains to clear the walks of older women who might be particularly wary of going out to the caucuses in bad weather. The campaign has printed doorknob hangers with caucus locations printed in extra-large type, also to accommodate these older first-time caucusers.

"We have had a significant challenge here in that our people are older and mostly new," said Karen Hicks, a senior campaign adviser for Mrs. Clinton. "But we've understood what our challenges were for a long time. This is not a problem you could have dealt with at the last moment."

Mrs. Clinton's campaign has contracted with a local supermarket chain to deliver platters of sandwiches for pre-caucus parties at caucus sites late Thursday afternoon. The idea is to entice people to arrive early and thus give Clinton aides time to see who has not shown up and get them to the caucus before the doors close at 7 p.m.

This city is teeming with Democratic strategists who are renowned in their party for knowing how to organize the caucuses or use sophisticated computer models and consumer data to find people who might not otherwise vote but could be open to backing particular candidates.

Mrs. Clinton is banking on Teresa Vilmain, who has worked in Iowa presidential caucuses for over 20 years, and Ms. Hicks, a former national field director for the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards have similarly respected operatives running their caucus operation, including David Plouffe and Steve Hildebrand for Mr. Obama. Jennifer O'Malley Dillon is running Mr. Edwards's Iowa campaign for a second time.

Mrs. Clinton, of New York, and Mr. Obama, of Illinois, are betting that they can use computer-driven research to expand the relatively small pool of caucusgoers. But all the Democrats have built large staffs, with members knocking on doors, making phone calls and keeping detailed records of which Iowans have pledged their support and which might be open to persuasion.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, in particular, are spending lavishly on door-to-door canvassers, repeated and often elaborate mailings and novelty items to help hook potential supporters. The Clinton campaign has mailed refrigerator magnets marked with the caucus date to the women they have identified as first-time caucusgoers who might determine her fate. Mr. Obama has promised baby-sitting to any parent who needs it caucus night.

"It is definitely the most highly organized caucus of all time," said Michael Whouley, a veteran Iowa caucus organizer, who is supporting Mrs. Clinton but is one of the few major Democratic strategists who have not come to Iowa for this fight.

As part of their effort to find first-time caucusgoers, the Clinton and the Obama campaigns have brought to Iowa the type of sophisticated voter identification models, using detailed demographic and consumer data, employed by the Republican National Committee beginning in 2002. Starting in the summer, the campaigns used that data to find Iowans who had not caucused before and who might be inclined to support their candidate.

It was that kind of research that led Mrs. Clinton to determine, for example, that women over 65 were inclined to support her, in particular widows or married women, but only those married to a Democrat or independent. Using that model and state election records, they searched for Iowans who had voted in regular elections but had not caucused. Mr. Obama did much the same thing with, for example, independent voters under 50.

They dispatched canvassers to make multiple personal visits to the homes of those people, a decision reflecting the determination by both campaigns that Iowa voters have been so deluged with telephone calls that they could not rely on telephone banks typically used. Because research conducted by her campaign found that many Iowans who supported Mrs. Clinton but had never caucused before found the process intimidating or baffling, her aides showed up at the homes of those voters with DVD's that explained how the caucuses work.

"It's always hard to expand the base," Mr. Culver said. "But if there was ever a year when we could have another 20,000 people turn up, this is it."

At the Edwards headquarters, Ms. Dillon said she doubted there would be a significant increase in voters. She expressed skepticism that her rivals' expenditures on mailings, gifts and personal contacts would bear fruit. "Iowa voters are not going to say, 'Oh my God! I got a bumper sticker. I should caucus!' " she said.

The intensity of the effort is fueled by the decisions of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama to decline public campaign financing. They are thus not constrained by the spending ceilings of the campaign finance system that restrict Mr. Edwards, of North Carolina, who is using public money.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign, in the first mailing to first-time caucusgoers who pledge to support her, includes porcelain lapel pins identifying them as Clinton supporters. Mrs. Clinton looks for women wearing those pins at her events and praises them for caucusing for the first time.

Mr. Obama is focusing on younger voters, who have brought considerable energy to his campaign but who as a group have not tended to turn out to vote in large numbers in past presidential elections. As supporters walk into a campaign stop for Mr. Obama, separate lines are designated for high school and college students to receive specific instructions for caucus night. After his speech, he holds a brief meeting and photograph session with his young supporters who belong to a program called Barack Stars.

Obama supporters of all ages receive a yellow slip of paper - a "Ticket to Change" - with directions to their caucus site and a telephone hot line (one for each of Iowa's five area codes) to answer questions.

To expand the universe of caucus participants, the Obama campaign hired Ken Strasma, one of the leading Democratic specialists in finding voters through microtargeting. Maps of Mr. Strasma's efforts hang throughout the campaign's state headquarters on Locust Street here, color-coded with shades of prospective pockets of supporters

To find its supporters, the Obama campaign spent months developing models of who their likely supporters would be, focusing particularly on previous caucus voters as well as Iowans who voted in the 2006 governor's race but had never caucused. Months ago, strategists saw one of the biggest areas of potential supporters to be independent voters under 50, as well as men registered as Democrats.

"What's the one thing that will determine this election? The campaign that does the best job of turning out the highest percentage of their supporters," said Mr. Plouffe, the campaign manager for Mr. Obama. "We're maniacally focused on that."

By Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, December 30, 2007

BOTTOM OF PACK IN HAWKEYE STATE

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa - Rudy Giuliani's support here has plummeted into the single digits, far lower than the frigid winter temperatures in the Hawkeye State, according to new surveys released yesterday.

A Reuters poll shows the Republican ex-mayor capturing just 8 percent of the vote - tied for fourth place with Fred Thompson and anti-war candidate Ron Paul.

And an MSNBC poll shows Giuliani tied with Paul for fifth place with a measly 5 percent of the vote - near the bottom of the pack.

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are running neck and neck for first.

The icy numbers come a day after Giuliani spent his final day stumping in Iowa before the Jan. 3 caucus. He was in New Hampshire yesterday, which holds its primary on Jan. 8.

Giuliani's support has fallen by half in Iowa over the past month.

"American's mayor is getting Ron Paul-like numbers! Where has he been? He stopped showing up," said conservative activist Jamie Johnson, who runs a radio station.

Giuliani did not air a single TV ad in Iowa, and his 15 trips here were far fewer than front-runners Romney and Huckabee.

Instead, he has focused on winning Florida on Jan. 28 and more than 20 delegate-rich states on Feb. 5, including New York.

Giuliani defended the strategy yesterday and brushed off questions about his slide in the polls.

"When you get to Florida and the Feb. 5 states, we're ahead in some cases by large percentages and in some case by closer percentages," Giuliani told Fox News. "We believe it's a good strategy and it's going to work."

New York's favorite daughter, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is faring far better, though she is locked in a tight race with Barack Obama and John Edwards.

She spoke yesterday at Corinthian Baptist Church, a mostly black congregation that Obama addressed recently.

Clinton came 30 minutes late with a big entourage and left through a side door before the sermon - and got chastised by the deacon during his sermon.

"When I first got here, I was a little overwhelmed by all the dignitaries," said the Rev. Elder James Green after Clinton had left. "I thought they were going to stay for service."

"I did, too," yelled out a worshiper.

The deacon then led the church in the refrain: "Lord, fix my heart, fix my mind . . . I don't want to run the race in vain."

Clinton later told a crowd of a few hundred in suburban Traer to "look at the evidence" when making their decision on whom to back Thursday.

"When the cameras are off and there isn't anybody around, I'm still trying to figure out how to help people," she said.

Meanwhile, John McCain - who like Giuliani has largely written off winning Iowa - is rising here, getting 13 percent in both polls.

By Carl Campanle and Geoff Earle, New York Post, December 31, 2007

While the Democratic race has often, and quite accurately, been described as a choice between change (Barack Obama and John Edwards) and experience (Hillary Rodham Clinton), it has, in the final days before Iowa, become another kind of choice as well.

Democrats must decide whether they want a candidate who is angry and confrontational, and who sees those favoring compromise as traitors (Edwards), or a candidate who presents himself as a uniter (Obama), or a candidate who presents herself as someone who understands the ways of Washington and can get things done (Clinton).

While Clinton and Obama both acknowledge the importance of working with various interests, including Capitol Hill Republicans and the business community, to come up with solutions to key problems, Edwards sounds more and more like the neighborhood bully who plans to dictate what is to be done.

The former North Carolina senator is running a classic populist campaign that would have made William Jennings Bryan (or Ralph Nader) proud. Everything is Corporate America's fault. But he's also portraying himself as fighting for the middle class and able to appeal to swing voters and even Republicans in a general election.

Edwards certainly would dispute that there is an inherent contradiction between his populist rhetoric and his alleged middle class appeal. But his approach to problems is likely to frighten many voters, including most middle class Americans and virtually all Republicans.

For months, observers have noted that Americans are tired of the polarization and gridlock that has defined Washington, D.C. at least since 1994 (except for a brief period following September 11th). But if Iowa Democrats choose Edwards, they are choosing anger, confrontation and class warfare. In a sense, they are displaying buyer's remorse (from 2004) and choosing a more attractive, charismatic Howard Dean-like candidate this time.

Ironically, Edwards criticized Dean for being too angry in 2004, yet this time the former North Carolina Democrat has adopted Dean's confrontational style.

Edwards portrays himself as a fighter for the middle class, but his message is decidedly working class and left. The North Carolina Democrat's message seems well-suited for 1933 or 1934, but not nearly as ideal for 2008. Yet, Iowa Democrats, like many of their partisan colleagues around the country, are so angry at President George W. Bush that they might be willing to give voice to their anger by voting for Edwards at the caucuses.

Four years ago, angry anti-war candidate Dean drew 18 percent of caucus-goers, while populist Dick Gephardt drew another 11 percent. Edwards, himself, attracted 32 percent of 2004 Iowa Democratic caucus attendees.

But let's be very clear: Given the North Carolina Democrat's rhetoric and agenda, an Edwards Presidency would likely rip the nation apart - even further apart than Bush has torn it.

On Capitol Hill, Edwards's "us versus them" rhetoric and legislative agenda would almost certainly make an already bitter mood even worse. He would in the blink of an eye unify the GOP and open up divisions in his own party's ranks. Congressional Republicans would circle the wagons in an effort to stop Edwards's agenda.

Would Clinton or Obama fare better in the nation's capital? It's hard to tell, but the answer probably is "yes."

Obama surely wouldn't arouse the immediate resentment and opposition that Edwards would, giving the Illinois senator a far better chance of accomplishing important things during the first two years of his term.

And while many Republicans around the country revile anyone named Clinton, the New York Senator might not face as much hostility as some assume from Capitol Hill Republicans. After all, Senator Clinton has worked well with her colleagues from both parties, and she knows better than anyone how important it is to build successful bipartisan coalitions on Capitol Hill.

Just as important, a President Edwards might well find that his view of the American economy is built on sand. For while Edwards bashes corporate America and "them," this nation's economy depends on the success of both small business and big business.

Scare the stuffing out of Corporate America and watch the stock market tumble. That's certain to make retirement funds - including those owned by labor unions and "working families" - happy, right? Stick it to Wal-Mart, and their 1.8 million employees are at risk. Beat up on IBM, and you are beating up on their 330,000 employees. Take a pound of flesh from General Electric, Citigroup, Home Depot and United Technologies, and you've put the squeeze on just under 1.2 million employees.

So, Iowa Democrats are faced with much more than a choice of change versus readiness for the job. They will be deciding what kind of party and what kind of country they want. And they will be making an important statement about the tone they want in Washington, D.C.

The question facing Iowa Democrats is whether they want to send a message of frustration, or whether they place a higher priority on getting things accomplished in 2009. Edwards's bet is that, unlike 2004, they'll choose anger and confrontation.

By Stuart Rothenberg, Real Clear Politics, December 31, 2007

RENO, Nev. (AP) - While Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama camped out in Iowa, their supporters worked behind the scenes across Nevada over the weekend.

Hundreds of Clinton volunteers hit the pavement and knocked on doors to encourage Nevadans to caucus for the New York senator.

Obama supporters held Women for Barack Obama house parties to drum up support for the Illinois senator in advance of the state's Jan. 19 presidential caucuses.

Obama supporters simultaneously gathered in Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City, Elko and Pahrump to meet with undecided caucus-goers.

Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's sister, called the parties to discuss the important role that women will play in the caucuses.

Clinton supporters fanned out to neighborhoods across Nevada.

"With less than a month to the caucus, the campaign is working hard to galvanize support for Hillary and make certain that all Nevadans make their voices heard by participating on January 19," said Rory Reid, Clinton's Nevada chair.

Nevada's caucuses will be the fourth test for Democratic presidential candidates, although they have promised not to campaign in the third state, Michigan.

A poll conducted Dec. 3-5 for the Las Vegas Review-Journal found Clinton favored by 34 percent of likely caucus-goers to Obama's 26 percent.

No other Democrat registered in double digits in the poll. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards got 9 percent, while New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had 7 percent.

The poll of 625 registered voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Las Vegas Sun, December 30, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa - Audacious as it seemed, Brett Rosenthal figured it couldn't hurt sending Barack Obama a letter after reading the presidential candidate's best-selling treatise on civic participation, The Audacity of Hope.

"I'm seeking your advice and direction so that my energy can best be used in advancing our shared vision of a gentler, fairer, stronger America. You chose to begin making your improvements to the world as a community organizer," wrote Mr. Rosenthal, a 22-year-old Irving resident, then a senior at Yale University. "Where do you suggest I begin?"

Six weeks later, an answer arrived in a voicemail message.

"Hey, Brett, this is Barack Obama. I just wanted to say I read your letter, and I was very impressed," Mr. Rosenthal recalls the Democratic senator from Illinois saying. "I hope we can get a chance to meet someday. Think about volunteering for me."

Someday arrived in May.

After first volunteering for Mr. Obama, Mr. Rosenthal became a campaign letter-writer, and not long thereafter, the campaign's get-out-the-caucus coordinator for Iowa's southern region. Since spring, the two men have crossed paths nearly 20 times.

DES MOINES - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's appearances are not billed as anything so conventional as mere "rallies" or "town meetings" or "speeches."

"Some people think you can hope for change," she said at one recent event, in a jab at Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. "Some people think you can just demand it," she added, in a swipe at former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. "I think you do it by working really, really hard," she said, before going on to catalog her resume.

As Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards try - ever so politely - to eviscerate one another in the final few days before the Iowa caucuses on Thursday, the flavor and substance of their competing performances reveal a basic cultural, thematic and stylistic divide in their campaigns, their supporters and themselves.

Mr. Obama's final zigzag across Iowa is known simply as his "Stand for Change" tour. But it could just as easily be called his "I'm Not Hillary" tour. ("And Not Edwards, Either.")

His references to his rivals are constant and, by and large, thinly veiled: becoming president, he says, has not been his "long-held ambition" (as has been suspected of both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards); it is not, he says, something he has craved "since kindergarten" (a reference to the Clinton campaign's ridicule of a paper he penned, or perhaps crayoned, as a tot); the country is weary of "the same old arguments by the same old folks," he says.

And he acknowledges, sarcastically, that people say he might not be angry enough - a reference to Mr. Edwards, whose high-volume declaration of an "epic fight" against "entrenched interests" has marked his own last dash across Iowa, also known as the "America Rising: Fighting for the Middle Class" tour.

There are similarities: they travel with big-deal entourages, vow to "stand up for you" in Washington (while urging voters to "stand for me" on Thursday night), and look very much in need of a good night's sleep, or 10.

But their distinctions are more revealing, and ultimately reflect the competing notions of change the candidates are seeking to embody.

Mrs. Clinton's variously named events reflect a candidate striving to convince voters that a host of seemingly contradictory qualities can coexist in a single candidate: that she is an utterly familiar figure who is an agent of change; that she has already lived in the White House but that her election would be historic and unprecedented; that she is someone who is tough but also likable.

Mr. Edwards's events are boisterous, if not always the most crowded. (Mr. Obama outdrew him 900 to 300 at simultaneous rallies in Davenport on Friday.) A jarringly loud rendition of John Mellencamp's "Our Country" marks his oft-tardy arrivals. He speaks less than an inch from the microphone and deploys bellicose words (22 "fights" in 40 minutes on Saturday morning), stories (about the bloody-nosed beatings he took and gave as a boy) and metaphors (voters must send "a fighter into the arena").

"I welcome their hatred," Mr. Edwards says of "entrenched interests," quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt. His crowds, heavily populated by "my brothers and sisters in organized labor," are the most likely to break into spontaneous chants. He received a long standing ovation in Davenport, begun by his wife, Elizabeth, seated behind him, while a scattering of older voters covered their ears.

Mr. Obama presents himself as the ultimate fresh face, untainted by the experience Mrs. Clinton trumpets as her prime asset. He appears out of nowhere, makes a big entrance on stage and tends to address his crowds as a singular civic unit ("Hello, Marshalltown"), like a real rock star would.

His events are slightly ragtag compared with his counterparts'. They draw younger people, many with Obama bumper stickers on their backs, as opposed to the smaller stickers placed neatly on the lapels of Mrs. Clinton's supporters. Toddlers are more likely to be seen scurrying around Obama events, sometimes breaching forbidden areas, like TV camera risers.

Mrs. Clinton, of New York, speaks farther from her audience than Mr. Obama does, but also spends more time gripping, grinning and posing afterward. Mrs. Clinton has a tendency to use the "when I'm president" construction, as opposed to "if I'm elected." She prefers the pronouns "I" and "me," whereas Mr. Obama is more prone to use "we" or "us" and Mr. Edwards "them."

In a sense, the candidates' chosen pronouns reflect their varied messages. Mrs. Clinton's "I" is a proxy for her message of experience. She is thorough in conveying her litany of accomplishments - all the things "I've worked for" - even smaller-bore issues, like helping victims of traumatic brain injuries, broadening access to mental health care and helping apple farmers in New York, one of whom, Mark Nicholson, introduced her in Guthrie Center.

Mrs. Clinton took the microphone, thanked him profusely, and praised him "for producing wonderful fruits and then expanding into juices."

People travel long distances to her rallies, as much to see a celebrity as to meet a candidate. Mrs. Clinton gets by far the most autograph and photo requests. Before her arrival, the crowd in Guthrie Center was treated to a "Hillary Trivia' game in which contestants were challenged on candidate factoids ("Where did Hillary go to college?"). Winners got a Hillary T-shirt.

Mr. Obama's "us" and "we" reflect his unity campaign, the so-called new kind of politics. His "we" constitutes a prospective coalition of anyone bent on changing the political system - as opposed to "playing the game" within it, a tacit reference to the Clintons and their political mastery.

"Instead of sending someone to Washington to play the game, we need someone to change the game plan," Mr. Obama said. "We are not a nation divided as our politics suggests."

As he drills into specifics, Mr. Obama's critique of Mrs. Clinton becomes plainer. He said deliberations on his health care legislation would not take place "in a back room," a reference to Mrs. Clinton's failed initiative in the 1990s, for which she was roundly slammed as being too secretive. He vows to invite C-Span to broadcast his health care deliberations, resulting in one of his most sustained and reliable applause lines.

Mr. Obama likes to advertise that he won "some of the reddest parts of Illinois" en route to his Senate seat, just as Mrs. Clinton invokes her successful courtship of Republican voters in upstate New York and her collaborations with Republicans in the Senate.

Mr. Edwards vows to forge a winning, bipartisan coalition united against the evil forces of "them": purveyors of "corporate greed," "Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs," and big bonus-reaping executives from "oil companies, drug companies and insurance companies."

"They have infiltrated everything," Mr. Edwards shouts, right hand clenched in a fist around his microphone. He is gifted at summoning fresh rage, despite delivering these grievances so many times. "They have an iron-fisted grip on our democracy. We must take their power away."

When Mr. Edwards's appearances turn from emotional populist themes to more weighty international matters, the rooms quiet considerably. In Davenport, Mr. Edwards took a question from a woman who praised his message but challenged him to "give me some meat" on foreign policy. As part of his answer, Mr. Edwards described a sharp phone conversation he had with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto was slain.

Mr. Edwards said he urged Mr. Musharraf to "continue the process of democratization" in Pakistan, and to allow an independent investigation of Ms. Bhutto's killing.

"We also talked about the importance of the upcoming elections," Mr. Edwards said, meaning, presumably, in Pakistan, not Iowa.

By Mark Leibovich, The New York Times, December 31, 2007

DES MOINES - During an interview on Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton referred a few times to her shared history with her interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, who worked in the Clinton White House.

Mrs. Clinton often says that her time in the White House gave her the experience to be president. Mr. Stephanopoulos asked her on Sunday, just four days before the neck-and-neck Iowa caucuses, about a recent report in The New York Times that questioned the depth of that experience.

Mrs. Clinton said she disagreed with that conclusion and added: "You know, I can imagine what the stories would have been had I attended a National Security Council meeting. You were there. I think you can vouch for that."

Mr. Stephanopoulos was in the unusual position of being able to do just that. He managed much of the Clinton message and no doubt dreaded answering questions about the degree to which the powerful first lady might be involved in national security or anything else.

But he did not vouch for her. And there was no reaction shot of him when she said that.

At another point in the interview, Mrs. Clinton again drew him into their shared history.

Discussing the difficult campaign ahead, Mrs. Clinton recalled: "You know, George, you and I went through an experience, in 1992, where Bill Clinton didn't win anything until Georgia."

Mr. Stephanopoulos was at the Clintons' side through the searing trial by fire that was the 1992 presidential campaign. He left the White House in 1996, becoming a commentator for ABC News and writing a tell-some memoir in which he wrote of Mr. Clinton's "shamelessness" and how Mrs. Clinton would lambaste her husband while he was eating his cereal.

Despite the book, Mr. Stephanopoulos has had access to Mrs. Clinton for much of her own post-White House political career, interviewing her more than a half-dozen times.

Mr. Stephanopoulos has been an established journalist for several years now. In a brief e-mail after the show, Mr. Stephanopoulous said her references during the interview were not awkward for him. "I've reported on and interviewed Senator Clinton several times since her first Senate run, for 'This Week' and other ABC shows," he said. "She always brings her best game, and I try to do the same."

At this point, he and Mrs. Clinton seem to have a mutually beneficial relationship - she obviously has multiple ways of getting her message out, but ABC News is an important one, especially on the Sunday before the caucuses. And Mr. Stephanopoulos gets a much-sought-after interviewee.

It is also a relationship in which the tables appear to have turned.

Mr. Stephanopoulos is no longer the long-suffering aide helping to manage the Clintons' image. Now, he gets to ask Mrs. Clinton questions that he may not have been able to pose while in the White House.

He got her to say on the record that if she became president, her husband would not attend National Security Council meetings. And Mr. Clinton would "probably not" be on conference calls with the national security team dealing with an international crisis.

If he let her off the hook on at least one question - whether Senator Barack Obama was as qualified for the White House now as Mr. Clinton was in 1992 - he also asked her tough ones.

He started off by asking her about an article by Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, who said Mrs. Clinton is more polarizing and distrusted than even Richard Nixon.

"That's not a surprise to me, or to you," Mrs. Clinton answered, immediately drawing him back into their circle of familiarity.

8 p.m.Update: As some readers have pointed out, Mrs. Clinton did say in this interview that she did receive classified information while she was First Lady. Here is the question and the answer:

Mr. Stephanopoulos: How about in the White House? The New York Times wrote this week that you did not attend National Security Council meetings, you did not receive the president's daily briefing, didn't have a security clearance. And that calls your experience in the White House into question.

Mrs. Clinton: Well, I just disagree with that. You know, I can imagine what the stories would have been had I attended a National Security Council meeting. You were there. I think you can vouch for that.

But I had direct access to all of the decision-makers. I was briefed on a range of issues, often provided classified information. And often when I traveled on behalf of our country. I traveled with representatives from the D.O.D., the C.I.A., the State Department. I think that my experience is unique, having been eight years in the White House, having, yes, been part of making history, and also been part of learning how to best present our country’s case. And now, seven years on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

By Katharine Q. Seelye, The New York Times, December 30, 2007

BOSTON - Gov. Deval Patrick and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi put their day jobs on hold over the weekend to head out on the campaign trail -- but not for themselves.

Patrick spent much of Saturday on a bus tour of Iowa with Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, while DiMasi stayed closer to home, attending rallies in New Hampshire on Sunday for Hillary Rodham Clinton, his pick in the Democratic contest.

The timing is critical.

Iowa holds its presidential caucuses on Thursday. Five days later, on Jan. 8, New Hampshire hosts the nation's first primary of the season. In New Hampshire, many presidential candidates are hoping to get as much support as possible from backers in neighboring Massachusetts.

Patrick, who endorsed Obama at a rally on Boston Common in October and is planning to campaign for him next weekend in New Hampshire, said he saw clear parallels between Obama's White House bid and his own campaign for governor last year. "There's an amazing organization, a lot of grassroots activism just like our race," Patrick said in a phone interview. Patrick said that much like his own campaign, Obama is working to draw out voters who might have been turned off to politics in the past. Motivating those voters is particularly important in Iowa, Patrick said. "There are a lot of people who haven't been involved in the political process in the past who are coming out," Patrick said. "That's how caucuses are won."

Patrick began Saturday's bus tour by introducing Obama at a campaign rally in Burlington, Iowa. Patrick repeated the introduction at three more rallies before heading out on his own. On Sunday Patrick started off at a house party of Obama supporters before moving on to a church and more campaign canvassing.

DiMasi focused his attention on nearby New Hampshire.

DiMasi, joined by about 20 members of the Massachusetts House and a few dozen volunteers, attended two rallies, the first in Portsmouth hosted by New Hampshire's Speaker of the House Terie Norelli. Later, DiMasi attended a second rally in Manchester.

"Hillary is smart, tough and experienced. We need somebody who is going to hit the ground running in the White House," DiMasi said, echoing a key Clinton campaign theme. "She is the one most capable of making the changes that everybody wants. There's no learning curve."

DiMasi -- who's butted heads with Patrick on key legislative initiatives, including Patrick's casinos plan -- pointed to Patrick's own ties to the Clintons. Patrick served as head of the Justice Department's civil rights division under former President Bill Clinton.

"I know that Gov. Patrick had worked with President Clinton and knows how capable Hillary Clinton is," DiMasi said.

Patrick also has deep ties to Obama. Both share Chicago roots and both were black student leaders at Harvard Law School.

DiMasi and Patrick aren't the only Massachusetts politicians serving as foot soldiers on the presidential campaign trail.

State Sen. Marc Pacheco, a Clinton supporter, flew off to Iowa to lend a hand. U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who announced his endorsement of Obama this week, has also said he hopes to campaign for him in Iowa and New Hampshire.

On the Republican side, leaders in the Massachusetts GOP have split at least three ways among the top tier candidates, with former Gov. William Weld backing Mitt Romney, former Gov. Paul Cellucci supporting Rudy Giuliani and former acting Gov. Jane Swift endorsing John McCain.

Patrick said that regardless of which candidate ultimately wins the Democratic endorsement, he and DiMasi are both interested in seeing a Democrat in the White House.

"That's what it is, two of us campaigning for different candidates, but we'll all be together in the end," Patrick said.

Patrick and DiMasi planned to return to Massachusetts Sunday night. Patrick in particular doesn't want to be out of-state as another winter storm bears down on the region.

By Steve LeBlanc, The Boston Globe, December 30, 2007

Republicans Find Two Former Governors in the Lead, While Democrats Are Close in Numbers

"The younger you are the more likely you are to support Obama," said Democratic strategist Robert Shrum. "The older you are the more likely you are to support Hillary Clinton. And of course, John Edwards is sitting there with very solid support in Iowa. ... I think any one of those three could probably win."

For Clinton, the inevitability of her campaign's candidacy has faded and the former first lady realizes she may not come in first in Iowa.

"This is a great contest. We don't have any heir apparent in the Democratic party," Clinton said in an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "I'm out there fighting for every single caucus-goer. I'm out making my case to everybody that I can reach. I think this is what elections are supposed to be about."

Meanwhile, Edwards and Obama find themselves fighting for the same voters. Edwards even has begun to sound more like his opponent.

"My view is: It's the job of the president of the United States to unify and galvanize the American people, not to divide them," he said.

And on Saturday, Edwards tried to one-up Obama with a pledge. "When I am president of United States, no corporate lobbyists and no one who has lobbied for a foreign government will be working in my White House," he said.

Obama's campaign has attempted to lure Edwards' supporters, who may be more likely to shift than Clinton's. Obama claims he is the only Democrat who could beat a Republican. "I'm the only Democrat who does it. John Edwards doesn't do it," Obama said. "Part of the problem John would have in the general election is the issues that he's taking out now are not the issues or the things that he said four years ago."

The Republicans

On the Republican side of the battle, it seems two former governors are jockeying for first place in the Buckeye State. The once-dark horse Mike Huckabee has the momentum, and it's given him a lead in with polls with 37 percent. His closest rival, Mitt Romney, has 23 percent.

Romney has run three separate negative campaign advertisements against Huckabee on crime, immigration and foreign policy.

Huckabee has been firing back all weekend long. "He's making up things not about just our records, but making up things about his own in terms of things he saw," Huckabee said in an Iowa campaign speech. "I don't know, maybe you have another word for it. The only word I know in Arkansas, we kind of kept it simple there: We called it dishonest."

As the top two in the state battle it out, other high-profile candidates find themselves behind in the polls.

John McCain comes in third place with 11 percent in Iowa polls. The national Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani visited Iowa last week, but has spent limited time in the state, where he is in a four-way tie for third place.

It seems Giuliani's campaign largely has given up on winning in Iowa and his new television ad is not airing there.

Some argue he has spent his time on larger states like California and Florida, but Giuliani said his campaigning has been proportionate. "Spending time in the states that were going to vote in late January and early February not to the exclusion of the other states -- but a proportionate amount of time in those states -- was the best way to have ourselves in a position to win anywhere from 15 to 20 of the primaries rather than just three or four," Giuliani said.

Polls have him tied with Ron Paul and Fred Thompson.

Like Giuliani, McCain also is not in Iowa, but rather focusing on New Hampshire.

"I have the background, the capability, the concern to do this and I am doing it for the right reasons, but I am not particularly interested in running for president," Thompson said. "But I think I'd make a good president."

WASHINGTON (AP) - The 2008 presidential race began so early that voters have been on a first-name basis for months with Hillary and Barack, Rudy, Mitt and the other contenders. Yet people seem no closer to choosing from among them.

Democrats are hopeful of reclaiming the White House, helped by President Bush's unpopularity, general unhappiness with the Iraq war and fears about the worsening housing and credit crunches. Those issues will be waiting for whoever succeeds him.

If dollars are any indication, the Democrats have generated more enthusiasm, pulling in about 50 percent more money than the Republican presidential candidates. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and the other Democrats had raised $225.3 million to the Republicans' $149 million, as of Sept. 30.

In national polling, New York Sen. Clinton held a big lead throughout the year and was seen as the candidate to beat. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani dominated the Republican field; his closest competitor, Arizona Sen. John McCain, plunged in the polls after spending too much money and losing several top aides. McCain righted his campaign and slowly began to climb. Actor-politician Fred Thompson was supposed to invigorate the GOP, but his entry into the race was late and lackluster. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney crept up steadily and led in early-voting states until Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher and conservative favorite, threatened to win Iowa.

The year ended as it began, with national leads for Clinton and Giuliani despite arguments that the former first lady is too polarizing and he is too liberal for his party.

Even so, the nomination races were far from settled where it really counts, in states where the nomination battles will be waged.

Why so chaotic? Two reasons, said David Rohde, political science professor at Duke University. There is no president or vice president running - for the first time in half a century - and people don't necessarily like their choices for new leaders.

"The main reason is that each of the candidates has some significant weakness," Rohde said. "This is more than not perfect. These are serious deficits."

Among Democrats, voters worry that if Clinton wins the nomination she might not win the general election, that Illinois Sen. Obama lacks experience and that former North Carolina Sen. Edwards isn't much different from when he and John Kerry ran and lost four years ago, Rohde said.

Among Republicans, voters are uncomfortable with Giuliani's left-leaning positions as New York mayor on abortion and other social issues. They're also concerned about Romney's flexible stances and his Mormonism, about McCain's independent inclinations and Thompson's muted campaigning, he said.

After nearly a year of presidential politicking, voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are divided among the leading candidates, and more than half are still undecided, according to CBS/New York Times polls in the two states.

That makes the race up for grabs in the states voting in the opening weeks of 2008.

Among Democrats, Clinton is essentially tied with Obama and Edwards in Iowa, which begins the voting with caucuses on Jan. 3. Her rivals view Iowa as the one place they might block Clinton.

Clinton is targeting women who are new to the Iowa caucuses, while Obama is courting young voters and Edwards is working to turn out traditional caucus attendees, especially those in rural areas. Clinton has a comfortable lead in New Hampshire, which votes on Jan. 8, and the former first lady has millions of dollars to compete in the states that come next.

As for Republicans, Romney hopes victories in Iowa and New Hampshire will clear a path for him in the later states though Huckabee had seized the edge in Iowa. Giuliani aims to win in bigger, later-voting states such as Florida on Jan. 29 and California, New York and Illinois on Feb. 5, but he still is taking on Romney in New Hampshire, where he recently began running his first TV ads of the campaign.

Thompson hopes to win on Jan. 19 in South Carolina, where he runs close to Giuliani and Romney in polls. McCain could do well in New Hampshire.

Potential spoilers lurk in Ron Paul, an underdog GOP Texas congressman who managed to raise more than $4 million in one day, and in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who could launch an independent bid next year.

On the issues, Democrats have been arguing lately about health care; Clinton and Edwards offer universal plans requiring everyone to have insurance, while Obama opposes such a requirement.

Immigration has become a dominant issue for Republicans: Many voters tell pollsters it's No. 1. Romney and Thompson are running ads that call for secure borders and denounce amnesty for illegal immigrants. Giuliani, who as mayor advocated some pro-immigrant policies, is calling for a "virtual" fence with high-tech monitoring to stop illegal immigration; his ads have focused on his crime-fighting and tax-cutting in New York.

By Libby Quaid, Associated Press, December 30, 2007

Clinton responded that she's happy to talk about her experience in 80 countries, from working for peace in Northern Ireland to standing up for women's rights in Beijing.

Later in Dubuque, Clinton told a crowd of about 600 that as first lady, she represented America in "places that oftentimes were not necessarily a place a president could go."

"We used to say in the White House that if a place was too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the first lady," she said.

She said she was the first high-profile American to go into Bosnia after the peace accord was signed.

"We landed in one of those corkscrew landings and ran out because they said there might be sniper fire. I don't remember anyone offering me tea on the tarmac there."

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama's tea comment was not a critique of another candidate. "What Senator Obama was referencing are trips to Europe paid at the taxpayers' expense that amount to little more than exchanging pleasantries at the embassy," he said.

Also Saturday, Clinton promised to look deeper into the causes of Gulf War syndrome after a Desert Storm veteran questioned her about it. "I promise you that among my priorities will be trying to get to the bottom of this," Clinton said.

She said when she was first lady, she investigated after veterans or their wives approached her about unexplainable ailments.

The reasons why military members got sick is still unknown - people have looked at the anthrax vaccines, the pesticides that were heavily used in sleeping and eating areas, and residue from depleted-uranium weapons, she said.

"One thing we did accomplish is that we forced the VA to recognize the Gulf War syndrome," Clinton said. "Couldn't give you the specifics, but because of the work I did, we did get to the point where you will be recognized as having some combination of ailments.

"But now we've to figure out what's really causing it and I promise you, I will do my best to get that done."

By Jennifer Jacobs, Des Moines Register, December 30, 2007

There is growing unease among Republican organisers that the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan could meet the same fate as Huckabee's squirrel. The presidential campaign has failed to produce a champion to take on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or whoever wins the Democratic nomination. Instead the struggle for the party's soul has exposed fissures in policy, disarray over what it now stands for and distractions both banal and bizarre, 'redneck stew' included.

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who does 'not necessarily buy into traditional Darwinian theory', and is celebrated for losing more than 100lb in weight, appeals to Christian evangelicals but not fiscal conservatives. Romney, a Mormon forced to backtrack over a claim that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, appeals to social, economic and foreign policy conservatives, but not those who regard his religion as a cult.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor praised for his leadership after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for his part plays well with so-called 'security moms' concerned about terrorism, but less well in the heartland because of his liberal views, three marriages and performance 10 years ago on Saturday Night Live as a granny in a floral dress. The resurgent Senator John McCain can trump varmint hunting with his Vietnam War record, but has refused to toe the party line on tax cuts and campaign finance reform.

And the one man none likes to mention as they burn up miles in Iowa is President George Bush.

The party is seen as divided, stale and saturated by religion. It has left jaded activists nostalgic for the certainties of the Reagan era and, after losing control of Congress in 2006, panicking about a meltdown in 2008.

Frank Luntz, the US pollster and political consultant, said there is no mistaking the mood in Iowa and New Hampshire, which holds its primary next week. 'Every time the response is the same,' he said. 'The Democrats can't wait for election day, they are so excited about the prospects and the candidates. The Republicans are much more nervous and much more dissatisfied. There's some disillusionment with the fortunes of the party. There's tremendous fear about the Democrats taking it all, and a sense that they have neither the messenger nor the message.'

The destiny the Republicans fear is that of the Conservatives in Britain in 1997: an unpopular leader overshadowed by a long-serving predecessor, a loss of direction and unity, a charismatic opponent promising change, and a hammering at the polls that spells years in the wilderness. The Republicans have plenty of candidates, but none has captured the imagination or threatened to dominate the landscape. Whereas the Democratic debates have shown an embarrassment of riches, including a woman and a black man with star quality, the Republicans have lined up mostly grey-haired men in suits and has lacked an ace. Whereas the Democratic race is thrilling - Clinton, Obama and John Edwards are virtually neck-and-neck - quantity rather than quality is the Republican byword.

Adam Nagourney, writing in the New York Times, said: 'It is hard to think of another campaign when Republicans have seemed less excited about their choices ... what is worrying Republicans these days is that this tepid rank-and-file reception to the best the party has to offer suggests that the Republican party is hitting a wall after dominating American politics for most of the last 35 years.' George Ajjan, a Republican pundit and analyst, said: 'It's definitely not a healthy party, that much is clear. The root of it is that from 11 September, 2001, until now the Republican party became a George W Bush personality cult where it was follow the leader, throw principles to the wind and support the agenda, whatever it might be at any given moment.

'Symptoms of that are a complete lack of leadership, complete lack of cohesion and very weak candidate line-up. If it was stronger, I think there would be more consensus on who should be the presidential nominee at this point.' He added: 'The Republican party under Bush spent so much of its political capital pursuing the war that a lot of what was traditionally considered a Republican platform about fiscal conservatism - cutting the budget, looking at how to streamline entitlements like social security - just fell off the agenda. A lot of people are upset with the President over immigration as well.'

Whatever Bush's reputation on the international stage, he appeared to succeed at party level in holding together an unlikely coalition of fiscal conservatives and free-market libertarians, 'compassionate' conservatives open to spending public money, an increasingly fractured Christian right, neoconservatives who led the charge into Iraq, and 'realists' who call for a return to pre-9/11 pragmatism in foreign affairs.

Now there are signs that it is falling apart, with the candidates personifying the fragmentation. For example, Giuliani, liberal on abortion and gay rights, and Huckabee, who promises to side with the people against high finance, 'would pull apart the coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives and Huckabee the economic (and foreign policy) conservatives,' according to the right-wing National Review

Its online editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez, said: 'I do think Huckabee is tearing at the coalition - isolating economic conservatives, putting non-evangelical religious social conservatives in an awkward spot, as he seems to be running as a specifically evangelical candidate.'

In churchgoing Iowa, Huckabee's pitch - it's God, not the economy, stupid - has stolen the thunder of former Massachusetts governor Romney, who has poured millions of dollars into the state but cannot buy off anti-Mormon sentiments at any price. Huckabee has called for 'fair', not free, trade and insisted: 'The Republican party needs to represent not just the people on Wall Street but also the people on Main Street.'

He rises early each day, runs between six and 10 miles and reads a chapter from the Book of Proverbs. In his Christmas TV advert, he reminded viewers that 'what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ,' as a window behind him was lit to emphasise the shape of a cross. Huckabee has attributed his miraculous rise to 'the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000'.

Faith came to the fore during Reagan's campaign, but now it has gone too far, according to the political commentator Charles Krauthammer. He complained recently: 'This campaign is knee-deep in religion and it's only going to get worse.'

The danger for the Republicans is that this could alienate not only non-Christians but anyone who feels anxious about the blurring of boundaries between church and state, playing into the Democrats' hands. However, Huckabee is not faring so well in New Hampshire, where the Christian right holds less sway and he has been branded hopelessly naive on foreign policy. One pundit rated his chances against the Democrat nominee as: 'Dead on arrival.'

Instead many still predict that Giuliani will overcome likely setbacks in Iowa and New Hampshire to win most states in the primary elections on 'Super Tuesday', 5 February. He was the Republican mayor of a Democratic city and is seen as capable of reaching into the middle ground. He mentions Hillary Clinton at every opportunity on the road and is spoiling for the fight.

If their self-preservation instinct kicks in, many Republicans might then be expected swallow their doubts about Giuliani's colourful past and liberal views and rally to his cause. Like the Tories before 1997, they have a formidable reputation as an election-winning machine, as they demonstrated when upsetting the odds to beat John Kerry in 2004. Indeed, some say they are instinctively better at campaigning than governing.

Iowa indicators

- Since 1972, no candidate who finished worse than third in Iowa has won a major party presidential nomination.

- Iowa has more pigs than people. Its human population is three million. Iowa is 91.5 per cent white, compared with 66.9 per cent of all America. It is 2.3 per cent African-American, compared with 12.8 per cent nationwide. Hispanics make up 3.7 per cent of its people, compared with 14.4 per cent across the nation.

- Three Democrats - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards - are running virtually neck-and-neck in the polls.

- Among Republicans, a Los Angeles Times poll puts Mike Huckabee at 37 per cent and Mitt Romney on 23 per cent, with John McCain and Fred Thompson both on 11 per cent. But New Hampshire looks very different and victory in Iowa might prove insignificant.

- The Democrats have spent the most on TV advertising in Iowa. Obama has ploughed in $8.3m, Clinton $6.5m and Edwards $2.7m. As of 28 December their adverts had been shown 44,600 times, compared with a Democratic total of 28,054 four years ago.

- Famous Iowans include jazz cornet and trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke, comedian Johnny Carson, actors John Wayne and Elijah Wood, and the 31st US President, Herbert Hoover.

By David Smith, The Observer, December 30, 2007

In the 2008 presidential race, polls are inevitably mercurial, but they also can provide a compelling snapshot into the national body politic. It comes as no surprise that a recent Fox 5/Washington Times/Rasmussen poll shows former President Clinton is both an albatross and an asset for his wife's presidential bid.

Predictably, the trend is reversed among Republicans, among whom 22 percent said Mr. Clinton is a boon for Mrs. Clinton's bid, while 62 percent feel that Mr. Clinton brings questionable trappings. Perhaps most critically, among third-party or independent voters, 47 percent feel that Mr. Clinton is a minus and just 32 percent responded that he is a plus. This margin is striking; it seems that a majority of independent voters would rather see a candidate who isn't tied to a controversial figure such as Mr. Clinton, who has the dubious honor of being one of only two presidents in our nation's history to be impeached.

Our survey of 1,000 adults, which had a margin of error of three points and was taken Dec. 18-19, also found that just 41 percent of respondents know where the top presidential candidates stand on the issues they find most important, while a remarkable 38 percent said they don't know. (Don't expect the media to take this to heart, however, and shift their reporting and focus to substantive issues rather than the all-to-common, trivial horserace fare.)

The Washington Times, December 29, 2007

By the time Bill was done, Hillary sounded like a cross between Margaret Mead, Mother Teresa and Lyndon Johnson. The 900 or so Democrats at the Hawkeye Downs race track seemed to go home happy.

On a pit stop here between stretches in Iowa, I can tell you this: things look different on a snowy I-80 than they do on the East Coast and inside the Beltway.

Lots of other things look different when you're driving around the state chasing candidates and campaigns, as I have done in recent days, and as I will be doing again soon. Here are a few:

OBAMA'S "FIRE"

Barack Obama may be riding a generational wave of change. Often it feels just like that. But while he draws large crowds, I am never quite sure that they leave his events as "fired up" as when they enter. That's how it seemed to me the other night in Coralville. The crowd was big and adoring in a somewhat abstract way. But when he went into his final "Fired up/Ready to Go" chant, the mostly upscale and well-educated voters in the motel ballroom kept the lid on. Part of that is just Iowa: they are not the most demonstrative people. But it's something else, too. Perhaps the IDEA of Obama (a new beginning; an historical figure or racial progress; a soothing message to the world) is too hard for the man himself to match.

THE HUCKABEE CHRISTMAS AD

You know the ad ... the one in which, horror of horrors, Mike Huckabee wears a red sweater, mentions Jesus and wishes everybody a Merry Christmas. Back East, folks were hysterical; in Iowa, especially but not exclusively among Republicans, the ad was seen as a nice, homey, appropriate touch. In Iowa, they still say "Merry Christmas" to each other for the most part, even on the radio, and the national press reaction played into Huck's hands.

GOOD TIMES

John Edwards has set the pace, and dictated much of the tone, of the Democratic race - a tough, populist, anti-corporate message. Perhaps he can win on the strength of it. His crowds are good, too, and more of the "fired up" variety. He's got a lot of union organizers straight out of the old-school, shouting slogans through megaphones made of rolled up posters. But I remain skeptical, for one reason: these are for the most part good times in Iowa. If you listen to WHO radio, the legendary, 50,000-watt clear-channel station that covers the state, you know that corn and soybean prices are at an all time high. Farmers are flush, and so are a lot of other people. If Edwards wins in the face of that, it's a huge signal about the future of economic fear.

SOCIAL DYNAMICS

On the Democratic side, what matters will be the intricate, local dynamics of each of the 1,700 individual caucuses. By now you junkies know how this works; my point is the outcome could well be decided by the savvy and determination of the precinct leaders for each candidate. There may be a lot of loose change available on the second go round of presidential preference votes: votes available in the many places where Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson do not "make threshold" the first time. Obama has attracted a young crew of smart and savvy kids, many from other states. They are charming and diligent - the sort who do a good job on their term papers. But how far have they penetrated into the hearts of the little towns and suburban neighborhoods where the race will be won or lost?

IOWANS

People grouse about their exaggerated role. There is that professor back east who tried to quantify it: Iowans had 20 times the power of anyone else. A better system, in my view, would be a lottery to change the starting two states every four years, instead of the Iowa/New Hampshire tango. But here we are. And when you spend time in Iowa, and I have spent a lot of it over the years, you realize how prepared for it they are. The state has the highest high school test scores and college attendance rates, and there is something about the mixture of Quaker, Scandinavian and Yankee history that makes them take it all so seriously. Pundits complain about how "white" Iowa is, which is true. But if he can win there, Obama will have gotten a seal of approval that he could wear all the way to the White House next year.

(CNN) - In the final weekend before Iowa voters kick off the presidential primary season, Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each raised questions about the other's ability to beat the Republican Party's nominee next November.

"We are less likely to win an election that starts off with half the country not wanting to vote for that candidate," Obama said Saturday at an event in Madison. "We are less likely also to win an election with somebody who had one set of positions four years ago and has almost entirely different positions four years later. We've been through that," he also said in comments that seemed to be directed at John Edwards. At a later event he said the same thing and named Edwards.

Clinton quickly responded in a media availability in Eldredge, sounding her familiar campaign theme that she has already proven her ability to withstand the "Republican attack machine," and suggesting Obama has yet to be tested.

"I have been around a while," the New York Democrat said. "I have seen a lot of elections come and go, and who ever our Democratic nominee is will be subjected to the full force and effect of the Republican attack machine."

"Unfortunately that is the barrier that you have to overcome," she added. "What you know with me, I have already overcome it. I have withstood it, and not only survived it but thrived over the last 16 years. So there is very little guess work."

By Chris Welch and Mike Roselli, CNN, December 29, 2007

Armed with a briefing book and a scouting report the size of a small encyclopedia, Gavin Newsom - the mayor of very urban, very liberal San Francisco - found himself traveling for hours across an eerie landscape of ice-shrouded trees and tiny towns tucked into the endless snow-covered plains.

And the mission here for Newsom - a high-profile surrogate for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the nation's most competitive political terrain - was to help deliver the gold: those elusive, undecided Iowa caucus voters who could make or break his candidate's presidential campaign.

He recalled just how tough it can be: A Des Moines house party hostess directed him to take off his shoes, sit on the couch, and start calling voters. But it was clear, he said, that they were hard to impress. Iowans are being wooed, day in and day out, by some very important people.

"We don't even consider a candidate unless they dry my dishes," the hostess told Newsom with a smile.

"She wasn't kidding," the San Francisco mayor said.

Yes, this is Iowa, where, with just days to go before the first votes of the 2008 presidential election on Thursday, the final frenzy to make the sale is on - and at the kind of intensely personal retail level that most Californians will never experience. Iowa, with just 2.9 million residents and a state budget smaller than the city of San Francisco's, has unusual clout, coming first in the parade of electoral events that will decide the nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties.

The San Francisco mayor was tapped by the Clinton campaign to travel here earlier this month to address voters on health care, preschool and gay and lesbian issues. But he was just one of several Californian politicos who've gone vote hunting in the far corners of the Hawkeye State as the crucial opening of the 2008 presidential race approaches.

Iowa this week is jammed with temporary immigrants from the Golden State, whether media types covering the madness, or campaign volunteers and staffers, or big name surrogates like Newsom.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen are working the terrain this week for Clinton; San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, Bay Area attorney Tony West and Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti are on the road for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, while actor Martin Sheen is stumping for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. But there are also the campaign insiders, like former California GOP spokeswoman Sarah Pompeii, now a lead press aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and Darrel Ng, a former aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is shepherding reporters across the state following former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

For some of them, the experience can be both exhausting and surreal - but also unforgettable.

Newsom, in an interview, recalled how he charged from tiny middle school theater to weather-beaten Elks Club, from local bar to coffee art house, from Cedar Rapids to Fairfield to Solon, working phone parties and home gatherings, in the space of a few hours. It wasn't unusual, he said, to bump elbows with other prominent surrogates - like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright - in comfy living rooms and at worn kitchen tables.

As a Democratic celebrity from the nation's most populous state, the San Francisco mayor's challenge involved sitting sometimes with a dozen voters on the fence, sometimes with just one. With the help of detailed briefing profiles - including individuals' occupations, concerns and even what they might ask ("she will want to know when Sen. Clinton will be back") - he tried to discern how he could best win them over.

The mayor said he answered their questions on everything from universal health care, to preschool programs, to more arcane stuff like, "What is Hillary Clinton's policy on MSG?"

"In some cases, I made the sale, and in some, it was almost impossible," a hoarse Newsom, fighting a cold, recalled last week. "I had one guy, it was almost an hour and a half. I couldn't break him. Every argument, I tried. I thought I had him on every point," he said.

Then, finally, the man told the mayor, "You're right, Clinton is better on every point."

"So you think you can help us?" Newsom asked.

"I'm still not sure," the man told Newsom apologetically.

The same challenges are now confronting San Francisco District Attorney Harris, who arrived this week with a suitcase stuffed with down coats and long johns from North Face, and a determination to take a few days off from battling crime to battle for Obama in towns like Knoxville, Indianola and Newton. As the candidate's co-chair for women and African American voters, Harris will have a full schedule, hitting churches and get-out-the-vote rallies with a mind to traverse Iowa and "do it all, phone banking, canvassing, knocking on doors and licking stamps."

Although the flat-as-a-pancake landscape couldn't be more different from San Francisco, Iowa's political landscape has many similarities, Harris said. In both places, local politics can be exhaustive and enormously challenging, and Iowa's regular voters, like those in San Francisco, tend to be engaged, aware - and very, very discerning.

"You can't get more retail in terms of politics than campaigning for office in San Francisco. The way we run, and win, campaigns is by being on the ground, shaking hands, and talking one-on-one with voters," she said. "Like San Francisco, Iowa has a tradition and history of taking politics seriously, of really being engaged. They're complex and intelligent enough to ask the first question, and then the second."

Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles mayor, discovered that for himself on Saturday, swathed in a long black cashmere coat and running from voter to voter in the parking lot of the Hy Vee Food & Drug Co. in Des Moines to buttonhole potential Clinton supporters.

He ran into Christie Vilsack, Iowa's former first lady, running out with a bag of black-eyed peas she planned to cook - "for luck" - for Clinton for the New Year. Villaraigosa slapped her on the back and headed into the store's produce section, where he energetically approached Brad Richardson, a research scientist at the University of Iowa, with his son Sam, 7, in tow.

"I'm doing this the old-fashioned way," he told Richardson. "I'm supporting Hillary Clinton ... because this is the most important election in my lifetime."

Richardson, a juvenile justice expert who recognized the Los Angeles mayor and invited him to an upcoming conference, said such Iowa visits by high profile politicians from afar are both illuminating and valuable.

"When you bring in people from the outside, it gets people thinking," he said. "It shines a bright light. In the end, local people do the voting, but the presence of national people is important."

Ng rode with reporters in a press bus from Chariton to Knoxville for five different events, admitting the schedule of all this excitement is sometimes daunting. "I'll admit not knowing what city I'm in at any given time."

Ng, like the rest of the Californians, has learned to live with the political challenges - and oh yes, the bone-chilling weather. "We drink a lot of hot chocolate," he said.

But Peter Ragone, a Democratic operative and aide to Newsom, said the discomforts are more than exceeded by the moments that make this the only place to be as the 2008 presidential campaign formally begins.

"You step off the plane, the trees are encased in ice and look like glass figurines, and you can see the cold in the air," he said. "It's a wet cold, and you drive across the plains and you can see how flat it is in the dark. And you get to a small town, and they have Christmas decorations in the town square, and a beautiful gazebo, and it's a Friday night and it's cold. And about a dozen people show up."

It is there, in those small groups, that American presidential politics finally gets down to business, said Newsom.

"There's a seriousness. They recognize what's at stake. You're talking about world peace here, not just cleaner streets," he said. "You have to connect with them on a human level. ... You can't get away with anything else."

Newsom said before he arrived, "I was a big city guy who walked into Iowa saying, 'What is this? It's crazy.'

"And I left saying, 'Thank you, Iowa. This is real.' "

THE GENDER card is still the wild card for Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama can quote Martin Luther King Jr. But if Clinton writes an online essay for Glamour magazine, she is criticized for pandering to women.

So, is there still enough upside in her womanhood to win her the Democratic nomination?

Clinton appears to be banking on it. On the campaign trail, she talks about making history and clearly revels in the women of all ages who come up to her and tell her they are inspired by her candidacy. Her mother and daughter are campaigning on Clinton's behalf. They are there to support her, but also to connect with female voters, who often bring daughters of their own to Clinton campaign events.

But gender remains a double-edged sword. How Clinton is playing it - or overplaying it - remains at the heart of the debate over her candidacy, inside the campaign and in the media.

Clinton's campaign encountered its first serious pushback last fall after issuing complaints that her male rivals were piling on after an Oct. 30 debate in Philadelphia. That appeal to victimhood made Clinton seem weak at the very moment she had strength as the perceived front-runner. It was a strategic misstep, which stalled her campaign more than the actual issue that drew the attack from rivals - an imprecise answer she gave to a question about whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to obtain a driver's license.

Bill Clinton's efforts on his wife's behalf also draw a mixed response. While the former president is popular with some Democrats, his presence on the campaign trail forces Hillary Clinton to define her experience from the vantage point of former first lady. It also puts the Clinton marriage front and center, detracting from Hillary Clinton the presidential candidate.

As the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary loom, Clinton is telling voters, "I'm very excited about the possibility of becoming the first woman president." The comment drew this headline in The Washington Times: "Hillary dangles prospect of first female president."

Of course she would be the first female president, and voters, including men, realize it. But on its own, that's not enough to win the nomination or the presidency, even if the latest USA Today/Gallup poll shows that Clinton is the woman Americans admire most. After all, Oprah Winfrey, who is actively campaigning for Obama, is only two points behind in the poll.

Voting for the first woman president would be "voting for an historic moment," said Bion Piepmeier,, 23, as he and a friend, Chris Devine, also 23, waited to gain entrance to a recent Clinton campaign event in Manchester, N.H.

These two self-described political junkies are graduates of Connecticut College, where they belonged to the Connecticut College Republicans. Disillusioned with the Bush administration, they were checking out presidential candidates on the weekend before Christmas. In that spirit, they, along with a few other men, showed up for what was billed primarily as a mother/daughter event for Clinton.

Both young men were looking for reasons beyond making history to consider a Clinton vote. Both found some, and in their response lies Clinton's strongest case to voters in the primaries and beyond.

"Quite frankly, I was very impressed with Sen. Clinton. I thought she gave detailed, concise answers to all the questions posed to her . . . I thought she really connected with her audience. I'm still very much on the fence about whom I will support, but after seeing her up close I feel much more comfortable with the idea of her leading this nation," said Piepmeier, via e-mail, after the Clinton event.

While leaning toward Republican John McCain, Devine said, via e-mail, "I was thoroughly impressed with Sen. Clinton. I found her to be personable and articulate . . . Quite simply, hers was a speech that George W. Bush could never dream of delivering and one that Barack Obama should be delivering instead of his customary series of abstractions and platitudes."

Those are the attributes Clinton should be stressing. The way to make history is to show voters she is the best candidate, not the only female candidate.

By Joan Vennochi, The Boston Globe, December 30, 2007

STORY CITY, Iowa - Even as her prospects teeter for winning the crucial Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton has renewed her focus on a foe who is not in the race: President Bush.

Since returning to the campaign trail after a two-day Christmas respite, Clinton has unveiled a whole new vocabulary of attacks on the Bush administration, debuting phrases such as "the two oilmen in the White House," and the "imaginary credit card in the sky" that she says Bush has relied on to fund his tax cuts for the wealthy and to help pay for the war in Iraq.

"They've turned that wonderful phrase by Abraham Lincoln on its head: They have a government of the few, by the few, and for the few," she said Thursday evening in western Iowa.

Yesterday, she leveled withering criticism on Bush for giving President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan a "blank check." And her campaign released a new television ad in Iowa declaring that Bush and Wall Street "did nothing" as the housing crisis mushroomed in the summer and fall.

"Senator Clinton's attacks on the president will not provide her with the credibility on foreign policy issues she so desperately desires," said Danny Diaz, Republican National Committee spokesperson in an e-mail. "Clinton has failed to demonstrate any level of resolve as our men and women in uniform fight terrorists in Iraq and can not be trusted to ensure they receive the resources they need. Ultimately, Senator Clinton will be judged by her record, not rhetoric.”

Criticizing Bush has long been a centerpiece of her campaign, but this tactic receded as she began suffering in the polls and faced criticism that she was running a general election campaign, as if she had already won the nomination. She turned more of her attention to drawing contrasts with her leading rival, Barack Obama.

But this week, Bush has once again become the central foil in her campaign narrative. While the topic doesn't help her draw a distinction with her competitors, it is dear to the hearts of many Democrats, and even disaffected Republicans, who appear to make up notable proportions of her audiences in some parts of Iowa.

"I'm a registered Republican, but I'm very discouraged with the Bush administration," said Kay Resel, a community college instructor who is volunteering as precinct captain for the Clinton campaign. After seeing Clinton speak in rural Lawton on Thursday, she said many of her neighbors feel similarly. "I do have a sense that people are leaning more toward Democratic candidates."

Speaking yesterday about former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination on Thursday, Clinton spent several minutes detailing what she views as Bush's failures in dealing with instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She described calling the White House after a trip to Pakistan last January, saying that the relationship between Musharraf and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was dangerously broken and suggesting that the United States send a high-level envoy to try to mediate.

"Like so much else in dealing with the Bush administration, the answer was, 'No, we're going to do what we're going to do,' " she said.

A campaign spokesman said Clinton is not any more focused on Bush than she had been before. But it sounds as if she spent the Christmas break brainstorming new lines for her stump speech.

At each stop, she describes having helped to undo a Pentagon policy to deny signing bonuses to troops who are injured in Iraq. And then she adds, as she put it yesterday, "Just when I thought it was impossible to be surprised by the Bush administration . . ."

By Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe, December 29, 2007

Presidential candidates are sharpening their focus on what appears to be the economic trend of the election: the U.S. housing slump. Hillary Clinton released a television ad Friday in which the New York senator imagines what she would have done this year to rescue homeowners struggling with housing payments had she already been elected president. Mrs. Clinton also made it clear in the ad who is at fault for not stemming the rise foreclosure rates and decline in home prices: President Bush and Wall Street.

"What if we had a different president this year? Hillary Clinton called for action on America's housing crisis in March, in June, in August. George Bush and Wall Street did nothing. Since then home prices have plummeted," the ad says. "And millions may lose their homes. Hillary's plan: Freeze home foreclosures; freeze rates on adjustable mortgages; provide real tax relief for the middle class. When we choose a president next year, let's choose one that would have started fixing our economy this year."

Mrs. Clinton isn't alone in talking about helping homeowners. Many other Democratic candidates have called for freezing adjustable-rate mortgages, creating a government fund to help homeowners refinance troubled loans and changing bankruptcy laws to allow judges to alter the terms of home loans.

What's driving the strategy? Republican and Democratic contenders are aiming to gain the favor of voters in early primary states where the housing downturn has created the most pain, including Nevada, Michigan and Florida.

By Alex Frangos, The Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2007

He was arguably the greatest hero in the history of American cinema, a leader of men who beat the bad guys and symbolised patriotic values.

On Thursday the world's most important - and protracted - democratic process gets underway, when voters in this mid-West corn belt state become the first to pick their presidential candidates.

The result of the Iowa caucuses, a series of town hall votes, will help answer the question now gripping the nation: is America, the land of John Wayne machismo, finally ready to elect Hillary Clinton its first women president?

Declared a shoo in by her own advisers over the summer, Mrs Clinton now finds herself locked in a three-way tie with Barack Obama and John Edwards for victory in Iowa, the state that begins the month-long battle to secure the White House nominations. While there are 50 other states to go, defeat for Mrs Clinton in Iowa would be hugely embarrassing and severely damage her chances in the rest of the contest.

The final post-Christmas frenzy of campaigning proves that many Iowa voters are still looking for a president who offers the reassuring certainties of John Wayne's world, while the increasingly bitter exchanges between the candidates resemble nothing so much as a brutal shootout from one of the Duke's Westerns.

The challenge Mrs Clinton faces is clear in Winterset, where Wayne was born in 1907 at the heart of Madison County, whose covered bridges gave their name to the 1995 Hollywood movie.

At the Wayne birthplace museum, tour guide Glenna Finney, 67, has no time for Mrs Clinton, or the memory of her husband's White House dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. "The majority of people here are retired and they are Republicans. I don't think they're ready for a woman president. Some of them have a hard time having a female pastor," she said.

"People here expect you to have manners. A decent name is to be treasured. How will President Clinton be remembered? Not for any of the good things he did. Where was his decency?

"There's nothing badly wrong with this good old America that John Wayne couldn't have fixed. It was Mid West values that made him so strong. I'm looking for someone who offers leadership, honesty and integrity."

In Des Moines, Iowa's state capital, drivers tooted their horns on Friday as John Strong, 66, a former soldier, brandished a banner reading "Veterans Against Hillary". He has become a familiar sight at campaign events in the city, accompanied by a Halloween effigy of Mrs Clinton in a witch's hat. He said: "I don't mind her being a woman, but she is weak on national defence and she's very condescending and nasty. She is part of the liberal elite and she is a fake when she says she cares about regular people."

Mrs Clinton may not look or sound like John Wayne, (who was friends with Ronald Reagan), but she fights like him and provokes similar macho posturing from her rivals.

She accused Obama's camp of "politicising" the assassination of Benazir Bhutto after comments by one of his aides appeared to blame Mrs Clinton's support for the Iraq war for diverting attention from Islamic militancy in Pakistan. Mr Obama hit back, saying Mrs Clinton's much touted foreign policy "experience" amounted to "what leaders you went and had tea with".

David Axelrod, Mr Obama's chief strategist, told The Sunday Telegraph that the Clinton camp's aggression was evidence of their nervousness. "The next week is extraordinarily important," he said after Mr Obama delivered a speech urging 300 voters in the town of Nevada to "believe" in his promise of change.

"Everyone needs to get off to a good start. The question is not whether we can match the Clintons, but whether the Clintons are up to us." On the Republican side, Iowa boils down to a battle between Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and former governor of Arkansas, and Mitt Romney, the Mormon former Governor of Massachusetts. Both are under fire since the Bhutto assassination for their lack of foreign policy expertise.

But the other main talking point among Republicans has been the resurrection of John McCain. The Arizona senator's support in Iowa has doubled in the last ten days, partly as a result of the Vietnam veteran's perceived wisdom in foreign affairs. He now hopes to grab third place, securing a momentum which could see him beat Mr Romney in the New Hampshire primary election a week on Tuesday.

Mr McCain's re-emergence is also a danger to Mrs Clinton. He is widely perceived to have the best chance of beating her in the general election. He told The Sunday Telegraph: "I have a better chance because I'm the most qualified. I think every poll shows that."

The final shoot-out will soon be underway in Iowa, and by Friday morning, political corpses will litter the fields. But the parallels with a John Wayne film are limited. The Wayne museum gift shop sells mugs bearing his famous dictum: "Talk low, talk slow and don't talk too much." There is precious little chance of anyone obeying that in Iowa this week.

By Tim Shipman, The Telegraph, December 30, 2007

In the chaotic, colourful, cathartic American primary campaign of the past few months, it has in the end come down to a clarifying choice.

In a completely open field - with no incumbent president or vice-president running and both Republicans and Democrats casting about in a newly fluid ideological world - two fundamental emotions have bubbled to the surface. In the final few days before the first critical contest in Iowa, the race is between hope and fear.

The reasons for fear are obvious. America is still adjusting to the impact of 9/11 and the gruelling wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The country is also experiencing a wave of immigration - much of it illegal and uncontrollable - greater than anything since the beginning of the last century.

In the past few years, what were once heartland certainties have been shattered: America is immune from direct military attack; America's public culture is overwhelmingly Christian; America does not torture prisoners; if the worst happens - a hurricane like Katrina - the federal government comes to the rescue. All these bedrock assumptions have been called into question. These are unnerving, unmoored times and the candidates who have based their campaigns on fear - and their ability to assuage and reassure - have propelled themselves to prominence.

Among the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani banked everything on his response to 9/11. Fear of Al-Qaeda resonated through every speech. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto might be seen as a boon to his campaign. But in the end, Giuliani's utterly unnuanced commitment to fighting back any time, anywhere, did not reassure. It alarmed. His mercurial temperament, fiery egotism and willingness to make enemies of everyone have become liabilities. He has fallen consistently in the polls for the entire year.

Mitt Romney, at the start, pitched himself as an inveterate optimist. Alas, his set speeches often came off as robotic invocations of themes lifted from the 1980s. And so his pitch soon reverted to fear - especially of illegal immigrants, where he taunted even Giuliani for being soft on "illegals". For evangelicals, suspicious of his Mormonism, he relied on another set of fears. He promised to fight to make abortion illegal and ban rights for gay couples in the constitution itself.

Mike Huckabee, Romney's chief rival in Iowa this coming Thursday, has tried another tack. His credibility as a candidate came from his being the only real true-believing fundamentalist in the field. In a Republican party remade by George Bush and Karl Rove as a religious movement, he was "one of us". His good humour and ready wit struck many as a strange confluence of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

However, it was his economic message that appealed to working-class Republicans. In a world where globalisation unsettles many, Huckabee is the first Republican candidate in a long time to attack unabashedly free trade and unfettered market capitalism. Railing against Wall Street, he deftly exploited populist themes that had special power in states like Iowa. But, in the end, fear also undid him. In a dangerous world, his total cluelessness in foreign policy remains a huge liability. In the wake of chaos in Pakistan he looks like a risky bet.

On the Democratic side, John Edwards shifted his uplifting message of the 2004 election into a populist screed against the moneyed and powerful. Declaring the tax system to be rigged for the wealthy, the healthcare system cruelly indifferent to working Americans and Washington controlled by corrupt, wealthy lobbyists, he insisted that he alone was able to fight the forces arrayed against the little guy. Using the skills he finessed as a trial lawyer, and focusing almost manically on Iowa, he enters this week with surprising strength. Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton has been able to consign him to the asterisk status that many expected. Most polls still show the race as a tight three-way tie.

No one has exploited the politics of fear as intuitively as Clinton. Her deepest fear has long been of Republicans. She believes deep down that they command a majority and has long practised a politics that seeks first to neutralise the enemy before attempting anything positive herself. This is the scar tissue of the Reagan and Newt Gingrich eras - with the biggest wounds her 1993 healthcare debacle and the impeachment nightmare of her husband's second term. Her biggest appeal to her party is that she can withstand the attacks from the right. And as long as they fear the Rove Republicans more than they believe in themselves, she wins.

In the battle with her fellow Democrats, she also resorts to fear of the unknown. When Obama's poll numbers equalled hers in Iowa and New Hampshire, her surrogates unleashed a torrent of negative attacks: the Republicans will eat the young Obama for breakfast; they will smear him as a former cocaine user, as a Muslim, as black.

The candidate herself, bereft of any serious policy differences with Obama, made her final pitch that she has the experience that Obama lacks. For those afraid of risk in a world at war, she is a surer bet than the young dreamer from Illinois. And if all else fails, Bill Clinton will be there - an insurance policy for the jittery.

This leaves one viable candidate on either side. They are the least afraid and the most hopeful. They are Obama and John McCain, the Republican senator and Vietnam war hero. Yes, McCain's experience has emerged as a great strength in an unstable world. But what remains impressive about his candidacy is that he has taken positions that are more forward-looking than many of his younger rivals.

McCain is the only Republican eager to address climate change. Faced with a Republican base furious about illegal immigration, he stuck to his view that illegal immigrants needed to be assimilated and even defended a bill that he authored with Ted Kennedy, the Democrat senator, to achieve this. He also bravely said that America does not need to torture prisoners and that the war in Iraq can be won. As the candidate of honour, he also became a candidate of hope - especially in Iraq. He has seen his numbers surge recently in New Hampshire and, if he can prevent Romney getting momentum, he still has a chance to pull it off.

Obama, of course, based his entire candidacy on the title of his campaign book, The Audacity of Hope. The fearful have every reason to look elsewhere. If you do not believe that a black man can be president; if you do not believe that America can risk talking to Iran's leadership or withdrawing from Iraq without losing the wider war; if you think it's naive to hope that the polarising culture war of the past 40 years can ever end; if you doubt that a man with a name like Obama who once attended a secular madrasah in Indonesia can ever win a majority of US votes, you really should vote for Clinton.

Obama knows this and directly confronts it. In the final days his appeal is disarmingly simple. "The question is, do you believe in change?" he asks. "The question is, do you believe deep in your gut we can do better than we're doing?"

There are real and powerful reasons to fear right now. It is not crazy to want the reassurance of a former president back in the White House; it is not mysterious that retrenchment is a powerful sentiment in a world of terror and globalisation and mass immigration. Americans have to make a gut decision - whether Republican or Democrat. Should they take a risk or stick to what they know? Should they dare to be optimists or rely on the pessimism that these past few years has been a good guide to a darkening world?

After following this race for an almost interminable preamble, all I can say is that I can't imagine a more constructive race than one between Obama and McCain. The odds are still against it. But it is more imaginable now than at any time in the past year.

And it reminds me of something. In Tel Aviv, a while back, a slogan began appearing on walls in graffiti. In the depths of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as optimism seemed like a delusion, it spread the way memes do. It's a simple slogan and, as this new year beckons, worth holding on to, as a few Americans in a wintry state decide in which direction to take their country.

Know hope.

By Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times, December 30, 2007

BOONE, Iowa - John Edwards has the practice, having placed second in the last Iowa caucuses and visited more counties than anyone else. Barack Obama has the buzz, which has translated into an unmatched volunteer army. And Hillary Clinton has the machine, a formidable alliance of the state's leading political minds and institutional backers.

The extremely tight race - the most recent polls show a virtual tie among the three - means the victor will probably be the candidate not with the best stump speech but the best network of local precinct captains. Or the sharpest voter-mobilization campaign. Or the smartest baby-sitting arrange ments for caucus-goers with young children. Or perhaps even the biggest push by unions and other "independent" groups - particularly for Clinton and Edwards.

"This race has been within the margin of error for a long time," said Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager, who is in Des Moines helping lead the caucus operation. "This could be decided by between 3,000 and 5,000 votes."

The campaigns expect a larger turnout than in 2004, when about 124,000 showed up at the Democratic caucuses. The candidates' fierce Iowa politicking - the speeches from flatbeds, the requisite visits to the Iowa State Fair, the endless TV ads - now gives way to more mundane work. Each campaign is focusing on essentially just two things.

The first is their "get-out-the-caucus" plan - making certain, through phone calls, home visits, e-mails, text messages, and neighborly coercion, that committed supporters will in fact show up to vote, and that they have all the road directions, rides, child care, and food that they need.

"We really don't need excuses," Hildebrand said in an interview. "We really need turnout."

Nothing is left to chance. After some Clinton supporters expressed concern about venturing out in the snow, her campaign bought 500 shovels and devised a plan to clear their paths. On Friday, the campaign packed the shovels into U-Hauls and drove them to field offices across the state.

Obama is personally recruiting precinct captains in rural areas where he lacks them. Every time he snags one, an aide rings a bell at Iowa headquarters in Des Moines and an office-wide cheer goes up. Obama's wife, Michelle, is scheduled to sit down with a group of undecided women tonight in Des Moines.

The leading Democratic campaigns this cycle have created the strongest and deepest political organizations Iowa has seen. They each have two to three dozen campaign offices. They have precinct captains in the vast majority of the 1,781 precincts. Their corps of thousands of aides and volunteers amount to small armies.

But each leading contender has unique advantages.

Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who surged into second place in the 2004 caucuses, is the only caucus veteran. His supporters are passionate and seasoned, and he began the 2008 race with dozens of precinct captains already in place. His campaign has what it calls a "99-county strategy," contending that Edwards enjoys strong support in rural hamlets his opponents have yet to visit. "Having a foundation that's been laid over months and months really has given us a sense of the strength we'll have on caucus night," said Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, Edwards's state director, who helped run his 2004 campaign. "Until you go through it, you don't really know what it's like."

Obama, the Illinois senator, has been running only since February, but the raw excitement his campaign has ignited has drawn legions of volunteers and zealous backers, including thousands of Iowa college and high school students whose participation could be decisive. His campaign is considered the best-organized, especially at the ground level. "They know the people are there, they just need to make sure they come out," said Jordan Oster, a 21-year-old student at Drake University in Des Moines and an Obama precinct captain.

Clinton, despite her contention that she is a new face in Iowa, has strong institutional support. Her caucus specialists are the best on the market: Teresa Vilmain, a veteran Iowa political hand; Jerry Crawford, a Des Moines power broker and long-time Democratic activist; and Michael Whouley, a ground-organization guru who guided Senator John F. Kerry to a surprise victory here in 2004. Clinton's unique appeal to women could also make the difference - women make up 60 percent of Democratic caucus-goers.

"We have a very consistent base of support," said David Barnhart, Clinton's caucus director.

Edwards and Clinton have the added benefit of politically savvy unions and other ostensibly independent advocacy groups working Iowa neighborhoods.

A battalion of Service Employees International Union activists, in addition to funding a pro-Edwards TV ad campaign, is on the ground canvassing and phone-banking for him. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees has between 200 and 250 people here doing the same for Clinton, while EMILY'S List, a group that works to elect Democratic women supportive of abortion rights, has a campaign to help Clinton target women who have not caucused before.

Andrew Bouska, public affairs director for AFSCME Iowa, which has 40,000 members in the state, said the union learned from the 2004 election that the most successful strategy was pairing activists with voters who shared their profession. "When you have someone who wears the same uniform as you do or deals with the same clients or the same patients, they tend to listen," Bouska said.

Obama's campaign, which lacks the same kind of institutional help, is worried that such third-party activity could be decisive.

But the bulk of the campaigns' ground work is being done by activists such as Megan Mitchell, a 22-year-old Wellesley College graduate who works in Clinton's office in Ames, a college town north of Des Moines.

On Friday morning, Mitchell set out for the nearby city of Boone, armed with Clinton bumper stickers, a stack of addresses, and a GPS unit. Her charge was to visit supporters and remind them, gently but firmly, that they needed to caucus on Thursday.

Her first stop, a house in the shadow of the Boone water tower, was a success. The man at the door said he would be there, and could even drive others. Check.

But the next hour illustrated the grueling nature of political organizing. Even when people were home, which was not often, they were not always receptive. A woman at one house said from behind the door, "I'm not dressed," forcing Mitchell to return later. A woman in an apartment complex told her pointedly to leave. A third woman said she was a Clinton supporter but was unlikely to caucus.

Clinton's campaign, like the others, emphasizes building personal relationships with potential caucus-goes, especially those who have never participated before. Her campaign mailed packets to voters with personalized nametags, to make them feel they are truly expected at their caucus.

"It's real important that people feel urgency," Barnhart said.

The leading candidates already do. They have just days left until show time.

"There are six campaigns that are all energized for one night," said Andrew Lietzow, a 56-year-old Des Moines realtor and precinct captain for Obama. "And there will be five of them that will be anywhere from moderately disappointed to really grieving."

How does Lietzow see his job Thursday night? "Herd 'em in like herding cats," he said.

By Scott Helman, The Boston Globe, December 30, 2007

"There are those saying that al-Qaida did it. Others are saying it looked like it was an inside job - remember Rawalpindi is a garrison city," she said.

Earlier in the day, the former first lady sat down with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos and said that, as president, it wouldn't be "appropriate" for her to include Bill Clinton in top-secret security discussions.

"I think he would play the role that spouses have always played for presidents," she told the host of "This Week" in an interview to air today. "He will not have a formal official role, but just as presidents rely on wives, husbands, fathers, friends of long years, he will be my close confidante and adviser as I was with him."

Sen. Barack Obama has dismissed Hillary Clinton's White House experience as largely irrelevant. Consequently, Clinton spent much of yesterday touting her work in the 1990s on international women's rights and the negotiations that led to reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. "I actually went to Northern Ireland more than Bill," she said.

Clinton, who earned the endorsement yesterday of the influential Concord (N.H.) Monitor, emphasized her foreign policy experience and spoke about her 12-year relationship with Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister.

In August, her aides accused Obama of helping to destabilize the nuclear-armed Pakistan by suggesting he'd deploy U.S. forces in the country to hunt for Osama bin Laden.

But yesterday, Clinton delved into Pakistan's internal affairs, suggesting its "feudal landowning leadership," led by Musharraf, has protected al-Qaida to preserve its tenuous grip on power. In an interview on Friday, Clinton called for an international probe into Bhutto's assassination, saying "there was no reason to trust the Pakistani government."

An Interior Ministry spokesman rejected that suggestion yesterday, saying, "I think we are capable of handling it."

By Glenn Thrush, Newsday, December 30, 2007

DES MOINES -- At dusk Thursday, in an annex of Hillary Rodham Clinton's main Iowa campaign headquarters, dozens of operatives formed a chain loading snow shovels and boxes filled with election materials and T-shirts for precinct captains onto a fleet of rented U-Haul trucks.

The Clinton campaign is leaving nothing to chance in turning out the caucus vote for the New York senator on Thursday. And if it snows, the campaign expects its volunteers to wield shovels if that's what it takes to bring Clinton supporters to their neighborhood caucus.

If a Clinton backer needs a ride, child care, or even a buddy to help navigate the caucus process, the Clinton campaign will provide it.

The silence is deafening. So many prominent politicians, particularly Democrats, have refrained from endorsing a presidential candidate. Are they drowning in a sea of good options, or terrified of making the wrong call?

Who are the 'bundlers' financing presidential candidates?

CLINTON, Iowa (AP) - With the governor of a key battleground state in tow, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton raced through the final weekend before Iowa's high-stakes leadoff precinct caucuses urging activists to look past the primaries and back her because she can win in November.

Clinton and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland stumped through vote-rich eastern Iowa making the case that the former first lady is best able to win back the White House and is ready to tackle the job once she does.

"When Governor Strickland decided to endorse me it was a great personal endorsement," said Clinton. "I think it also said something about who he believes, of all of our good Democrats running, who is best prepared to actually run and win in a state like Ohio, which we need to win to take back the White House."

"I think I know what it takes to win in Ohio," said Strickland, the state's first Democratic governor in 16 years. "She's a person of experience. Serious times call for serious candidates."

"He not only has become the first Democratic governor in 16 years, he's an incredibly popular one," said Clinton.

Speaking with reporters after her event, Clinton said the backing she's getting from political leaders has meaning.

"They are not on a political suicide mission," said Clinton. "They are professionals, they are assessing each and every one of us and they are concluding, number one, I would be the best president and, two, I am the Democrat most likely to be elected."

Most polls have shown Clinton locked in a tight and fluid race in Iowa with leading rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards just days before next Thursday's caucuses launch the presidential nominating season. Most surveys have shown a large number of Democratic activists yet to make up their minds, and electability is a key concern of many who are hungry to win back the White House after an eight-year Republican grip.

Clinton was exuding confidence with Strickland at her side.

"I look forward, as the nominee, to campaigning with him in Ohio," said Clinton. "We're going to win Ohio and I believe that we're going to win a lot of states that haven't been as friendly a territory to Democratic presidential candidates in the last several years."

Making her case to about 300 activists at a high school in Clinton, the former first lady made it clear her role in the White House was one of a player.

"I was privileged to be a part of a lot of the decisions we made," said Clinton.

Clinton's closing argument to activists couples her argument that she can win with the case she makes that her record of achievement is strongest.

"When the campaigning is over, how do you make the decision?" Clinton asked. "I believe the best way to make that decision is to look at the evidence. If you want to know what I'll do as president, the best evidence is what I've done."

Clinton was pointing to the backing she's gotten from fellow senators and governors like Strickland as evidence that practicing politicians have made the assessment she's best able to win.

"I have people across this country who have been elected in tough states for Democrats," said Clinton. "They know how to win and they believe that I am the best person to win for Democrats."

Much of Clinton's claim of experience lies in her eight years as first lady, and she makes the case to activists that they were better off during her husband's tenure, and rejects the argument that she was asking voters to turn back the clock.

"It's not like I'm talking about ancient history, I'm not talking about the 15th Century," Clinton said. "We were on the right track and then it was all squandered."

Since the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Clinton has woven into her stump speech the argument that she's by far the most experienced Democrat to deal with a troubled and dangerous world.

"I was privileged to travel around the world on your behalf," said Clinton. "The best way to guard against extremism and violence and conflict is to build alliances and relationships."

Clinton was taking the high road during the final weekend, avoiding references to her rivals.

"On Jan. 20, 2009, someone will be sworn in at high noon to be president," said Clinton. "We know some of the challenges that will await the next president. No matter how much we think we know today, we can't possibly predict everything that will happen."

By Mike Glover, Associated Press, December 29, 2007

CLINTON, Iowa -- Any presidential candidate likes to campaign with the governor by her side. But the governor at Hillary Rodham Clinton's side today was not Iowa's. It was Ohio's.

Subtle? Not even close. The message: Nominate me and I'll win next fall in Ohio, the state that cost Democrats the 2004 election. "Iowa may be the most important first state," Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said here before introducing Clinton. "And Ohio may be the most important general election state."

Strickland's presence is Clinton's electability argument for the day as Iowa voters ponder whether she would be the Democrat best able to win a general election despite her high negative ratings in the polls. Strickland told the crowds in Iowa today that Clinton is leading Ohio polls. "I would not have endorsed her, in spite of all the respect I have for her, were it not for the fact that I am convinced she is the candidate who can win in November 2008," he said.

Taking questions from reporters at an earlier stop in Eldridge, Clinton said the support of so many elected Democrats across the country bolstered her argument. "They are not on a political suicide mission," she said. "They are professionals. They are assessing each and every one of us. And they are concluding, number one, I would be the best president and two, I am the Democrat most likely to be elected."

Here in a town with at least a friendly name, Clinton dismissed -- without naming them -- her main rivals, Sen. Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards, both of whom came through yesterday. She portrayed them both as people who had never really accomplished anything. "What really matters is: What have you done?" she said. "What have you done that has made a difference in people's lives other than your own?" she asked. "I'm not asking you to take me on faith. I'm not asking you to take a leap of faith."

She seemed to be mocking Obama in particular here when she sarcastically talked about how nice it would be to offer gauzy dreams and promise to bring everyone together and "feel so happy." She added, "I guess I've lived long enough and read enough of history, read the Bible, to know that's not the way things happen."

By Peter Baker, The Washington Post, December 29, 2007

"I want you to know that I believe that if you vote for Hillary in the primary, she'll come out of here and win in South Carolina and Nevada," he told an audience in Portsmouth, N.H., following events in Dover and Nashua.

The former president called the current contest for the Democratic White House nomination "an immensely rewarding and taxing situation", drawing a contrast from his 1992 bid for his party's nomination, in which he conceded Iowa to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) before going on to perform strongly in the New Hampshire primary.

Clinton praised his wife's rivals, mentioning several by name, but not her main opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). "I like all these people, I respect them and you should too," he said.

Yet he stressed that his wife stands out from the pack, arguing that she is the most prepared to handle the unexpected events that can hit a country, giving the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina as examples.

"I consider her the best candidate that I've had a chance to vote for in a Democratic primary in my lifetime," he told the crowd.

New Hampshire, once seemingly safely in Clinton's hands, has become increasingly contested. Obama led Clinton by two percentage points in the state, according to an LA Times/Bloomberg poll conducted over Christmas. The same pollster gave Clinton a 19-point lead over Obama in September.

Speaking in a former Baptist church, Bill Clinton enumerated the qualities needed in a U.S. president, citing vision and "the proven ability" to turn that vision "into positive improvements in people's lives."

The former president listed Clinton's achievements as first lady of Arkansas and, later, as the country's first lady.

At times the speech had the trappings of a Clinton State of the Union address, heavy on his own accomplishments and peppered with detailed policy proposals.

He boasted about his administration's record, saying he created 22.7 million jobs "in our eight years" compared with 5.3 million so far under President Bush.

Later, touching on clean energy, he gestured to the ceiling of the church.

"You could green this roof, go up and put on sod," he said.

He announced that The Concord Monitor would endorse Clinton in its Sunday paper.

"Last time they endorsed somebody in my family in 1992, it worked out pretty well," he said.

By Jessica Holzer, The Hill, December 29, 2007

"I don't know what else Clinton's people could have done but put on the inevitability mantle, but they did take Obama for granted," said Tom Bevan, co-founder of the widely read Realclearpolitics.com Web site. "That mistake, I think, has largely determined the course of the campaign."

The Clinton-Obama parity first on display in Selma has become the dominant reality of the race, spreading to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- a trio of neck-and-neck January contests that could determine the outcome of the Democratic primary.

Even John Edwards remains a factor, especially in Iowa where he has a strong statewide organization. The former North Carolina senator, who has waged an aggressive campaign despite his wife's renewed cancer diagnosis, is hoping to leverage a Hawkeye State victory into wins in the next two primaries, where his support remains in the teens.

So how can Clinton recover? Shorn of her air of inevitability, she has spent weeks groping for a coherent message, and only recently hit on a hybrid theme her campaign believes is a winner. Some backers jokingly call it the "Mama Bear" approach, emphasizing Clinton's toughness and experience, while using friends and family to melt her Ice Queen image and demonstrate her commitment to change.

Clinton, who still holds a nearly 20 percent advantage in national polls despite slipping into statistical ties in the three early states, has indeed seemed like her party's inevitable candidate for much of the year. Throughout the summer she built up her lead to double-digits in Iowa and New Hampshire, largely on the strength of her debate performances, which even opponents praised.

She was especially impressive at the first-of-the-campaign debate in South Carolina in April when Clinton said she would respond to new terror attacks on U.S. cities "as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate." Obama, by contrast, stumbled, saying he'd investigate before doing anything.

By fall, however, the campaign hit some serious potholes: The Norman Hsu fundraising scandal, controversies over the Clintons' limited release of White House records and, finally, Clinton's muddled and contradictory positions on Gov. Eliot Spitzer's ill-fated plan to award driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Clinton was also bedeviled by an avalanche of unexpected problems inside her campaign, including tactical misfires (a news release claiming that Obama had penned a kindergarten essay touting his presidential ambitions), serious strategic disagreements (a protracted fight about whether to seriously contest Iowa), below-the-belt shots at Obama (her New Hampshire co-chairman questioned if Obama dealt cocaine) and internal bickering reminiscent of her husband's White House.

Most disconcerting to Clinton's own supporters were the times when the otherwise confident campaign brain trust seemed confused and disoriented, particularly as they tried to limit the damage.

"At times, it seemed like they had a different message every day," said a prominent New York supporter.

But Clinton, whom Karl Rove once described as "brittle," has also shown resiliency. She kicked her fundraising apparatus into high gear after Obama collected a startling $25.8 million during the first three months of 2007. But the third quarter, she has reasserted her fundraising dominance, beating Obama by a $28 million to $20 million margin.

Then there was Clinton's apparently successful navigation of her Iraq problem. To the amazement of Obama's handlers, Clinton has managed to dodge the fallout from her October 2002 vote for the Iraq war, which fueled much early opposition to her candidacy.

By gradually shifting her rhetoric from tepid support for the war in late 2005 to fiery opposition to the Bush administration's troop surge, she has managed to diffuse some of that hostility -- even as she supports a residual U.S. presence in Iraq.

But at the Philadelphia debate it all seemed to fall apart for Team Clinton when a series of gaffes cascaded into a full-scale collapse of the inevitability argument.

During that period, Clinton tried a variety of approaches, many that backfired, including a widely criticized attempt to suggest sexism at the root of the attacks on her. For a time, Clinton took aim at Obama personally, attacking his "present" votes in the Illinois state Senate, saying her newfound aggression heralded the "fun part" of the campaign.

But earlier this month, the campaign rolled out the kinder, gentler approach, which many in the campaign credit for stemming Clinton's slide, particularly among Iowa Democrats, who disdain negative campaigning.

"Within the last couple of weeks they've settled on a single message that's just a lot more comfortable for them and it shows. They're doing a lot better," said a top Clinton donor.

Still, Clinton's main problem is her principal asset -- her unshakable Hillaryness. The former first lady, a polarizing politician with negatives and positives in the 40-percent range nationally, has been called upon to defend her front-runner status for a year. That's the longest period any non-incumbent has had to do so in a competitive race.

"The notion of a front-runner is obsolete in American politics," said Robert Zimmerman, a Clinton campaign donor and Democratic National Committee member from Long Island. "There was this false perception that she was the front-runner. Nobody's a front-runner until they're out of Iowa and New Hampshire."

By Glenn Thrush, Newsday, December 30, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa-Iowa could make or break a Democratic candidate on Thursday. The question is, who?

While the state has long played a key role in choosing the Democratic presidential nominee, it has unparalleled influence this year, even after several larger states moved up their contests to try and muscle in. Those efforts have done little more than compress the calendar into a five-week sprint that ends with the multistate primary Feb. 5 -- strengthening Iowa's position as the leadoff caucus state rather than diminishing it.

Even New Hampshire, which holds the first primary of the season, has seen its once-mighty position diminished somewhat by Iowa's outsized role this time.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are locked in a tight three-way contest in Iowa just days before voters attend their precinct caucuses on Thursday. And while all three have strong organizations in other early states, the best laid plans in those places could come apart depending on what happens in Iowa.

Only Obama and Clinton have raised enough campaign cash to be sure of being competitive through Feb. 5 and beyond. Edwards has agreed to accept federal matching funds, which will constrain the amount of money he is allowed to spend in each state.

Trailing in the polls, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd have also concentrated nearly all their resources in Iowa in hopes of scoring an upset.

The impact of unexpected news events, such as the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, may further complicate a fluid situation.

Here's a look at what to expect in the next several weeks:

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IOWA -- Jan 3 (45 pledged delegates)

All six major Democratic candidates will blitz the state before next Thursday's caucuses. Hundreds of staff and volunteers from each campaign will flood likely caucus goers with mail, visits and phone calls. The television airwaves have been saturated for weeks with advertising.

Clinton, who has struggled in Iowa despite leading the field in national and most other state polls, has the most riding on the outcome here. A win could fuel a wave of momentum for the former first lady, while a loss, particularly to Obama, would shatter the notion of inevitability she has tried to project.

The New York senator is barnstorming the state and has deployed dozens of surrogates including her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Her closing argument -- "It's time to pick a president" -- underscores her central message: A candidate like Obama may inspire and move voters, but Clinton is the best prepared to actually do the job.

Obama and Edwards are competing to be the strongest "anti-Clinton" candidate in the field. Both are promising to bring fundamental change to Washington.

Spending by outside groups has added a new dimension to the contest. EMILY'S List, AFSCME and the American Federation of Teachers are coordinating to boost Clinton through mail, TV and phone banks, while Edwards is receiving assistance from labor-backed groups headed by his 2004 campaign manager.

Obama has called on Edwards to ask the groups to cease their work in Iowa, and privately Obama's advisers fret that he is being hurt by the influx of spending on the other candidates' behalf.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE -- Jan. 8 (22 pledged delegates)

The candidates are reinforcing their organizations in New Hampshire to prepare for whatever verdict Iowa delivers.

The Clinton campaign, which had long counted on the state to be its firewall in the event of a less-than-stellar Iowa showing, has scrambled as her lead here has all but evaporated. The situation was further roiled when a prominent New Hampshire supporter, Bill Shaheen, stepped down as a campaign co-chairman after raising concerns about Obama's teenage drug use.

But Clinton has strong ties to the state thanks to her husband's 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Her organization numbers several hundred staff and volunteers in New Hampshire, methodically working phones and canvassing.

Obama strategists say the key to victory in the state lies with independents who can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary and who polls show strongly oppose the Iraq war. The campaign is counting on a strong showing among these voters but is targeting traditional Democrats as well, making about 20,000 calls a night.

The Edwards campaign says it has four times the staff in New Hampshire that he had in 2004, when he finished a disappointing fourth. The campaign says its volunteers have knocked on 235,000 doors in the state, where 220,000 people voted in the primary four years ago.

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MICHIGAN -- Jan. 15 (128 pledged delegates; national party says the state will lose them all)

The Democratic candidates have agreed not to compete in Michigan because the state moved the date of its primary in violation of party rules. The Democratic National Committee has penalized the state by stripping all its delegates, but the eventual nominee may choose to restore the delegates prior to the convention next August.

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NEVADA -- Jan. 19 (25 pledged delegates)

Nevada will be the first state with delegates at stake after the New Hampshire primary and could play an important role if the race is still competitive coming out of Northeast.

While party leaders estimate only about 40,000 voters will take part in Nevada's caucuses, all the major candidates have spent considerable resources here in hopes of securing a win among a Western, heavily Hispanic electorate.

The campaigns are all counting on momentum and strong organization to fuel their efforts here. The candidates are basing their organization on an Iowa caucus model, building relationships precinct by precinct.

Richardson has spent more time here than any other candidate, hoping to parlay his Hispanic heritage and proximity as governor of neighboring New Mexico into a strong showing.

All the campaigns are vigorously competing for the backing of the Culinary Union, which represents some 60,000 service workers along the Las Vegas strip. The union will announce an endorsement in early January.

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SOUTH CAROLINA -- Jan. 26 (45 pledged delegates)

The three top-tier candidates have grounds to lay claim to South Carolina -- Obama and Clinton because of their popularity among black voters, Edwards because he was born in the state and won its primary four years ago.

Clinton and Obama have strong organizations in the state and have begun sustained television advertising recently. Both have made a concerted effort to woo black voters, who were 50 percent of primary voters in the state last time; they've run ads on black radio and sought endorsements from community leaders and black legislators.

Edwards has run television ads here since November and has made more campaign visits than Obama or Clinton. Polls show him running a distant third but slowly gaining ground.

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FLORIDA -- Jan. 29 (185 pledged delegates, may be lost)

Like Michigan, Florida has been penalized for moving its primary in violation of party rules. The national party has stripped the state of its delegates, and the candidates have pledged not to campaign in the state, although they have made several fundraising visits.

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MEGA TUESDAY -- Feb. 5 (At least 20 states and 2,075 pledged delegates)

Contests from Connecticut to California on this day could end up determining the Democratic nominee.

Clinton has seen her lead diminish somewhat in California, whose 441 delegates represent the day's largest prize. But the campaign is running generally strong there and is targeting absentee voters who can begin casting ballots Jan. 8.

The campaign is also building organizations in states holding caucuses on Feb. 5, including Minnesota, Colorado and Kansas.

Obama has bolstered efforts in California, and polls show him running strong in Georgia and Missouri. He's strongest in his home state of Illinois, while Clinton is dominant in her home state of New York and in nearby New Jersey.

By Beth Fouhy, Associated Press, December 29, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa (AFP) - White House candidates battled across snow piled prairies and airwaves saturated with attacks ads Saturday, five days before Iowa activists make their picks in the first 2008 nominating contests.

Tensions hit new heights between Democratic foes Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while the tone of the Republican contest took another negative lurch, as eight party hopefuls blitzed the midwestern state hosting Thursday's caucuses.

Campaigns, which have waged the longest, most expensive race on record for wide-open 2008 party nominations, geared up to tear down rivals, plead final cases to Iowans and oiled huge get-out-the-vote operations.

Republican Mitt Romney overtaken in an Iowa poll surge by folksy Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee, opened a two front war by hammering Senator John McCain, who is on the rise in New Hampshire which votes January 8. "McCain championed a bill to let every illegal immigrant stay in America permanently," the ad warned, hitting the Arizona senator for backing an ill-fated Senate bill which provided a long path to citizenship for illegals.

Illegal immigration is a boiling issue for Republicans, and helped drive down McCain this year. Recently though, the 71-year-old has been rising again, prompting one Iowa columnist Saturday to dub him "The Comeback Codger."

Polls show Romney, who needs wins in both early voting states trails Huckabee in Iowa and is under fierce pressure from McCain in New Hampshire.

Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, hopes to capitalize on discontent among 2008 challengers with the Republican field, particularly among evangelical Christian voters who helped elect George W. Bush.

Victory in Iowa would be a "seismic political event" he said Friday, claiming multi-millionaire businessman Romney had outspent him 20 to one, in a state renowned for its kingmaker potential.

Clinton and Obama meanwhile set off on gruelling new daylong bus tours across Iowa's icy highways, touting their duelling visions of political change, the issue on which the Democratic race is turning.

John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee locked in a deadheat with the two senators in Iowa, meanwhile planned an evening rally in state capitol Des Moines after a punishing swing through Democratic districts in east Iowa.

The battle between Clinton and Obama degenerated Friday over a remark by the 46-year-old Illinois senator about how his foreign policy spurs had not been earned by taking "teas with diplomats" -- an apparent swipe at Clinton.

The Clinton camp hit back with a statement from former secretary of state Madeleine Albright saying the former first lady had represented the United States in refugee camps, clinics, orphanages, and villages all around the world, including places where "tea is not the usual drink."

The two camps had also sparred over their response to the assassination of ex-Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, which was seized on by candidates to show leadership spurs and experience on the world stage.

Although Des Moines is not quite Dubai, it does have a wealthy feel - there are galleries, cappuccino bars and fancy restaurants.

Lost innocence

The staff in this art gallery shop have left the phone on speaker when a call comes in: "Hiya," a female voice says, "it's Michelle here, Barack Obama's wife. I'm just calling to say..."

With a practised, almost laconic deftness, an assistant reaches out her arm and ends the call, all the while serving a customer.

Iowans have lost their innocence, and lost it big time.

"Hi it's Barack Obama here - I got your number from a friend, and, well, I just wondered if there was any chance you might be able to help me out with this running for president thingy," the message ran.

The friend was thrilled and spent days day dreaming about the size of his White House office once the campaign was over and his part in it had been properly recognised.

Then the ghastly truth dawned - Mr Obama had left the same message for 200,000 other Iowans who drove a hybrid car, or owned a bicycle, or ate out twice a week or whatever it was that attracted them to the Obama camp.

Nowadays, the "robocalls" are universally resented here as an unreasonable intrusion.

It would not surprise me if, on Christmas Day, some campaigns had at least toyed with idea of calling on behalf of opposing candidates in order to foster festive ill-will.

Chit-chat

The point is that Iowa is not about mass politics. It is a celebration of the one-to-one relationship between an individual American and his or her putative commander-in-chief.

Almost two years ago I wrote a piece for this programme about meeting one of the Republican front runners, Mitt Romney, in Iowa.

I was one of two reporters who sat down with him for a sandwich lunch. That could not happen now. I would have more chance of getting an informal off-the-record chat with the Pope than I would with Mitt.

Unless, that is, I were an Iowan.

Iowans have dozens, literally dozens, of opportunities each week to meet all the candidates and often to talk to them.

They are in diners, in hotel lobbies, in churches, in schools, in hospitals.

Iowa in campaign season is like a single British rural parliamentary constituency - think Ross and Cromarty - with everyone spending all their time campaigning there.

The result is dizzying. A great US political story has two voters chatting about their choices in one of the early voting states - Iowa or New Hampshire, I think.

One asks the other about whether he likes a particular candidate, "Oh I don't know," comes the reply, "I've only met him twice!"

Cutting the mustard

Occasionally, there are moves to de-throne Iowa or reduce its importance.

Why should our presidential election be so heavily influenced, other Americans sometimes ask, by 100,000 or so people who actually turn up to the Iowa caucuses, most of them white and most of them over 55?

The honest answer is that Iowa and New Hampshire, and the other handful of early votes, for all their unfairness, at least give the system a connection with local communities.

However grand a presidential candidate, he or she has to come to Iowa and cut the mustard.

They have to talk about the intricacies of their Iraq policy with farmers.

These high achievers have to pause to hear about the health worries of depressed single mums waiting tables in dusty diners on the long, straight, empty roads of the Midwest - they have to talk face to face to the kinds of people you see in Edward Hopper paintings, people whose highest achievement is just getting by.

Hillary Clinton, the best-known of the hopefuls this year, made a classic error early on in the race.

She went to a diner and talked to the waitress but when she left, her tip was given by her staff to the manager to be handed out later.

Bad mistake. You could do that in New York but in Des Moines you hand the money to the server and you look them in the eye.

The waitress complained and Hillary got a black eye.

If she loses on Thursday - which she might well do - put it down to the curse of Iowa, on those who cannot connect.

By Justin Webb, BBC News, December 29, 2007

DAVENPORT, Iowa (Reuters)- Hillary Clinton has one. Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney too. Each contender in the presidential race has some special line about family, or faith, or war-time sacrifice - some turn of phrase that consistently strikes a chord with crowds.

Often, the key lines win whoops and hollers, spontaneous ovations and the occasional "Oh Yeah!," indicating that the top Democratic and Republican contenders for their party's presidential nominations are connecting with voters.

For Democrats, favorite phrases often include swipes at President George W. Bush, while Republicans win ovations for references to religion and strengthening family values.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, seeking to become the first female U.S. president, struck gold with a comment she made at a stop at the fairgrounds Friday afternoon in Webster City, Iowa:

"The cronyism, the corruption, I am just fed up with it. We can do so much better. We can have a transparent open government, not a government of the few, by the few and for the few, but a government for every American. I am going to start with an old fashioned idea. How about appointing qualified people for the jobs we ask them to hold in the United States government?"

In contrast, the crowd attending a rally in Sergeant Bluff for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney ate up the Republican's comments about Clinton: "Putting government in charge, putting 'Hillarycare' in place, would be the worst thing imaginable for our health care system," Romney said, to roars from the crowd. Another proven applause-getter for Romney: "There's no work in America that's more important to our future than the work that goes on in the four walls of the American home."

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, seeking to become the first black U.S. president, fired up his crowds this week with pledges to fight corporate lobbyists in Washington and to end divisive politicking.

"LIGHT, NOT HEAT"

"There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there," Obama told his crowds. "We don't need more heat. We need more light." But Obama's best lines, measured in cheers and standing ovations at a series of campaign events this week: "We will end this war in Iraq. We will close Guantanamo. You will have a president who believes in the Constitution and supports the Constitution and obeys the Constitution of the United States of America.

Crowds are usually more subdued at campaign events for Republican Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist minister who typically opens - and sometimes closes -- his events with a prayer. On Friday night in Ottumwa, about 80 miles southeast of Des Moines, a Huckabee pledge to put the IRS out of business drew loud clapping, and the crowd roared its approval when he said that "small business people are the backbone of the country."

David Axelrod, senior strategist for the Obama campaign, said "take-away" lines are key. "I think that is essential," Axelrod said. "You want to make key points that people will take away and remember when they vote."

By Carey Gillam, Reuters, December 29, 2007

WEBSTER CITY, Iowa - For the presidential candidates, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has emerged as a ghoulish sort of test: a chance to project leadership and competence - or not - on a fast-moving and nuanced foreign policy issue.

Mr. Biden tried to sound presidential as he expressed concern about loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan, and he also emphasized his foresight by noting that he had long called Pakistan "the most dangerous nation on the planet."

Mr. Richardson, a former diplomat, made an effort to cast himself as a man of action, meanwhile, calling for President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to step down.

Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, spent the day asserting their own personal expertise: their private conversations with Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf, their visits to Pakistan and their concerns about fallout affecting the nation's nuclear arsenal to the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Mr. McCain, speaking in New Hampshire, also sought to convey leader-to-leader chemistry when he called Mr. Musharraf a "personally scrupulously honest" man who deserved "the benefit of the doubt" on uniting Pakistan.

But Mike Huckabee, the leading Republican in polls of Iowa caucusgoers, found himself on the defensive on Friday, trying to clarify earlier remarks in which he said the chaos in Pakistan underscored the need to build a fence on the American border with Mexico, and that "any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country" should be monitored. A series of misstatements in discussing the issue could buttress criticism that Mr. Huckabee has faced from his opponents that he lacked experience on foreign policy.

The Bhutto assassination is one of those rare things in a presidential race - an unscripted, unexpected moment that lays bare a candidate's leadership qualities and geopolitical smarts. Think of Mr. bin Laden's videotape message late in the 2004 election - giving President Bush a chance to look more commanding than Senator John Kerry - or the twists of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, as Ronald Reagan made President Jimmy Carter look feckless. And all of the contenders rushed to weigh in, determined and eager to use the moment to show command of issues both large (Pakistan's relations with India and Afghanistan) and small (the proper pronunciation of Rawalpindi, the garrison city where Ms. Bhutto died).

While there were some stabs at substance - Mrs. Clinton called for an independent investigation into Ms. Bhutto's death, and Mr. Richardson called for cutting off all aid to Pakistan - most of the candidates concentrated on projecting the aura of a steady hand in a crisis.

"Pakistan is a foreign policy problem that requires nuance and finesse, so it's a great test of presidential mettle," said Xenia Dormandy, director of the Belfer Center's Project on India and the Subcontinent at Harvard University. "There are so many priorities: building a democracy, the war on terror, nonproliferation. I do think we're going to see a split between those candidates who have the experience to recognize the complexities, and those who are just determined to play the politics on this one."

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois tried to sound like both a leader and a candidate on Pakistan on Friday. At one point, he said he would suspend some military aid to Pakistan if the government did not hold free elections and clamp down on terrorist groups. At another point, though, he suggested that the war in Iraq - which his rivals Mrs. Clinton, John Edwards and others had voted for - had "resulted in us taking our eye off the ball" in pursuing Al Qaeda and bringing stability to the region.

Some candidates had moments, meanwhile, that sounded a bit out of the presidential loop. Mitt Romney said that, if he had been president, he would have gathered information from "our C.I.A. bureau chief in Islamabad." The Central Intelligence Agency has station chiefs, not bureau chiefs. (That said, Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, invoked Mr. Reagan on Friday as a great foreign policy leader, and noted, "he was a governor, not a so-called foreign policy expert.")

Most of the candidates talked Friday about the need for democracy in Pakistan, and no one has stressed that theme more frequently than President Bush himself. But as the complexity of the situation there has set in on the Bush administration in recent years, the talk of democracy has contrasted sharply with the need for stability (something Rudolph W. Giuliani talked about Friday).

The Bush administration's approach so far has been to back Mr. Musharraf at all costs; only Mr. McCain seemed to echo that on Friday.

While the administration has urged the Pakistani government to go through with elections, it has also made clear that it wants Mr. Musharraf to stay in power as long as possible, chiefly because he is the only one Washington trusts to have control over the country's nuclear arsenal.

Pakistan's nuclear weapons are the problem that is the focus of intense attention inside the White House - but an issue that the candidates, aside from Mr. Biden and to a lesser extent Mr. McCain, have talked about rarely. The Bush administration has spent a little less than $100 million in a secret program to help Pakistan protect its arsenal. But outside experts question how effective that effort has been.

Discussing the security of another country's nuclear weapons is something most candidates shy away from. Partly that is because they do not want to strike too much fear into voters. But partly it is because so much of the information is classified, meaning that some of the senators in the race - Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain - may know more than they can say about the American effort. Or, they may have been left in the dark, which, as they seek to project leadership stature, they would not want to admit.

Clinton accused Bush of failing to hold Musharraf accountable for deteriorating political stability in Pakistan, and urged him to demand an "international, independent investigation" of Bhutto's death.

Clinton devoted about 10 minutes of a 40-minute speech to her views of events in Pakistan, indicating the importance her campaign places on portraying her as being strong on national security, an issue upon which she does well among .potential voters.

She also promised to begin bringing U.S. soldiers home from Iraq within 60 days of becoming president, criticized Bush's "No Child Left Behind" school standards as an unfunded mandate, spoke of a U.S. economy that is losing jobs overseas and offered herself as someone whose presidency could be both tough and compassionate.

"I know how to find common ground and I know how to stand my ground," Clinton said.

Despite holding a sizable lead in national polling, Clinton is in a dead heat in Iowa with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. A loss here could shatter her campaign's efforts to offer her as the presumptive favorite for the Democratic Party's nomination.

Despite her criticism of Bush, Clinton accused Obama of politicizing Bhutto's death, following suggestions by Obama's camp that Clinton's early support for the Iraq war had diverted U.S. attention away from instability along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. The border there has become a hideout for remnants of the Taliban, which U.S. forces drove from power in Afghanistan in 2001.

"I just regret that [Obama and his chief strategist] would be politicizing this tragedy, and especially at a time when we do need to figure out a way forward," Clinton said Friday in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

By Martin C. Evans, Newsday, December 28, 2007

Clinton, a New York senator, has a small lead among Iowa Democratic voters with 29 percent support, followed closely by Illinois Senator Obama at 26 percent and Edwards with 25 percent. In New Hampshire, Obama has 32 percent, Clinton gets 30 percent and Edwards trails with 18 percent. In both states, the frontrunners' leads are within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

"Democratic voters are having a conversation with themselves on what they want more in this election,'' says Susan Pinkus, the Los Angeles Times polling director. "If they choose Obama it's about personal characteristics, whereas for Clinton it's her leadership on issues.''

Strengths, Weaknesses

The poll, conducted Dec. 20-23 and Dec. 26, provides a picture of how Iowa and New Hampshire voters perceive the candidates' strengths and weaknesses. The survey includes 580 Iowa Democratic caucus-goers and 519 New Hampshire Democratic primary voters. Among likely voters in Iowa, Clinton's small lead in Iowa widens a little -- and Obama's support drops somewhat -- though her advantage may not be relevant because caucus turnout is difficult to predict.

Clinton, 60, is viewed as most experienced, best prepared to be president and most qualified to handle a range of important issues, including Iraq, terrorism, the economy and health care.

She also is viewed as the least honest candidate and less likely to produce change in Washington than Obama, 46. By contrast, Obama, is viewed by both Iowa and New Hampshire voters as an agent of change, the more honest candidate and most likely to tell voters what he thinks rather than what they want to hear.

Still, Obama, a one-term senator, gets the lowest grades on experience, with almost half of Iowa Democrats and 41 percent of those in New Hampshire saying he needs a "few more years'' of political seasoning before he is ready to be president.

Candor, Integrity

Voters have more mixed perceptions of Edwards, 54, especially in Iowa. He gets higher marks than Clinton on candor and integrity, and is considered more experienced than Obama. At the same time, he doesn't do as well as Obama on most of the personal traits or as Clinton on most of the policy issues.

If the desire for dramatic change is on voters' minds over the next 11 days in Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama enjoys real advantages.

Democrats in both states say the need for new ideas is more important than experience. In Iowa, the margin is 42 percent to 29 percent; in New Hampshire, it is 48 percent to 27 percent.

"We just need some new ideas,'' says Donald Holbrooke, 65, a poll respondent who lives in Swanzee, New Hampshire, and plans to vote for Obama. "We need new blood in there.''

Clinton's lead on substantive policy issues is sizable: On the economy, she bests Obama by 22 points in Iowa and by 15 points in New Hampshire. In Iowa, she has a 17-point edge over Obama on who would best handle terrorism and national security; in New Hampshire, her advantage is 14 points. The poll was taken before the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto yesterday, which may spark the type of international crisis that Clinton says she is best qualified to handle.

Experience

Ray Klenske, a retired printer from New Hampton, Iowa who plans to caucus for Clinton says he trusts her to be president because of her eight years of experience as first lady to former President Bill Clinton, her two Senate terms and her travels around the world.

"You can't sit across the table from somebody all those years and not talk business,'' says Klenske, 81. "If you're a farmer's wife you pretty much know as much about operating a farm as your husband does.''

The poll finds a divide in support for Clinton and Obama among age groups, with about two out of five voters age 18 to 44 in both states saying they favor Obama and about the same margin of Democratic voters age 65 and above backing Clinton, though Edwards gets a similar margin of support from that group in Iowa.

Furthermore, Clinton continues to hold onto support from older women. In Iowa, she gets 43 percent of the vote from women age 45 and over, twice as much as Edwards and Obama. The numbers are similar in New Hampshire.

Race, Gender

A plurality of Democrats says the fact that Obama is black and Clinton is a woman won't be factors in the nominating process.

About three-quarters of Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats say a candidate's past use of illegal drugs wouldn't influence their decision.

In his 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father,'' Obama wrote that he used drugs as a youth, and he openly discusses that experience on the campaign trail. Earlier this month, Bill Shaheen, a Clinton supporter in New Hampshire, stepped down as a campaign co-chair after saying Republicans would attack Obama for his past drug use if he becomes the Democratic nominee.

Edwards is helped most by the Iowa caucus system, which requires Democrats to switch their support to another candidate if their first choice doesn't get 15 percent of the total vote. Edwards is the top second-choice candidate, with 23 percent.

'Second Choice'

"The feeling right now is that second choice is going to boost Edwards,'' says David Redlawsk, a political scientist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Democrats in both states are in a pessimistic mood, with about nine out of 10 saying the country is going in the wrong direction. A large majority of Democrats in both states also say the economy is doing badly and the war in Iraq wasn't worthwhile.

Along with the Iraq war, one of the top policy issues for Democrats in both states is health care, with a plurality saying their chosen candidate's plans to address the problem is the leading reason for their support.

The pessimism about the state of the country aside, 92 percent of Democrats in Iowa and 88 percent in New Hampshire say they are satisfied with their party's field of candidates.

Scott Romine, a retired teacher from North English, Iowa says he would have "no hesitation'' in supporting any of the Democratic candidates.

"I like my Democratic slate,'' he says.

By Heidi Przybyla and Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg, December 27, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton touted her experience and rival Barack Obama made his case for change on Thursday as White House hopefuls scoured Iowa for support one week before the U.S. state's too-close-to-call nominating contest.

Polls show a tight Iowa race on both sides.

Clinton, Obama and John Edwards were in a three-way fight among Democrats and Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee battled for the Republican lead in a state where a win provides vital momentum.

Obama, a first-term U.S. senator from Illinois who has been rapped by Clinton for having too little experience for the job, said he was the candidate who could end the partisan "food fight" and accomplish real change in Washington.

In a speech that took several swipes at Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, Obama also poked fun at her husband Bill Clinton's statement that electing Obama would be a roll of the dice. "The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result," he said in Des Moines. "You can't fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and offer yourself as the leader who is best prepared to chart a new and better course for America." Obama, an early opponent of the Iraq war, has criticized Clinton for voting in the U.S. Senate to authorize it. He and Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, also have attacked her vote to label an Iranian military group a terrorist organization as potentially paving the way to war with Iran.

Clinton stressed her experience as she joined other presidential candidates in decrying the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

"I have known Benazir Bhutto for a dozen years and I knew her as a leader, I knew her as someone who was willing to take risks to pursue democracy on behalf of the people of Pakistan," she said in Lawton, in northwest Iowa.

'WHO DO WE LEAVE OUT?'

She also took a shot at Obama's health care plan, which critics say would leave up to 15 million Americans uninsured.

"Who do we leave out -- do we leave out this woman who's a nurse but doesn't have health insurance?" Clinton asked, pointing to a woman in the audience.

At a campaign stop in Decorah, Iowa, Edwards also mentioned his past meetings with Bhutto and said he spoke to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf after the attack and urged him to continue the democratization process in his country.

Several top Republicans were notable exceptions to the focus on Iowa on Thursday.

Huckabee, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor who has been surging in polls, was in Florida most of the day.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, chatted with diners at coffee shops in New Hampshire, which holds its nominating contest on January 8, five days after Iowa. "I think this will be a challenging race. New Hampshire makes it interesting," he said at Norton's Classic Cafe in Nashua, where he nibbled on a Greek pastry.

Romney, who along with Huckabee has been criticized for a lack of foreign policy credentials, has seen his lead in New Hampshire evaporating under the advance of rival Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in Florida, which holds its contest on January 29. He returned to a familiar theme, his leadership after the September 11 attacks in New York, in unveiling a new television advertisement to run in New Hampshire and Florida, and on national cable television, featuring images of firefighters at the World Trade Center ruins. "When you try and come here and kill our people, we're one and we're going to stand up to you and we're going to prevail," Giuliani says in the ad.

Giuliani, who has seen his lead in national polls shrink and in some cases disappear under the surge from Huckabee, has concentrated on later voting states like Florida and the 22 states holding contests on "Super Tuesday" on February 5.

Less than a week before voting begins, former senator John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama are engaged in an increasingly pointed duel over which man is the true messenger of "change" in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination -- with both drawing heavily from Bill Clinton's themes during his first campaign for the White House.

STORY CITY, Iowa - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who has tried to make her experience the central theme of her closing Iowa campaign argument, called Friday for an independent international investigation into the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

"It is ... clear that the Bush policy giving Musharaff a blank check has failed," Clinton said.

Clinton also called on Pakistan to proceed with "free and fair elections" as soon as a party replacement for Bhutto can be found "on as fast a track as possible."

Clinton, who polls indicate remains in a three-way tie days before the Iowa caucuses, used Thursday's assassination as a transition to discuss her experience and make a final plea for support as she storms the state by bus.

She said Bhutto's assassination is a reminder that the next president will have to be ready to handle both current and future problems.

That is why we need to pick a president who is ready on day one to handle everything that's on that desk [in the Oval Office] and whatever is coming through that door," she said.

The senator also spoke at length about her legislative accomplishments, falling back on what she says are 35 years of experience in fighting for the underdog.

"If you want to know what changes I will make, look at the changes I've already made," Clinton said, asking the crowd to "look at the arc of my life."

On the issue of electability, Clinton promised she would run a tough general election campaign.

"You know, the Republicans have been after me for 16 years, and much to their dismay, I'm still here," she said to applause.

While Clinton, like the media and other candidates Friday, focused on foreign affairs, polls suggest domestic issues have taken priority among voters.

Tim Oelschlager, a union member and plant worker at a John Deere factory in Iowa who attended the Story City speech, said he came to hear Clinton because he wanted to hear her positions on labor organization and job outsourcing.

Oelschlager said he is leaning toward caucusing for former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), who has made opposition to current administration trade policies a centerpiece of his campaign. But Oelschlager said he wanted to hear more from Clinton on his issues before making up his mind.

Oelschlager said he voted for former President Bill Clinton twice, and he has yet to see Edwards in person, something he hopes to correct soon.

Oelschlager, who said he is retired military, said that while foreign affairs is important, he is more concerned about his children's future and the future of the U.S. economy.

He said his plant alone has lost "thousands of jobs" in recent years, and he is looking for a candidate that can stop that bleeding.

"That's why [the jobs] issue is at the top of my line," Oelschlager said.

Clinton took a couple of questions after she finished her speech. This followed news reports about how she has not taken questions at previous events, even though she traditionally had tried to set aside time at the end of her speeches for audience questions. Earlier Friday, it was reported that she would not take audience questions.

By Sam Youngman, The Hill, December 28, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa - Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama yesterday traded bitter charges over the assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto as each sought to capitalize on a development thousands of miles away that threatens to upend the 2008 contest.

Clinton accused Obama's campaign of shamelessly "politicizing" the murder by claiming it was a result of the Democratic front-runner's vote in favor of the Iraq war.

"I just regret that [Obama and his top strategist] would be politicizing this tragedy and especially at a time when we do need to figure out a way forward," Clinton said yesterday on CNN.

Seeking to undermine the notion that Clinton has deeper foreign-policy experience, Obama snidely remarked that she can't count her eight years as first lady and the "ambassadors I visited who I had tea with" among her credentials.

The Clinton-Obama face-off began shortly after news of Bhutto's assassination on Thursday, when Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, linked the murder to the Iraq war.

"Barack Obama had the judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, and he warned at the time that it would divert us from Afghanistan and al Qaeda, and now we see the effect of that," he said in Iowa. "Sen. Clinton made a different judgment."

Later in the day, he backed off.

"I believe our policies in Iraq have had a direct impact on events in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but I would not suggest there is a straight-line relationship between the events of today in Pakistan and anyone's particular vote," Axelrod said.

Meanwhile, Clinton also called for an independent, international investigation into Bhutto's assassination.

Campaigning in Iowa yesterday, Rudy Giuliani tried capitalizing on his antiterrorism credentials. "We need a president who will keep us on offense on the Islamic terrorist war on us. We realize once again that there is an effort against us by Islamic terrorists," he said.

Iowa front-runner Mike Huckabee said the killing should be a call to arms in this country to keep Pakistanis from overrunning the borders. The federal government should "have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our border and particularly to make sure if there's any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country," he said.

By Charles Hurt, New York Post, December 29, 2007

Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, pleaded with voters in Iowa yesterday to cast aside doubts about his lack of experience, amid signs that Hillary Clinton had stabilised her troubled campaign and regained the initiative.

Standing before an overflowing crowd in Des Moines, a week before crucial January 3 caucuses in Iowa kick off the presidential nominating process, Mr Obama gave the most powerful speech of his campaign, urging the crowd to reject the Clintons' politics of cynicism and fear in what his campaign calls his "closing argument".

It came as a new poll claimed to show that, after months of deadlock in Iowa, Mrs Clinton had suddenly opened a wide lead. The new American Research Group poll put Mrs Clinton 15 points ahead of Mr Obama, only a week after it had the two in a statistical tie. According to the survey, Mr Obama had suffered a dramatic 11-point drop in support among men.

Iowa polls are notoriously unreliable, and most analysts believe that the race in the Hawkeye State is still a close three-way contest between Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama and John Edwards. But the survey increased anxiety in the Obama camp that Mrs Clinton's relentless message of experience, versus Mr Obama's theme of change, may be having more resonance in the final, frantic stretch of campaigning.

To amplify those concerns, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, came a day after Mrs Clinton, for the first time, played on voters' fears by declaring the world dangerous and unpredictable, as she crisscrossed Iowa with her husband, Bill, and daughter, Chelsea, on her new "It's Time to Pick a President" tour. Without mentioning Mr Obama by name, Mrs Clinton asked crowds if they were ready to put their faith in an untested leader when "you never know what may happen in some part of the world that will create a real challenge to us here at home".

Late last night the Clinton campaign reacted furiously to a suggestion by Mr Obama's campaign manager that Mrs Bhutto's assassination was linked to Mrs Clinton's vote authorising the Iraq war.

David Axelrod said Ms Bhutto's death will "call into issue who has made the right judgment". He said the resurgence of al-Qaeda in Pakistan was "a consequence of us taking the eye off the ball and making the wrong judgment in going into Iraq".

Phil Singer, a Clinton spokesman, said: "No one should be politicising this situation with baseless allegations."

Mr Obama, who was introduced by General Tony McPeak, a decorated Vietnam fighter pilot and former Air Force chief of staff, responded with the most forceful and aggressive address of his White House attempt. "We can't afford the same politics of fear that invokes 9/11 as a way to scare up votes," he declared before banners proclaiming a new slogan: "Stand for Change." In a clear reference to comments by Mr Clinton last week that an Obama presidency would be a "roll of the dice", Mr Obama said: "The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result. And that's a risk we can't take. Not this year. Not when the stakes are this high."

Mr Obama did not refer to the Clintons by name, but he did not have to. He spoke of the cynics who had been scornful of his message of hope when he launched his candidacy ten months ago. He talked of the "attack ads and insults, the distractions and dishonesty" aimed against him as his campaign took off in the autumn. "Ten months later, Iowa, you have vindicated that faith.

"If you're ready to stop settling for what the cynics tell you you must accept, and finally reach for what you know is possible, then we will win this caucus, we will win this election, we will change the course of history." The largely partisan crowd gave him a standing ovation.

As Mr Obama and the Clintons campaign relentlessly for the next week, their greatest challenge is not just the bitter Iowa cold, or the prospect of enthusing caucus-goers on New Year's Day. It is Mr Edwards who has a significant chance of winning the state. All the campaigns concede that the Democratic race is still extremely volatile.

Battle for Iowa

34% Democrats in Iowa said that they would vote for Hillary Clinton

19% said that they would back Obama

38% of women said that they supported Clinton, 23% Obama

28% of men would vote for Clinton, 27% John Edwards, 16% Obama

23% of Republicans said that they would support Mike Huckabee

14% would vote for Rudy Guiliani

20% of men would vote for Huckabee and Guiliani

26% of women would vote for Huckabee and Mitt Romney

By Tim Reid, The Times, December 28, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Senator Hillary Clinton has narrowly beaten global television celebrity Oprah Winfrey in an annual poll to choose the woman Americans admire most.

Other women in the top 10 were US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (five percent); actress Angelina Jolie and first lady Laura Bush, both with three percent; and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who had the same level of support as Bhutto.

US House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, African-American author Maya Angelou and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II rounded off the list, all garnering one percent of Americans' votes.

Clinton, who is the front-runner in the Democratic party's contest to choose a candidate to run for president in next November's election, was chosen by 18 percent of Americans in the survey conducted earlier this month by USA Today newspaper and the Gallup polling agency, as the woman they admired the most.

It was the sixth year in a row that Clinton topped the annually compiled list of most admired women.

Winfrey, who has been actively campaigning for Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama, was just two percentage points behind the former first lady, with 16 percent of the vote.

The television presenter is becoming the eternal runner-up in the poll, having finished in second place every year since 1997, with the exception of 2001 when she was in third place -- behind Clinton and Laura Bush.

The poll, conducted on December 14-16, asked 1,011 adults in the United States which man and woman "living today in any part of the world" they admired most.

President George W. Bush was voted the most admired man in this year's poll -- narrowly beating his predecessor in the White House, Bill Clinton.

AFP, December 27, 2007

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the national front-runner for the Democratic nod, while the GOP race is a tossup between Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee, a new poll shows.

The new AP-Yahoo! poll shows Clinton snaring 47 percent of support nationwide, with Sen. Barack Obama a distant second, at 25 percent.

John Edwards takes third place, at 13 percent.

Among Republicans, Huckabee and Giuliani are in a statistical tie, taking 22 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

Sen. John McCain is in third place, at 14 percent, while Mitt Romney gets 13 percent and Fred Thompson takes 11 percent.

Officials in charge of the poll said the numbers on the Democratic side have been static since a similar poll in November. But on the Republican side, Giuliani had been the clear leader, at 27 percent, with Thompson getting 17 percent and McCain taking 15 percent.

The poll of 1,821 people was conducted from Dec. 14 to 20, and has a 2.3-point margin of error.

By Maggie Haberman, New York Post, December 28, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's stump speech has several applause lines, but only one provokes an emotional and gender-specific response - when she reminds voters her election would make history.

Sometimes she changes it up a bit, saying she is "thrilled at the prospect," but she always adds: "I am not running because I'm a woman. I'm running because I think I'm the most qualified and experienced person to do the job that has to be done."

The former first lady evokes both generations, reminiscing about those "women in their 90s" as well as parents who tell their daughters: "See, honey, you can be anything you want to be."

Ms. Weisbord remembers New York Democratic Rep. Geraldine Ferraro's bid for the vice presidency with Walter Mondale in 1984. "I didn't think much of her, and Hillary is a very different person. She's tough, and she can win," she said.

"Hillary is the candidate I've been waiting 23 years for, and I think we can all agree she was well worth the wait," Mrs. Ferraro said this summer. "When a woman is in a position of power, it makes a difference for all women."

"Her being a woman is very important for me," said Clinton volunteer Oma Iverson, a retired teacher from Sioux City, Iowa. "She's been through the fire, we all know that, in a way none of the other candidates ever have. If not now, when? What does it take in America to get a woman in there?"

"I think it's important the president has a stable relationship and stable family, and for that reason I have reservations about Hillary Clinton," said Remy Rochford of Irvine, Calif.

Mrs. Clinton's Republican colleague, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, noted the historic nature of the Clinton candidacy this summer, calling it "a powerful example that anything is possible" and "a message that reverberates through our society that it is possible."

"Think about being able to go to her on the day after the election and being be able to say to her ... every opportunity is now available to both men and women in this country," he said, adding: "We get a chance to make history."

Democratic activist Joyce Elliott of Little Rock, Ark., summed up her excitement about the 2008 field: "As an African-American woman, either way it finally feels as if I can't lose. It's a feeling like being in the majority. When will this ever happen again?"

By Christina Bellantoni, The Washington Times, December 28, 2007

DES MOINES -- The assassination of Benazir Bhutto came as a brutal reminder of the gravity of the decision Iowa's voters will be rendering in their caucuses next Thursday night. Its impact may be felt most powerfully by Democrats who have been thinking less about issues than about the style of leadership they are seeking from their next president.

A short while later, a Joe Biden commercial looks as if it had been produced precisely for this moment. "We don't have to imagine the crises the next president will face," intones a very serious voice. Indeed not.

Clinton, of course, is hoping that the chaos in Pakistan will fortify her relentless arguments about the importance of experience. Biden's refusal to back away from his insistence that this should be a foreign policy election seems shrewder now than it did last week. Biden has been warning not for months but for years that the United States faces its gravest challenge in Pakistan.

The images from Pakistan ratified that Biden was no Chicken Little. He noted yesterday that he had "twice urged President Musharraf to provide better security for Ms. Bhutto and other political leaders." Biden was suddenly relevant -- to television bookers for sure, but also, perhaps, to voters.

David Axelrod, one of Barack Obama's senior advisers, acknowledged that the events in Pakistan could well shake the campaign. But he insisted that they validated Obama's original judgment that the war in Iraq was the wrong battle at the wrong moment. Obama, he said, would be happy to reopen the debate on "judgment" in foreign policy.

Still, Iowa's Democrats work to their own rhythms. Foreign policy differences -- indeed, almost all issue differences -- have had little to do with the battle here.

Instead, said Axelrod, the rhythm of this campaign has been defined by "three different approaches" to the presidency laid out by Clinton, John Edwards and his own candidate.

Clinton's argument, he said, is that "she's been around the block," a not quite charitable way of characterizing Clinton's claims that her experience readies her for the coming battles for change that all Democrats devoutly wish to wage.

"The Edwards campaign is 'Storm the Bastille,' " said Axelrod in a colorful description of the former senator's fierce attacks on drug companies, oil companies and all others who would stand in the way of reform. This is appealing to the many Democrats who are in a fighting mood.

But Obama is running as the candidate who can transcend these fights. In offering his closing argument at a Masonic hall here yesterday, he poked fun at Clinton's recent embrace of change as her own magic word. No, said Obama, change "has been our message when we were down, and our message when we were up. And it must be catching on because . . . everyone is talking about change."

Clearly but obliquely referring to Edwards, Obama preached that anger won't cut it, either. "There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there," he said. "We can change the electoral math that's been all about division and make it about addition."

Thus has a wide Democratic consensus defined the choice here as among three different change agents: one tough and experienced, another forceful and angry, the third sunny and inspirational. Biden stands outside their fight, listening to his own drummer.

Reactions Illustrate Their Key Differences

For his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bhutto's death helped underscore the line she has been driving home for months -- about who is best suited to lead the nation at a time of international peril. In her comments Thursday, Clinton described Bhutto in terms Obama (D-Ill.) could not: as a fellow mother, a pioneering woman following in a man's footsteps, and a longtime peer on the world stage.

The differing reactions of Clinton and Obama to the assassination crystallized the debate between the two just a week before Iowans will decide the first contest in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

While aides said Clinton was anxious not to appear to be politicizing Bhutto's death, they nonetheless saw it as a potential turning point in the race with Obama and former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.).

"I have known Benazir Bhutto for more than 12 years; she's someone whom I was honored to visit as first lady when she was prime minister," Clinton said at a campaign event in a firehouse in western Iowa. "Certainly on a personal level, for those of us who knew her, who were impressed by her commitment, her dedication, her willingness to pick up the mantle of her father, who was also assassinated, it is a terrible, terrible tragedy," she said.

Three hours after news of Bhutto's slaying broke, Obama delivered a withering rebuke of Clinton's experience, depicting her lengthy political resume as a hindrance to solving big problems, including crises abroad. In an especially charged moment, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod would later tie the killing to the Iraq war -- and Clinton's vote to approve it, which he argued diverted U.S resources from fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both al-Qaeda hotbeds. "You can't at once argue that you're the master of a broken system in Washington and offer yourself as the person to change it," Obama said. "You can't fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and offer yourself as the leader who is best prepared to chart a new and better course for America."

His remarks came as part of the unveiling of a new stump speech meant to reinforce his change agenda to Iowa voters before the Jan. 3 caucuses. But at every stop Thursday, he started with a few words about the Bhutto assassination. "She was a respected and resilient advocate for the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people," Obama said. "We join with them in mourning her loss, and stand with them in their quest for democracy and against the terrorists who threaten the common security of the world."

Aides said the senator from Illinois made several Pakistan-related phone calls between events, including to Anne W. Patterson, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, and to Donald Kerr, deputy director of national intelligence. Obama also talked to Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, and urged his country to proceed with democratic elections. But mainly the Bhutto assassination was an undercurrent. No one in Obama's audiences asked him about it, although when a man in Nevada, Iowa, asked about Obama's plan for ending the Iraq war, the senator used it as a segue to lambaste the war for detracting from other regional problems, namely defeating al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"I've been saying for some time that we've got a very big problem" in Pakistan, Obama said. "We were distracted from focusing on them." The phone calls put him behind schedule, and Obama apologized to a Marshalltown audience for showing up half an hour late, explaining that he had to check with U.S. officials involved in the crisis "to make sure that we knew what was going on."

Axelrod, a senior Obama strategist, was more direct, linking the Pakistani crisis to the different positions that Clinton and Obama took on the Iraq war in 2002, when Clinton voted to authorize it in the U.S. Senate, and Obama, then an Illinois state senator, spoke out against it. "Obama opposed the war in Iraq explicitly because he feared it would divert our attention from al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the whole region," Axelrod said. "It underscores the fact that you have to have a president who understands the world, who is going to analyze these events, and who will chart the right course, counter to the conventional thinking."

"There's an issue of judgment," Axelrod said. Obama warned that the war could destabilize the region, "and that's come to pass. Certainly we see evidence of that even today."

Edwards said during an interview on Radio Iowa that he had spoken with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, encouraging him "to continue on the path to democratization, to allow international investigators to come in to determine what happened, what the facts were, so that there would be transparency and credibility about what actually occurred and also about the upcoming schedule of elections and that the important thing for America to do in this unstable environment is first of all focus on the tragedy that's occurred."

Obama has broadly built his foreign policy agenda around his opposition to invading Iraq -- citing that position as evidence of better judgment than his rivals -- and around the tone he promises to bring to international diplomacy.

Clinton has attempted to straddle a difficult foreign policy line throughout the race, voicing sharp opposition to an Iraq war she voted to authorize while taking a hard line toward other countries, including Iran.

Her campaign advisers pounced on Obama's and Axelrod's comments. "This is a time to be focused on the tragedy of the situation, its implications for the U.S. and the world, and to be concerned for the people of Pakistan and the country's stability. No one should be politicizing this situation with baseless allegations," Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said.

At her first event of the day, in Lawton, Clinton delivered straightforward comments on the events in Pakistan. Several hours later, she grew more personal, recalling Bhutto as an acquaintance. Then Clinton tied the political turmoil in Pakistan to the elections in the United States. "When you think about democracy, you're reminded that, in our country, we are the longest-lasting democracy in the world," she said. "One of the great events in our democracy happens a week from tonight, right here in Iowa. And if anything, the terrible events of today are a stark reminder of how important it is for as many Iowans as possible to be part of the journey."

Clinton then added her latest signature theme: "It's time to pick a president."

Obama predicted that the climate will get ugly in the days ahead, starting with a television ad scheduled to begin airing in Iowa on Friday attacking Obama's health-care plan, paid for by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a Clinton labor ally. "In seven days, what was improbable has the chance to beat what Washington said was inevitable," Obama said. "And that's why in these last weeks, Washington is fighting back with everything it has -- with attack ads and insults; with distractions and dishonesty; with millions of dollars from outside groups and undisclosed donors to try and block our path."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Kitchen table worries pushed ahead of the war in Iraq over the past month, a shift toward pocketbook issues that has gained currency as the election year dawns.

More than half the voters in an ongoing survey for The Associated Press and Yahoo News say the economy and health care are extremely important to them personally. They fear they will face unexpected medical expenses, their homes will lose value or mortgage and credit card payments will overwhelm them.

Events, however, can quickly change public opinion. Thursday's assassination of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto could draw more attention to terrorism and national security, an issue that still ranked highly with the public and which 45 percent of those polled considered extremely important.

This latest AP-Yahoo News survey of more than 1,800 people by Knowledge Networks offers a unique opportunity to track changes in public attitudes as the presidential campaign unfolds. The first poll was last month and set a base line to measure national sentiment.

In the new results, men and women approaching retirement were especially attentive to the economy and health care, with six out of 10 ranking both issues extremely important. Politically, the attention to such domestic issues hangs darkly over Republicans. Voters say they are far more likely to trust Democrats to handle the economy and health care.

Consider Linda Zimmerman, a 50-year-old sheep farmer from Thurmont, Md. Her daughter and son-in-law are having trouble keeping up with two mortgages on a town house, she said. One street in her neighborhood has five homes for sale, and one has been on the market for two years.

Registered as a Republican, she's ready to reconsider.

"We're Republicans and I'm very unhappy with them, and I've been watching the Democrats," she said. "We did better when (Bill) Clinton was in than we did with Bush. It's just terrible."

The Democratic edge on such issues illustrates the predicament Republicans face going into a presidential election. Iraq doesn't dominate the news as it used to, replaced by headlines about slumping home sales, high gasoline prices and a credit crunch.

The impact of Bhutto's assassination on public opinion depends on whether Americans perceive her death as an added threat to the United States. Terrorism was the only issue polled that Republicans were more trusted than Democrats to handle well.

Republican Rudy Giuliani had benefited most from people's fears of terrorism. But over the past month his level of support dropped, even among voters who said terrorism was an important issue. Giuliani is now trying to get some of those voters back, releasing an ad Thursday that uses images of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York.

All in all, though, voters appear to be weighing other issues at least as heavily as the country heads into the first voting of the presidential election.

Financial worries have risen in prominence. Forty-eight percent of those polled said Social Security is extremely important to them, up from 42 percent in November. That's virtually the same as the 46 percent who considered Iraq extremely important.

These new public concerns are reflected on the campaign trail, where candidates are hitting domestic topics hard. There too, Democrats have an edge over Republicans when it comes to connecting with their core voters.

Overall, 42 percent of Democrats are very or extremely satisfied with the amount of attention their favored candidates are giving to the issues that matter most to them. Only 32 percent of Republicans feel that way about their candidates. Of all the candidates, Democrat Barack Obama gets the best rating among his supporters.

Bill Hine, a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran from Warrenton, Va., considers himself a "soft Republican" who is partial to John McCain. But the nation's health system needs fixing, he said, and he's not happy with what he's hearing.

"A lot of Republicans are just anti-anything, anti-changing anything, and that's one of the things I'll be looking at," he said.

Six out of 10 people polled said they believe it is at least somewhat likely that the U.S. economy will enter a recession next year. Slightly more - 64 percent - said they worried about a major unexpected medical expense, and 55 percent worried that the value of their stocks and retirement investments would drop.

Forty-four percent said they were concerned that the value of their homes would decrease during the next six months. That sentiment was especially strong in the mountain states.

"Middle-class America is being chipped away at," said Edward Lemieux, a 57-year-old pattern maker from North Smithfield, R.I., who plans to support Obama for president.

His view is influenced by the flight of manufacturing jobs from his state, by the "For Sale" signs that outnumber the "Sold" signs on neighborhood lawns and by his mother's health care needs.

"We're all of a sudden becoming a country of rich and poor," he said. "The middle class is eroding."

Despite those worries, respondents have grown slightly more optimistic about the direction of the nation during the past month. Nearly three out of 10 say the country is on the right path, compared with 24 percent last month. This uptick in the national mood is evident in both parties, though it's much stronger among Republicans. Still, more than seven out of 10 said they believe the U.S. is headed down the wrong track.

Interest in immigration - a major issue in the Republican presidential contest - remained the same as last month, with 37 percent saying it was an extremely important issue. But for all the candidates' efforts to distinguish themselves on that issue, the poll found that none of the leading contenders holds an advantage among Republicans who feel most strongly about immigration.

Sentiments on health care and the economy could make a difference in the Democratic contest.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards supporters have much stronger feelings about the economy and Social Security than Obama voters. Edwards has staked his campaign on a message of economic populism, while Clinton draws 40 percent of her support from people with household incomes of less than $25,000, far more than her rivals.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards have been feuding over who would provide the most comprehensive health care plan.

Nearly two-thirds of voters polled said the United States should adopt a universal health insurance program "in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers." Fewer, but still a majority at 54 percent, said they supported a single-payer system whereby all Americans would get their health insurance through a taxpayer-financed government plan.

Lynn Haynes, 42, of Huntington, W.Va., works in the state government's welfare department where she sees clients who can't afford health care. What's more, she has a 35-year-old sister who is developmentally delayed and "falls into the cracks" of government assistance programs. She's a registered Republican, likes Giuliani but supports universal health care and is giving Democrats a hard look.

"I see too many people at work especially who just don't get any health care," Haynes said. "I look at what they get for retirement and Social Security, and I don't see how they live on that and afford their prescriptions."

The survey of 1,821 adults was conducted from Dec. 14-20, and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. Included were interviews with 847 Democrats, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.4 points, and 655 Republicans, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 points.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.

By Jim Kuhnhenn and Trevor Tompson, Associated Press, December 28, 2007

Most voters want it. The candidates all promise it. The presidential race hinges on it.

But nobody can quite agree on the meaning of the single most important word of the election: Change.

With the nation at war and facing a raft of domestic problems, voters are demanding a shift from the status quo in Washington. November will be a change election.

But what kind of change? On the Democratic side in particular, that question is at the heart of an unusually competitive race - and it prompted two leading candidates to dig at each other in separate interviews with The Associated Press.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois suggested that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would be no more than a "caretaker" president who represents change only in the sense of replacing a Republican with a Democrat in the White House.

Clinton responded coldly, "I think it matters who is president."

On the campaign trail, Obama is the image of change - young, black and new to Washington. He defines change as the ability to overcome partisan gridlock to solve the nation's problems, uniting Democrats, Republicans and independents "who've lost faith in their Washington leaders but want to believe again (and) who desperately want something new."

Clinton defines change as something important that comes only with experience, a twist of logic that her own advisers concede is a tough sell. It's hard to be for change as a veteran of the status quo.

She's trying to finesse the argument by closing the Iowa campaign with a focus on her experience - 35 years in public life, mostly as the first lady of Arkansas and the nation.

"I think certainly the question is who is prepared from Day One to step in and address all of the challenges we face plus all the unpredictable issues that cross the president's desk," Clinton said in an interview with the AP between campaign stops.

Her latest television ad casts Clinton an agent of change ("a new beginning") who can cope with war abroad and anxiety at home ("a steady hand"). She would be the nation's first female president, which is in itself a major change.

Though it's fair to wonder how much more prepared she is for the presidency than her chief rivals - having never run a major organization or been considered a major player in foreign policy - Clinton gets the benefit of the doubt from voters. A recent ABC News-Washington Post poll in Iowa found that she wallops Obama on the question of who has the most experience - 49 percent to 8 percent.

She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, cast Obama as too raw for the presidency. Their argument carries weight with voters, including some Obama admirers, who wonder whether he's trying to move too fast from the Illinois legislature to the U.S. Senate to the White House.

Obama can point to modest record of achievement in Illinois and Washington, but nothing on his resume sets him apart from the field. Still, he says he's not the risk. "The real gamble in this election," Obama said in his speech, "is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result."

A third leading Democrat, former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, is the white-hot advocate for change. He argues that Clinton is too close to special interests and Obama is too accommodating to them. "Compromise and conciliation is the academic theory of change. It just doesn't work in the real world," Edwards said in the text of an address prepared for delivery Friday. "Fighting for conviction is the historic reality of change."

In the AP interview, Clinton was asked how her definition of change differed from her rivals.

"I believe everyone talks about wanting change but the real challenge is who can deliver change and positive results," she said. "Some people think you can bring about change by demanding it and some people think you can bring about change by hoping for it. I think you bring about change by working hard for it."

In her view, Edwards only talks about change, Obama only dreams of it and she's the only one who would produce it.

Not so, said Obama. How does his definition of change differ from Clinton's? "I think Senator Clinton's argument is that what ails us today is the Republicans are in charge and once George Bush is out of office there will be sort of a return to the policies of the Clinton era and that will solve our problems," he told the AP. "My argument is that we need more fundamental change than just a change of political parties in the White House."

"This election is about whether or not we simply settle because we don't really think things can change that much, so we want a caretaker who can do things a little better than Bush," Obama said. "Or are we really shaking things up and making them better?"

Polls suggest the race is a dead heat - that Democratic voters in Iowa are evenly divided between Clinton, Edwards and Obama and their competing views on how to reform Washington.

That will change.

Associated Press, December 27, 2007

Until the past week or so, the press had pretty much written off John McCain's chances of gaining the GOP nomination. But if he can gain his party's nod, he remains the candidate, from either party, most likely to prevail in a general election - and thus win the presidency.

That could make a difference in the homestretch of the Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns, since surveys have shown time and again that voters on both sides of the aisle care about electability. But the polls everyone's studying at the moment don't accurately address this issue. How voters view the candidates today is not how they're going to view them in November - once a candidate gains the nomination, he or she is transformed into an altogether different character.
By looking at historical trends and the appeal of each of the current candidates, one can come up with fair indications of who is likely to rise or fall in a general-election campaign. Assuming each of these candidates were to win his or her party's nomination, here, in order, is an assessment of their chances of winning a general election.

1) JOHN MCCAIN McCain would bring a number of advantages to a general-election campaign. He's been in the national-election eye the longest, so he's well known and trusted - passing the presidential-threshold test by a mile. He's a national hero of sorts. And, he's perceived as enough of a maverick that he would appeal to some Democrats and independents. His weaknesses would be his age (he'd be the oldest person ever initially elected to the presidency), and the fact that his soft immigration stand might attract a third-party anti-immigration candidate. Still, despite his lukewarm showing in current GOP polls, he began this whole cycle as the strongest potential candidate in a general election, and he remains so - as long as it continues to appear that the war effort has turned a corner.

2) JOHN EDWARDS The only Democrats to win the popular vote after 1960 have been Southerners. Why should it be any different now? Yes, Edwards is liberal, but his candidacy would put a number of usually safe GOP states, such as Virginia, into play. Edwards expands the playing field, which is what you want to do to be a strong general-election candidate.

3) RUDY GIULIANI Giuliani does for the GOP what Edwards does for Democrats - he puts states normally carried by the other party into play (in his case, New Jersey or Pennsylvania). His weakness is that his candidacy would likely trigger a third-party social-issues candidate from the right, who would need to get only one to two percent of the votes in key states to throw the election to the Democrats. A Bloomberg independent candidacy wouldn't do him any favors, either.

4) (tie) HILLARY CLINTON Clinton and Obama have the same initial problem. Each has a scenario to get to about 310 electoral votes - more than enough to win (270 is required), but one that doesn't give either a large margin of error. Of the two, Clinton has less upside potential than Obama because she's divisive. But she has far less downside potential, too, because she's a known commodity. If there's a serious independent candidacy, her chances improve markedly. After all, getting to 46 percent (which is probably all it would take to win a three-person race) isn't Clinton's problem - it's getting to 50 percent plus one.

4) (tie) MIKE HUCKABEE Huckabee has the potential to rank higher: his strength is that, coming from nowhere, he would become the "change" candidate in the race, likely heading off any GOP social-issues or immigration splinter candidacies. But as such a new figure, he could be subject to wild fluctuations in public opinion - much like Jimmy Carter was in 1976 - and could even flame out entirely. Still, if Huckabee could hold Ohio and Florida for the Republicans - not a terrible bet if he could convince the nation he wasn't a weirdo - he'd win the general.

6) BARACK OBAMA On paper, Obama has more potential than Clinton because he appeals to independents. But he's far more of a risk, too: like all newcomers, he could fall apart under scrutiny. When your margin of error to win 270 electoral votes is as low as his is (at best he could get to around 310), that's a danger. Yes, he could be another Kennedy (who won the popular vote by all of 0.1 percent, by the way). Or he could be another, gulp, McGovern.

7) MITT ROMNEY If Romney had run as a Northeast new-face businessman, he'd have had the persona to wage a formidable general-election campaign, putting the Democratic base at risk with the same strengths as Giuliani. Alas, he chose to run as the man of a thousand faces. Even as the nominee, it would be hard to see how he could reinvent himself once again as a centrist. And the religious issue would still be lurking.

8) FRED THOMPSON Even as the nominee, Thompson would be the second coming of Bob Dole - a man who likely held the base and nothing more. He would offer little risk, but little reward, either.

By Steven Stark, Real Clear Politics, December 27, 2007

LAWTON, Iowa (AP) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign took on the appearance of a family business as she headed into the final week of the race for Iowa's leadoff precinct caucuses, driving home to activists the stakes in those caucuses and her view that she's ready for the job.

"Next week the eyes of the country and the world will be on Iowa, the world will be holding its breath," said Clinton. "We know that this decision you face is so important, you are picking a president and there isn't any more significant decision for you to make as a citizen."

Clinton opened her campaign day with a rally before about 300 people jammed into a high school in western Iowa.

She joked about a landing at a foggy airport that delayed her arrival by half and hour.

"We weren't sure we were going to be able to land," said Clinton. "Right after we landed they closed the airport again. I think that's a good omen."

Most polls have shown Clinton in a very tight and fluid race with rivals John Edwards and Barack Obama, with the stakes very high in next week's caucuses. Clinton has led in national polls but many strategists argue that a win in Iowa could give her the momentum to seal to the nomination.

She was working to close the sale in the final week, and leaving nothing to chance. Daughter Chelsea Clinton was at her side as she stumped through a series of stops in western Iowa, and her husband, former President Clinton,l was keeping his own campaign schedule in the state.

Clinton also brought along Mark Nicholson, an apple farmer from upstate New York to cement her ties to rural Iowa.

"We weren't used to getting a lot of attention from politicians in New York," Nicholson said. "Seven years later, it's amazing how far we've come."

Clinton hammered home her electability, and described for activists the type of general election campaign she'd run.

"I will wage a campaign that stands for our values and our country's future," she argued, warning that she's capable of standing up to what will certainly be withering assault from Republicans.

"The Republicans have been after me for 16 years and I'm still here," said Clinton.

With the assassination of a world leader as a backdrop, Clinton was reminding activists of her experience and familiarity with the White House and the challenges facing the next president.

"We know how important it is, the decision that will start here in Iowa in one week, picking a president that is ready on day one to deal with the myriad of problems" facing that next president, said Clinton. "Our next president will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009. Waiting on that president's desk in the oval office will be problems that are incredibly difficult, that present challenges to our leadership in the world, to our moral authority, to our economy, to the kind of society we are and want to be. These are some of the problems we know about."

She said it is inevitable that unexpected problems will confront the country and argued that on the ground experience in the White House is the only way to be prepared for that.

"That's the nature of the job and the world in which we live," she said. "It certainly raises the stakes high for what we expect from our next president. I know from a lifetime of working to make change."

All of her surrogates sounded the same theme.

"We were all incredibly impressed by her leadership," said Nicholson. "We need someone who is tested and proven.

By Mike Glover, Associated Press, December 27, 2007

US presidential hopefuls returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday after a pause for Christmas with the latest opinion poll showing Hillary Clinton regaining the lead among Democrats in Iowa a week before the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses.

Earlier polls had the New York senator locked in a dead heat with Barack Obama in Iowa, with John Edwards close behind.

The survey offered reassurance to Mrs Clinton after a tough few weeks during which her campaign appeared to lose momentum while Mr Obama surged back into contention.

After months spent trumpeting her strength and experience, Mrs Clinton has spent recent days campaigning alongside her mother and daughter across Iowa in a belated attempt to soften her harsh public image.

But the main narrative to the Democratic race remains the perceived choice between Mrs Clinton's greater experience and Mr Obama's promise of change.

While the ARG poll showed Mrs Clinton back in command, the survey found the Republican contest tightening into a dead heat between Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas.

Mr Huckabee had opened a double-digit lead in Iowa over recent weeks, bolstered by support from Christian conservatives. But Mr Romney, who had led in the state for most of this year, appears to be clawing back lost ground.

Iowa's caucuses on January 3 mark the first of the state-by-state contests that will determine each party's nominee in next November's presidential election.

Candidates hope a strong performance in Iowa and New Hampshire, which holds its primary election on January 8, will propel them towards their party's nomination.

In New Hampshire, polls show Mrs Clinton with a narrow poll lead over Mr Obama in the Democratic race, while Mr Romney heads the Republican field with John McCain, senator for Arizona, gaining ground in second place.

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is trailing in fifth place in Iowa and third in New Hampshire but hopes victories in several states that vote later in January and early February will catapult him back into contention for the Republican nomination.

By Andrew Ward, Financial Times, December 27, 2007

Watching What Richardson, Biden and Dodd Tell Their Supporters

In the next few days, one story we'll all be watching for in the Democratic presidential campaign is what Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd tell their people do to if they aren't viable on caucus night.

Supporters of those candidates who don't have 15 percent are required to realign with a candidate who does - or form a new group that meets the threshold - in a second round of voting.

It's not a small matter. Since the Iowa Democratic Party reports only an estimate of state convention delegates won as a result of that second round vote, the official result becomes a count of those delegates, not the initial preferences of people as they go into the caucus site.

But some of these folks might like a little guidance from their standard bearer. It's why the actions of the single digit candidates are still important in the closing days of the campaign.

Four years ago, on caucus day the Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards people cut a deal: In those precincts where one of them wasn't viable, his people were encouraged to go with the one that was.

In those precincts where neither were viable, people were encouraged to form a viable group around the one with the most votes. It proved an important factor in Edwards good showing.

While Kucinich didn't have much support, his people did give Edwards a few extra percentage points that helped push him into second place.

So, this year, we'll all be watching to see if someone tries a similar move Jan.3. It's why candidates who often don't get a lot of respect in the final days should still be respected and could prove pivotal.

Republicans are much easier to understand. They just drop a name in a hat and announce the totals. Still, a version of this "Who will the single digit candidates support?" game got played recently when Tom Tancredo quit and urged his people to support Mitt Romney.

By David Yepsen, Des Moines Register, December 26, 2007

One week. That's all the time left in the 2008 Iowa caucus campaign.

While many are ready for it to be over - caucus-goers are tired of the robot calls, and political and media types are tired of the same old restaurants - the race remains delightfully undecided.

That means one week from today, some real news is going to be committed in Iowa.

The big question is: "Who is going to win?" (Since I stupidly answered that question in a pre-caucus column four years ago - Howard Dean - I now quote Mark Shields, one of the most respected political columnists in our business, who told Jim Lehrer something to this effect: That is a very good question, Jim. And I would be a fool to answer it.)

So let's look at third place.

Third-place showings are likely to hold exactly opposite meanings in the two parties this cycle.

On the Democratic side, a third-place finish will severely wound a leading candidate, perhaps mortally. On the Republican side, it just might provide a shot of political steroid for a lagging candidate as the race heads to New Hampshire.

Some background: Throughout the history of the modern early caucuses, no candidate who has ever finished worse than third in a competitive race has ever gone on to win a nomination. As has been noted here before, there are three tickets out of Iowa to New Hampshire on the morning after: first class, coach and standby.

Among the Democrats, polls show that Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are in a close race for first place. All need to win. Clinton's been the national front-runner and needs an Iowa victory to certify that standing. Obama has come on strong at the end, and if he defeats Clinton for first place here, he stands a chance of pulling a John Kerry: Use an Iowa victory to run the table of subsequent contests and capture the nomination.

For Clinton to finish second behind Obama would be a defeat, though she will spin it that she had a successful effort in the state because she started so far behind here.

John Edwards finished second last time and must do better than that now to survive. He's already seen as a bit of a one-trick pony who has a great campaign in Iowa and little elsewhere. It's an observation he disputes.

The only common thread to this is that third place to any of them would be a dead zone. On a plane as full as the Democratic one, there is no standby ticket out of Des Moines on Jan. 4.

Polls also show there is so much distance between the top three and the bottom tier of Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd that their hopes for a third-place showing would seem to be dimming.

While a third-place finish will hurt the Democratic front-runner who winds up there, it will still provide a small springboard on the Republican side.

In Iowa, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are battling for first. Romney led early, but polls show Huckabee in the lead now. Neither seems likely to finish third.

That slot is vacant, which is why Fred Thompson, Rudy Guiliani, John McCain and Ron Paul are all rediscovering the joys of Iowa here in the last few days of the caucus campaign.

(Had any one of them paid closer attention to the state earlier, he would be in a better position to take third. But don't ask me to explain the strategic decisions of any of these candidates. They seem to be making them up as they go along.)

Here in the final days, they've each realized that a third-place finish would give them a little boost into New Hampshire and the subsequent contests - and winnow out the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-place winners.

In other words, there is a standby seat on the Republican plane. Welcome back, boys. We know you have many choices for your air travel. Thank you for flying Iowa.

By David Yepsen, Des Moines Register, December 27, 2007

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled a new political message Wednesday afternoon upon her return to campaigning in Iowa, urging voters in the Jan. 3 caucuses to "pick a president" rather than simply supporting a candidate who appeals to them personally.

And she also struck a markedly new tone, punching her words with new verve, speaking far more rapidly, and tearing into President Bush repeatedly. The performance conveyed much more of a fighting, populist spirit than Mrs. Clinton has demonstrated in recent weeks - call it give-em-hell-Hill - and reminiscent of the style of one of her most popular challengers in Iowa, former Senator John Edwards.

"We need a balance of power back, because all the power has shifted over to one side, George Bush's government, of the few by the few and for the few, the well-connected and the wealthy," Mrs. Clinton said, drawing her first standing ovation from a few dozen audience members in a crowd of over 1,000 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. It was the first standing ovation that Mrs. Clinton has received mid-speech in recent weeks.

As president, she said, the United States would "quit being in debt to foreign countries from China to Mexico," and she would stop "borrowing money from the Chinese to buy oil from the Saudis." She also used a new, emotionally charged phrase - "sick to death" - to express her anger at the Bush administration, a line that was rewarded by heart applause from the audience.

"I am sick to death of no-bid contracts and cronyism and incompetence and indifference and corruption - they have set a new record," Mrs. Clinton said. "We're going to bring it back and hold our government accountable."

Mrs. Clinton did not criticize any of her rivals by name, but the overall thematic thrust of her remarks was intended to elevate her above them as the only candidate "ready to be president on day one," as she said. Like John Kerry in 2004, who mounted a come-from-behind win in the Iowa caucuses, Mrs. Clinton urged the voters to pick the most prepared and seasoned president-in-waiting rather than the candidate with gut appeal (for Mr. Kerry, that target was Howard Dean).

"It's not going to be easy, this job never is - it's the hardest job in the world," she said. "On Jan. 20, 2009, someone will raise his or her hand to take the oath of office in front of our capitol. And then that person will go to the Oval Office. And on the desk is the oval office will be a stack of problems."

"I want you to ask yourself, who will be the best president? Who, if something happened that none of us can predict now, would be there able to respond and act on behalf of our country immediately? Who can use experience and qualifications and contacts and ideas and plans to get us moving together again? If you will go and stand up for me, I will stand up for you every single day in the White House," she said.

Mount Pleasant is the hometown of Mrs. Clinton's top Iowa supporter, former Gov. Tom Vilsack, a popular two-term Democrat whose political organization was on impressive display. More than 1,000 people filled the event site and an overflow room on the day after Christmas, and few seemed to leave even though the Clintons were 70 minutes late. (Air traffic delays in New York were blamed.)

Mrs. Clinton was introduced at the Mount Pleasant event by her husband, who has been campaigning for her steadily in this state, and who also tightened up his stump speech for Wednesday's re-entry to Iowa - 10 minutes, from a length that was sometimes twice as much. (Daughter Chelsea was also here.)

Mr. Clinton did not criticize any of the other candidates, either, instead highlighting Mrs. Clinton's experience and sharing the unique perspective of a former president on the challenges ahead.

"Knowing what I know about the demands of the presidency, and this time, because of the work I do around the world and here at home, this is a time full of opportunity but uncertainty and insecurity," he said.

At one point, referring to the war in Iraq, Mr. Clinton made a comment that sounded more like Mrs. Clinton's Republican challengers, who are pushing for victory in Iraq. "We have two wars around the world - one in Iraq, we need to win, we need to get out of without making it worse, and one in Afghanistan, we just need to prevail in," Mr. Clinton said.

Both Clintons have often said before that there is "no military solution" to the war in Iraq, but only a political one that the Iraqis must forge, and Mr. Clinton usually says that the United States must end the war in Iraq and prevail in Afghanistan. A spokesman for Mr. Clinton said after the remarks that his comment about the "need to win" in Iraq was a simple verbal slip-up.

By Patrick Healy, The New York Times, December 26, 2007

PELLA, Iowa (AFP) - The US presidential marathon entered the home stretch Thursday ahead of the first official contest of the race in Iowa in exactly one week's time.

Nominating Democratic and Republican Party caucuses, set for January 3 in this Midwestern farm state, formally kick off this year's election contest that will culminate with a November 4 national vote.

US Senator Hillary Clinton entered the phase with an urgent warning that only she can solve America's most pressing problems.

The former first lady is consciously raising the stakes and suggesting that choosing one of her rivals over her may be a huge risk.

"It is time to pick a president," Clinton told voters in Iowa on Wednesday.

As the caucuses loom, Clinton is developing the theme that helped her coast through much of the year with a gaping lead in key opinion polls, hoping to quell a serious of setbacks and missteps that plagued her earlier in December.

As she stood in front of a huge American flag Wednesday, in a high school 40 miles, (60 kilometers) from Iowa state capital Des Moines, Clinton painted a dire picture of an America under siege at home and abroad.

She said the next president had a war in Iraq to end, to offer healthcare to 47 million uninsured Americans, and to deal with an economy she said was tipping into a deep crisis.

"I am not coming to you with promises about what I think I can do or hopes that together we can achieve some of these ends .... but with a track record and an understanding of how difficult the process is," Clinton said.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama, locked in a gruelling fight for the Democratic nomination with Clinton, is also campaigning hard in Iowa. In his first post-Christmas swing, he took a veiled swipe at the former first lady, accusing her of running an "old textbook Washington campaign".

"You know, telling the American people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear just won't do," Obama said.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney launched a fierce new attack on rising rival Senator John McCain, who is threatening his lead in New Hampshire, accusing him of supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Tiny northeastern New Hampshire holds its bellwether primaries on January 8.

"I know something about tailspins, and it's pretty clear Mitt Romney is in one," McCain, a former navy aviator, responded in a statement.

"It's disappointing that he would launch desperate, flailing and false attacks in an attempt to maintain relevance."

Counted out by many only one month ago, McCain has pulled into second place in New Hampshire and third in Iowa in the most recent polls.

Four of the Republican candidates -- Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Romney and McCain -- remain so close in the earliest states to vote that none can be counted out.

Breakout contender Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, has a convincing lead in Iowa, while former Massachusetts governor Romney is ahead in New Hampshire.

Huckabee on Wednesday ventured out onto a frozen Iowa field to shoot pheasant, in a photo-op which captured the day's headlines in the Republican race, and also likely endeared him to the powerful gun lobby and rural voters.

Giuliani, the national frontrunner among Republicans, had taken the high-risk strategy of largely bypassing Iowa and New Hampshire to focus on Florida, which votes on January 29, and then other big states such as California and New York which vote on February 5.

But with his national poll lead slipping, the former New York mayor was to join the rest of the field in Iowa after Christmas, promising to go all out after a brief hospital stay last week for "flu-like symptoms".

"The Republicans are starting to see you really can't skip Iowa," Chuck Laudner, who head the state's Republican party, told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

The early contests tend to give states where they are held a disproportionate role in the selection process, and often bring surprises, sometimes knocking a perceived frontrunner off the field.

The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates will be formally nominated at their respective party conventions in late August and early September, but the nominee is generally known long before then.

AFP, December 26, 2007

Time for a year-end look at five moments that fundamentally altered the way the Democratic race has played out:

5. September 26 -- Edwards accepts public financing. Casting it as a move to ensure openness and a way to shut out lobbyists and special interests, John Edwards declared in late Spetember that he would accept public financing in his bid for the Democratic nomination. The decision gave him access to millions he might not otherwise have raised, but it also severely curtailed spending. Edwards, once seen as the obvious yin to Hillary Clinton's yang, has been marginalized to some degree by Barack Obama. And while Clinton and Obama each raised upwards of $75 million in the first three quarters of the year, Edwards has struggled in a distant third place.

Edwards' decision hurt him in several ways. Aside from curtailed spending in early primary states he needed to win, he also lost support among many of his one-time fans in the liberal blogosphere. Kos, for one, said that the acceptance of public money meant Edwards was not viable, and though he maintained good relations with the netroots, Edwards needed them to be for him in a much stronger way.

4. August 4 -- Clinton attends YearlyKos. The liberal netroots, who in 2006 helped raise million for the Democratic Party and claims responsibility for victories by several second-tier Democratic congressional hopefuls who pulled off big upsets, had their knives out for Hillary Clinton early. Unhappy with triangulation and furious with what they saw as timid moderation, the netroots wanted an unabashed progressive who would fight for their cause; it is little wonder that John Edwards had won online straw polls at DailyKos for more than a year.

But Clinton decided to attend the largest gathering of liberal bloggers of the year, showing up at YearlyKos in Chicago and held a breakout session to get to know a new set of opinion makers in the Democratic column. Clinton's moves to placate the netroots -- communications director Howard Wolfson fought Bill O'Reilly over YearlyKos; Clinton earned the endorsement of netroots hero Joe Wilson and announced it on a conference call with bloggers; in the Senate, she worked on a bill to provide paper trails in voting machines -- had a hugely important effect: The netroots still didn't like her, but at least they didn't hate her.

Whether it was DailyKos or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that got certain candidates elected is subject to debate. But it was certainly the netroots that brought down Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in his primary last year. By making sure lefty bloggers did not hate her, Clinton escaped what could have been a blogosphere-wide effort to bring her down.

3. October 30 -- Clinton stumbles in Philadelphia. In early debates, Hillary Clinton provided no zingers, no great lines and no winning moments. But she was the front-runner, and because she did not lose, she won. Again and again, Obama, Edwards and others tried and failed to land a punch. It was left to Tim Russert, moderating a debate in Philadelphia the day before Halloween, to throw Clinton off her game.

Clinton seemed on her way to another flawless debate performance until Russert asked her whether she agreed with New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's decision to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Clinton hemmed and hawed, offering what her opponents criticized as two answers in two minutes. The sheen began to come off the impenitrable armor of the inevitable candidate.

2. November 10 -- Obama shines at Iowa Dem dinner. Fewer than two weeks after the debate in Philadelphia, Clinton had the chance to right the ship. The Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson Jackson Dinner presented the opportunity to give a big speech, fire up the crowd and show organizational strength. But Clinton's efforts were outstripped, again, by Obama.

Clinton, speaking second-to-last, delivered a solid speech ripe with red meat for her fans crowded into an old hockey arena in downtown Des Moines. Obama, speaking last, put every candidate to shame with what many considered his best speech since his address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. And while Clinton had many friends in the audience, Obama had more -- Joe Biden made light by saying hello to Iowa and hello to Chicago.

Riding high in national polls, leading big in Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton's Philadelpia stumble opened a window through which Obama entered at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner. Now, Clinton's ten-point lead in Iowa has turned into a tie in the latest RCP Iowa Average. Her huge lead in New Hampshire has also evaporated, and while she leads the latest RCP New Hampshire Average, she has trailed Obama in recent polls. Clinton has even seen her national lead shrink.

1. January 16 -- Obama files exploratory committee. Conventional wisdom in 2006 and before was that Hillary Clinton would run away with the Democratic nomination. It was to be less a campaign than a coronation. But with the entry of Barack Obama, a freshman senator who nonetheless enjoyed unbelievable support, a hefty fundraising capability and the aura of one who could do no wrong, the calculus fundamentally changed.

Clinton's team already anticipated John Edwards' angle -- he would cast himself as the outsider versus Clinton, the ultimate insider. But Obama was more of an outsider than Edwards. He was new, fresh, and called for a fundamental change in the American political system in a way that Edwards simply couldn't match. The Clinton machine was seemingly blindsided, especially after Obama began drawing crowds numbering in the tens of thousands to rallies. His entry sucked oxygen out of the room, dooming second-tier candidates to also-ran status, a fate even Edwards might face.

Obama's audacity of hope, a theme to which he has stuck throughout the campaign, and the sheer audacity of a freshman senator running against a party legend, changed the Democratic race more than any candidate's entry -- save, perhaps, that of Al Gore -- could have.

The Democratic race is much more stable than the GOP race -- unlike yesterday, today our top five deals with just three of the candidates. In all likelihood, the race is still Clinton's to lose. But given the momentum Obama has built, thanks in large part to the Jefferson Jackson Dinner and Clinton's weak debate performance in Philadelphia, he has the opportunity to steal the nomination.

No matter who wins, Obama's was the game-changing campaign, and Clinton has to hope that she will either get her momentum back or that Obama's charge is just too little, too late.

By Reid Wilson, Real Clear Politics, December 27, 2007

If you have any doubts as to whether this political campaign season has lasted too long and soured voters on the whole political process, look at the favorable/unfavorable poll ratings of the candidates. Premier pollster Scott Rasmussen's latest polling of likely voters nationally shows that most Democrats and Republicans have higher negative than positive poll numbers. The more we see them, the less we want them as our leader.

To borrow from existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, 2008 could turn out to be the "Hell is Other People" election. The safest bet in politics is to wager that the next president is someone almost half of Americans don't like.

Wednesday Rasmussen reported that among Democrats, Hillary Clinton scored 45 favorable/54 unfavorable, Barack Obama's numbers were at 52/45, John Edwards was 48/44, Joe Biden 38/37, with all other Democrats disliked more than they were liked by as much as 23 points.

Republican hopeful John McCain showed the highest favorable rating of all the candidates of any party - 55 favorable/35 unfavorable. Fred Thompson scored 43/34 and Mike Huckabee was tied at 42/42, while the rest of the Republicans were rated more negative than positive. Rudy Giuliani scored 44/49 and Mitt Romney scored 44/45. If the numbers don't change, GOP primary voters will have to ask themselves: Do we want to vote for a candidate whom most American voters don't like?

"If you're a casual observer, the things you'll remember the most are the people you don't like," Rasmussen observed. With a hyper-driven news cycle and limitless stories on candidates' gaffes and baggage, what's to like?

This too-long primary has driven Democrats further to the left and Republicans further to the right. Rasmussen noted that Giuliani had a lower unfavorable rating in the beginning of 2007, back when voters looked at him as The Mayor of 9/11. But as Giuliani moved to the right to woo GOP primary voters, his negative numbers have grown.

There was a time when many voters boasted that they voted for the candidate, not the party. But as the nation's divide has widened, University of Virginia political expert Larry Sabato noted, many Democrats and Republicans will rank unfavorably "every single candidate of the other party." That means that generic candidate X starts off with an unfavorable number of, say, 30 percent, before opening his mouth.

Candidates like Clinton and Giuliani are especially talented at turning off voters from the other party. Note they've been their parties' front-runners.

On the other hand, Sabato observed, McCain and Obama are exceptions, as they draw interest from voters outside their party.

These polls matter, because they offer primary voters a choice: They can pick a nominee who plays to their party's base, or they look to the rare candidates who just might draw independent votes in November 2008 and achieve a big victory that signals a mandate.

It's not just a matter of winning, but a question of what kind of tone will emanate from Washington in 2009. Wednesday, Clinton's negative rating was 54 percent; on Dec. 20 it was 50 percent. Her unfavorable numbers may fluctuate, but they will not go away.

"She has a good chance of winning," Rasmussen said of Clinton, "but she has very little chance of winning a serious majority."

Without a serious majority, the next president - whoever he or she may be - will walk into the White House hobbled. If it's a 51-49 vote, almost as many people who elected the next president will have a stake in undermining the new commander in chief's success.

By Debra J. Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle, December 27, 2007

"Wanna Caucus?" asks a hand-made banner laying on a table in the Coronado High School cafeteria in Henderson, Nevada on a recent Tuesday night. It's six weeks before Nevada becomes the first Western state, and fifth state overall, to vote in the 2008 presidential race. More than a hundred suburban Las Vegans have shown up here to "learn how to caucus" after receiving a flier in the mail from the state's Young Democrats organization.

Under the guidance of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Nevada's caucus was moved up in the hope that this booming part of the country would finally have a say in the presidential nominating process. But until recently, the plan appeared to many to be wishful thinking. Though Republicans followed suit in moving their caucus up as well, the corresponding decisions by Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to schedule their primaries or caucuses even earlier in the 2008 calendar - not to mention the choice by such crucial states as California, Arizona and Colorado to join the flood of states holding their primary on February 5 - stole most of the thunder from Nevada.

The dynamic state of both parties' races, however, has helped give Nevada a boost of late, and residents are starting to believe their caucus might matter after all. "Nevada is sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of national politics," says Ted Jelen, political science professor at UNLV. "I'm not sure how much the national media is taking it seriously, and I'm not sure how many Nevada voters are taking it seriously, but the candidates are taking it seriously."

The fluid nature of the races are mirrored in Nevada, where Clinton leads Obama by 8 points in a recent poll, while Giuliani holds a slight lead over Romney and Huckabee. "Now that it appears nothing will be settled after Iowa and New Hampshire, we could be seen as a tie-breaking momentum-builder," says Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston. "And the calendar changes give us 10 straight days of attention."

Nevada may play a more important role in the Democratic race. That's partly because the Republicans have their all important South Carolina primary on the very same day (the Dems' is a week later, on the 26th). But it's also because of the demographics of the fast growing state, which is a sharp contrast to Iowa and New Hampshire. One third of Nevada's 2.5 million people are Hispanics, Asian-Americans and blacks, according to 2004 census figures. Unions - particularly Culinary 226, which includes Strip hospitality workers - have a huge presence here. Culinary alone has some 60,000 members. Even when Hillary Clinton campaigned in Pahrump, a small town outside of Vegas known for its anti-government leanings and several well-known brothels, more than 2,500 people showed up, forcing Clinton organizers, who had only been expecting about 300, to rent a skating rink to accommodate the overflow.

"By any measure Nevada's caucus is significant," says Rory Reid, the Senator's son who is a Clark County (Las Vegas) Commissioner and head of the Nevada Clinton campaign. "It's the first time [in the campaign] a presidential candidate has to stand before a crowd that looks like America."

Reid says that candidates learned to speak Nevadan long before they took the stage at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for a CNN Democratic debate in November. (All of the candidates mastered the local pronunciation of Nevada, which is Nevaaada, not Nevah-da.) In addition to addressing Nevada-specific issues like the controversial proposed nuclear dump Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, they've spent the better part of the year speaking to western, Hispanic and labor issues.

"There are issues that are transcendent in the west - water, public resources, public land-83 percent of Nevada land is public," Reid says. "As political messages are developed here, those messages will be used throughout the primaries and general elections."

Back in the high school cafeteria in Henderson where the caucus training is taking place, the trickle-down significance of Nevada's caucus is palpable. "We want to do Nevada proud," Democratic mock caucus organizer Samantha Steelman tells the crowd before starting. In 2004 Kerry won in Clark County 51-percent- to 46-percent, but lost the state."I'm telling you we are going to turn Nevada blue at the election!"

Steelman explains caucusing by having the group decide what their favorite movie is. Placards with movie names such as "Star Wars" and "Grease" are placed around the cafeteria, and people are told to stand by their favorite. "This is what you'll do on caucus day," she tells them. ("The Godfather" wins this mock caucus.)

The group - inordinately white and gray-headed, but peppered with young and minorities - is laughing, having fun. Regional field director Robert Disney tells them, "A caucus is a party building activity. Iowa is blue because they've been doing this for so long. This is our chance. We are a purple state. We are going to be blue state. It's a pain to go through, but it's worth it."

By Stacy Willis, Time, December 26, 2007

With the Massachusetts primary moved up to Feb. 5, presidential candidates will soon need politically savvy allies who can muster dedicated volunteers to the polls, to phone banks, and into snowy streets for door-to-door canvassing.

And perhaps most importantly, those volunteers are only a short drive from New Hampshire, where the first make-or-break battle of the 2008 presidential race is well underway.

"Getting help from political leaders in Massachusetts who can help deliver troops to make phone calls and knock on doors can really be helpful," said Paul Cellucci of Hudson, who served as governor and US Ambassador to Canada. Cellucci is backing former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani for the Republican nomination. "We're sending a lot of people from Massachusetts to New Hampshire."

A survey of nearly 200 state and local politicians by Globe West found that dozens have already signed on with major presidential candidates. Although the former first lady holds a clear lead in recruiting, other candidates have also scored key endorsements.

State Representative Thomas Conroy, for example, said he is supporting Obama because of what he describes as the campaign's positive tone, and because Obama has "more experience in elective office" than Clinton. "He [Obama] thinks about solutions to our nation's challenges based on a wellspring of optimism and confidence rather than a skepticism based upon fear," said Conroy, who represents Lincoln, Sudbury, and Wayland. "And, as a former state senator, he understands that public service at the local level is crucially important to improving the day-to-day lives of Americans."

Obama has also landed support from state Representative David Linsky of Natick, Newton Alderman Stephen Linsky (no relation), and even former Upton selectman Alan Rosenfield, a member of the town's Republican Committee who said he is "disillusioned" with the GOP after eight years of George Bush.

Clinton strong in Newton

The Obama forces face an uphill battle against the Clinton contingent, which includes US Representatives Barney Frank and James McGovern; state Senators Pamela Resor, Susan Fargo, Richard Moore, Edward Augustus Jr., and Harriette Chandler; and seven state representatives, including majority whip Lida Harkins of Needham.

Clinton's support is particularly strong in Newton, where she is backed by state Representatives Kay Khan and Ruth Balser, Mayor David Cohen, and members of the Board of Aldermen, including Sydra Schnipper and Christine Snow Samuelson.

Looking to N.H., Iowa

Peisch said she will also be rallying support for Clinton in Wellesley, "talking to people who have supported me, and attempting to persuade those who are currently undecided."

She said she would even put aside her own collegiate allegiance to work with the Wellesley College Democrats club.

"I'm a Smith grad," Peisch said with a laugh. "But hey, Wellesley College is in my district and they are an obvious base of support for Hillary."

Harkins, meanwhile, said she is working with House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi to organize a Dec. 30 bus trip to Portsmouth for local Clinton supporters. Harkins said she may even go to Iowa in the week before the Jan. 3 caucuses, which she called a piece of political Americana.

"I'm very curious to go to Iowa and work on the caucuses; it's something I've never done before," the longtime politician said. "Plus, this may be the last opportunity in my lifetime to elect a woman president."

Door-to-door efforts

Harkins and other politicians said that, unlike celebrity campaign endorsers, local politicians are accustomed to rolling up their sleeves and doing the tough campaign work, even if it means canvassing through 3 feet of snow or driving five hours from one small-town caucus to the next.

"I'll certainly be going door-to-door for her [Clinton]. It's the most effective way to get support for a candidate," state Representative Pam Richardson of Framingham said. "I'll be bringing some of my friends along, too. We also organized a table at the Framingham Concerts on the Common this year that was very well attended and a great place to talk to people."

But Clinton supporters aren't the only ones hitting the sidewalks and living rooms of New Hampshire.

State Representative Paul Loscocco of Holliston, the Massachusetts cochairman of McCain's campaign, said his candidate has led followers by example in that regard. At a recent rally in Hollis, N.H., Loscocco said, voters seemed to connect with McCain in a way that a local politician like himself found familiar. McCain's "strength really is retail politics," said Loscocco.

Among Republican members of the state House of Representatives, Loscocco is the lone defection from Romney, though some Republican state senators from around Massachusetts have endorsed his rivals.

According to Romney campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom, the former governor has wrapped up the support of the other 18 Republicans in the House, including Richard Ross of Wrentham and Karyn Polito, who represents Shrewsbury.

Backing for Giuliani

In addition to Cellucci - who along with EMC Corp. founder Richard Egan of Hopkinton, has raised more than $1 million for Giuliani - the former mayor of New York has garnered the support of Shrewsbury Selectman John Lebeaux. Lebeaux, an independent who lived in New York prior to the Giuliani administration, said he has been impressed both by his candidate's efforts to clean up the city and by his decisive response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "I think our country needs a leader who can be counted on to perform with thoughtful preparation and decisiveness every day he or she is in office," Lebeaux said.

Former senator Fred Thompson and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee round out the Republican field, but no one who responded to the Globe's survey identified themselves as a supporter of either man.

On the Democratic side, while former senator John Edwards has lined up some key allies statewide, including former attorney general L. Scott Harshbarger, his lone political ally in the western suburbs appears to be Waltham City Councilor Robert Logan. Logan said he will do whatever he can for Edwards, whom he picked because he believes Clinton and Obama are both too inexperienced to be president. Edwards, Logan said, "was also right on the war [in Iraq] from the start and he has the strongest position on global warming."

A good feeling

But just because Logan might be feeling a bit lonely, that doesn't necessarily mean he should be feeling discouraged.

Newton's Kay Khan said she felt a little uncomfortable supporting Governor Deval Patrick in the state primary two years ago while many of her political friends and colleagues were supporting former attorney general Tom Reilly, but ended up more than satisfied with her work after the votes were counted.

"The election certainly doesn't depend on us entirely," Khan said. "But you can make a difference."

By Ralph Ranalli, The Boston Globe, December 27, 2007

WASHINGTON - Dig beneath the surface of the raucous Republican presidential race and you will find even deeper turmoil: Four in 10 GOP voters have switched candidates in the past month alone, and nearly two-thirds say they may change their minds again.

Half of all voters - including four in 10 Republicans - know too little about Huckabee to even say whether they have a favorable impression of him, let alone whether he is conservative, liberal or moderate. That could be ominous, because it gives his rivals the opportunity to define him. Witness Mitt Romney's criticism of the former Arkansas governor on immigration and Fred Thompson's contention that he raised taxes "like a Democrat."

The Democratic side is less chaotic, with Hillary Rodham Clinton maintaining a clear lead nationally over Barack Obama, though voters are still doing plenty of shifting. About one in five backs a different contender than in November, and nearly half say they still may settle on someone else, according to the poll conducted by Knowledge Networks.

This ground-level view of the 2008 race is made possible by an AP-Yahoo News survey that will periodically question the same 2,000 people until Election Day, repeatedly seeking their views about politics, the country and their own lives. That will produce a picture of how the campaign is playing out from the perspective of voters like Matthew Larson, 29, of Mankato, Minn., who since last month has moved from Giuliani to Huckabee.

"I switched due to inconsistencies in Giuliani's stands" on abortion, said Larson, a security counselor, referring to the former New York mayor's explanations of his abortion rights views that trouble many who no longer support him. "That's the big one in our household. Huckabee just seems more firm in what he wants to do."

Highlighting how restless Republicans are, a fifth who said last month they wouldn't change candidates did so anyway - along with half who said they might change. Only a third of Democrats who said they might change moved to a different contender.

People's drifting sentiments even pushed them across party lines, with 14 percent changing their loyalty as Democrats, Republicans or independents in roughly equal proportions. Among them was Anne Marie Pontarelli, who shifted from the GOP to Clinton because she liked her equivocal initial response to the controversy over states granting driver's licenses to illegal aliens.

"There are many shades of gray" on issues, said Pontarelli, 30, a consultant from Downers Grove, Ill. "The way she responded took a lot of guts."

No one in the GOP had a rougher ride in the past month than Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who joined the race in September and has slowly fizzled ever since. This month's poll showed he retained just over half of those who supported him in November, compared with six in 10 by Giuliani, Romney and John McCain and three in four by Huckabee.

While each candidate also picked up fresh supporters, Giuliani and Thompson saw their overall strength droop, with Giuliani losing the most. Huckabee's support rose, while McCain and Romney stayed about the same.

Millicent Muller of Farmville, N.C., moved from Giuliani's camp to Romney's. "I don't care if he's a Mormon," said Muller, 53, a homemaker, though some voters say that makes them reluctant to support the one-time Massachusetts governor. "The cheap shots at it offended me, and made me take a closer look at him. I don't see anything wrong with him."

Religion has played a pivotal role in Huckabee's rise, though in a more textured way than many polls have shown. Roughly four in 10 white evangelical Christians have made a change since November, similar to other Republicans who shifted candidates. But 56 percent of evangelicals who found another candidate flocked to Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, giving him 36 percent of the support of one of the GOP's heavyweight voting blocs, well ahead of his rivals.

The intensely religious were even more restless - and more smitten with Huckabee. Among evangelicals who are conservative and attend church weekly, 54 percent switched candidates last month - and 61 percent of the switchers moved to Huckabee.

"He believes in what I believe in. I'm a Christian," said truck driver Jerry Steadman, 53, of Inman, S.C.

Yet even Huckabee is not immune to voters' evolving tastes - 83 percent who moved to him said they were open to changing again.

Though the poll shows little relationship between shifting voters and the issues they consider important, many who left Giuliani put more importance on political corruption than those who still support him. Bernard Kerik, Giuliani's former police commissioner, has pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges.

Among Democrats, Clinton's large lead over Obama and John Edwards changed little, though polls on Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses - the nation's first voting - show them in a three-way battle there.

Nationally, six in 10 Obama supporters now say they are sure to stay with him, a gain from last month and the same as for Clinton. Edwards' certain supporters doubled, but only to just more than four in 10.

"She's kind of harsh," Linda Beerhorst, 56, a notary from Osceola, Ind., said of Clinton, whom she has abandoned for Obama. "He doesn't talk like a politician, he talks like your next-door neighbor."

Among Democrats, men were slightly likelier to switch than women, while middle-aged Republicans changed more often than younger or older ones.

The survey of 1,821 adults was conducted from Dec. 14-20, and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. Included were interviews with 847 Democrats, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.4 points, and 655 Republicans, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 points.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.

By Alan Fram and Trevor Tompson, Associated Press, December 27, 2007

December 27, 2007 -- Take that, Oprah!

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton edged out Oprah Winfrey - who is backing Sen. Barack Obama for president - in a survey of the world's most admired women this year.

Clinton was selected by 18 percent of survey respondents in the USA Today/Gallup poll, over Winfrey's 16 percent - a number that was an all-time high for the duchess of daytime TV talk shows.

The annual poll asked the question: Which man and woman "living today in any part of the world, do you most admire?"

Clinton was even more popular than her ex-president hubby, who was edged out as most admired man by his successor, President Bush.

For Winfrey, her percentage in the survey was her all-time high, but Clinton also had a strong year.

It was the New York senator's best showing since 2000, the year she was first elected, when she captured 19 percent.

She's still a distance from her personal best score, which came in 1998 amid the impeachment of Bill Clinton over the Sexgate scandal. That year, the then-first lady snared 28 percent.

But perhaps Team Clinton will want to pay caution to the nitty-gritty details of the poll - Oprah was more popular among women than Hillary, 21-16 percent, while Hillary bested Winfrey among men by 20-11 percent.

Among Democrats, Clinton was more popular than Winfrey by 32-21 percent.

Bill Clinton, who's been campaigning for Hillary in Iowa, beat out Obama among Democrats, 17-9 percent.

Behind Clinton and Oprah came Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with 5 percent, and humanitarian hottie Angelina Jolie, who tied first lady Laura Bush with 3 percent.

As for the men, President Bush bested Bill Clinton by 10-8 percent.

But it was Bush's lowest score in the poll in the seven years he's been listed, according to the poll.

Behind Clinton was his former vice president, Al Gore - whose anti-global-warming efforts earned him a Nobel Peace Prize this year - taking 6 percent. Then there was Obama, with 5 percent, and the Rev. Billy Graham tying Nelson Mandela at 3 percent.

Rounding out the survey was former President George H.W. Bush, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Pope Benedict XVI and former President Jimmy Carter.

The survey queried 1,011 adults nationwide, with a plus or minus 3-point margin of error.

By Maggie Haberman, New York Post, December 27, 2007

Ever since hordes of "Clean for Gene" college students came to New Hampshire and helped Eugene McCarthy shock President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1968 primary there, Democrats have seen youthful vigor and youthful free time as the fuels of a successful candidacy.

This year, however, campaigns are looking less at the McCarthy model and more at the cautionary tale of Howard Dean's ambitious and high-profile effort in 2004 to draw supporters nationwide to Iowa - a project the campaign proudly branded "The Perfect Storm" and one that ultimately backfired and is thought to have contributed to his loss there.

"From the Dean experience, there was some concern that out-of-state volunteers can be very helpful but they can also be a drain," said Gordon Fischer, a former Iowa Democratic Party chairman supporting Obama.

As the caucus season enters its final week, campaign strategists - typically more astute in their analysis of success than of failure - are reexamining Dean's 2004 collapse and taking away lessons, about everything from media strategy to door-knocking etiquette to staff dress codes, shaping the way they approach the closing days of the race.

The "perfect storm" strategy called for thousands of volunteers to blow into Iowa to turn out the 50,000 or so votes that had reportedly been pledged to Dean. But as the onetime front-runner began to stumble on his way to a third-place finish, those volunteers - distinguished by their glowstick-orange hats, stubborn fervor, and unfamiliarity with local concerns - seemed to represent all that was wrong with the campaign.

"It was sort of an invasion," said Andy McGuire, a Dean activist and former lieutenant governor candidate now supporting Hillary Clinton. "Iowans shun that. They don't appreciate being told how to vote."

For the Obama and Clinton campaigns, which appear to have drawn particular interest across the country from new voters and would-be volunteers, the intimate character of the Iowa caucuses presents a particular challenge of integrating grass-roots zest into the corporate hierarchy of a campaign organization.

"You want neighbors talking to neighbors, Iowans talking to Iowans," said Karen Hicks, a senior Clinton adviser who oversaw Dean's New Hampshire field operation in 2004.

While not turning away out-of-state supporters, the Clinton campaign is using them for low-profile roles such as driving vans or holding signs outside events. "They're much more likely to be doing things that are removed from voters," said Hicks. "They're not doing a lot of door-to-door."

"I dropped everything and drove/came all the way from ___," read a telephone script given to Dean's supporters. "I'm volunteering here because we need a candidate who can stand up to George Bush and take our country back. That's why so many of us have come to Iowa." If voters "get upset and try to cut you off," callers were instructed, "assertively tell your story."

To Iowa caucus-goers - who tend to be older, insular, and serious - those stories were not well received. "Iowa can be a little parochial, but we are friendly, polite, welcoming folks," said Fischer. "It is a problem if folks can't articulate specific positions of the candidate."

Now the canvassing stories that circulate are about Clinton workers braving the snowy Iowa winter in jackets and ties. "People are expected to look tidy and professional," said Hicks. "They're representing the next president of the United States."

As campaigns attempt to impose standards on what volunteers say or do, they run the risk of discouraging their supporters, said Matthew Hindman, a political scientist at Arizona State University. "All three of the major Democratic campaigns are trying to walk the line between energizing the base and giving up too much control over your message," said Hindman. "They clearly understand that better than they did four years ago."

Some voters who had committed to Dean early had wavered by the caucus date, confusing his campaign's efforts to turn out confirmed supporters. This year, canvassers have been returning frequently to voters to check their commitment.

"There's not a two-week period where we're not talking to a supporter personally," said Hicks, "rather than talking to somebody back in May and assuming they're with you in January."

"Campaigns are being more cautious and conservative about their hard counts" of certain votes, Fischer said. Instead of accepting verbal commitments, canvassers say they are not identifying a voter as a definite supporter until he or she has personally signed a card pledging support.

Like Obama and Clinton, polls showed Dean with particular appeal among those unfamiliar with the state's peculiar caucus system, which requires voters to show up at a particular time and publicly declare their preference. But many of Dean's volunteers, who had as little as 15 minutes of training, focused their attention on persuading voters instead of on the complex mechanics of voting in Iowa.

This year, time at rallies that might once have been spent trying to energize a crowd is devoted to asking how many attendees had ever caucused before and explaining the differences between a caucus and a standard election day. Ordinary caucus-goers are invited to receive more training than many of Dean's volunteers did, thanks to training videos and "mock caucus" events that are designed to demystify the process.

McGuire, recalling the problems she encountered in 2004 while supporting Dean, said: "I don't think we realized how much people wouldn't show up. They would vote for Dean - but even though they were for him, they didn't know about caucusing at all. You can support someone all you want, but unless you caucus, it doesn't mean a thing."

By Sasha Issenberg, The Boston Globe, December 27, 2007

For Black Candidates, the Presidency Has Long Been Out of Reach. In 2008, the Goal Doesn't Seem So Unattainable.

The Petaluma Democrat, one of the House's most outspoken advocates for bringing troops home, said she's backing Clinton because she is convinced she is the only candidate who can deliver on her promise to end the war.

"I believe Hillary is the one who can take what she says and turn it into reality once she's elected president," said Woolsey, who has known Clinton since 1992.

Woolsey admits that philosophically, she is closer to Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio congressman.

MANCHESTER, N.H.
WITH HER mother and daughter at her side, Hillary Clinton told an audience of mostly female voters at the local YWCA that she understood their needs and, as president, would make family-friendly policies her priority.

She was articulate, personable, and substantive. But, of course, she referred frequently to programs linked to her husband's White House years, reinforcing a theme in that day's Washington Post - that Hillary Clinton is running for president "in a tight embrace of Bill Clinton's record." The Post article on Saturday also suggested that both Clintons "are making the case that theirs was a co-presidency."

Asked in an interview afterward if she viewed herself as co-president, Hillary Clinton replied, "No . . . I was a member of the team. I was a member of the White House team that was involved with trying to make a lot of changes . . . I think that people who are running for president should lay out for Americans their record, their experiences, their qualifications, their vision, their plan, and their understanding of how to make it all happen, and that's what I'm doing."

She's also doing what a lot of women do - juggling identities. In Clinton's case, she's a mother, daughter, US senator, and wife of a former president. But, the last role overshadows everything else, forcing Clinton, the presidential candidate, to define "experience" mostly from the vantage point of former first lady. There's some irony in that for a Wellesley College and Yale Law School graduate like Hillary Clinton. But she disputes the notion that Bill Clinton's large presence sends the message that a woman needs a powerful husband in order to run for president herself.

"Everybody's spouse is out there campaigning," said Clinton. "Some of the wives of some of my opponents are very active campaigners. They obviously support their husbands. And I supported my husband for years as he was in the political arena . . . I think it is absolutely appropriate that he would not only be supporting me privately, but doing so publicly."

Pundits may view Bill Clinton's help as a mixed blessing, but not Hillary Clinton: "It's been fascinating to see how Bill has understood the challenges of being someone who is trying to make the case for someone else," she said. "That's exactly what he's trying to do for me and that's what I have done for him for so many years."

Clinton is trying to connect what she views as the accomplishments of the Clinton administration to her agenda for the future. Part of that, she said, is weighing her record for change "long before my husband ever became president." That includes expanding health insurance coverage for children; improving the foster care and adoption system; advocating for education reform as first lady of Arkansas and as a senator from New York; and helping to pass legislation to assist family caregivers.

"We've been inflicted by a sense of fatalism under this (Bush) administration," said Clinton. ". . . There's this sense that we're not up to the challenge, that we can't fix problems and give people better opportunities. You don't have to go back very far in history to see that's just not true, to rebut this sense of built-in resignation that the Bush administration has basically promoted when it comes to our government."

The message should be a powerful one. But it's often lost in the overall rush to deconstruct the Clinton marriage, rather than the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, Clinton's rivals are challenging how much credit she should get for the positives of the Clinton years, while happily burdening her with the negatives.

The candidate who last month told Katie Couric that the Democratic nominee "will be me" now says: "You have to make your best case . . . but if you can't seal the deal with the voters that you would be the best president and they can trust you, your experience, your understanding of the world to do what they believe should be done in the country, you can run a great campaign but you can't overcome that."

She sees herself as a "hardworking candidate who gets up every day and tries to persuade voters to support me."

After a year of campaigning, she's still trying to connect her experience as daughter, mother, US senator, and wife of a former president to a commitment to change. It's a tough juggling act, but Hillary Clinton may be just tough enough to pull it off.

By Joan Vennochi, The Boston Globe, December 27, 2007

President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton again top Gallup's annual list of "most admired" men and women, the pollsters just announced.

As Gallup Poll editor in chief (and Gallup Guru blogger) Frank Newport says, U.S. presidents typically come in first in this yearly rite (done this year as part of the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll).

Bush's support this year, though -- he was the choice of 10% of 1,011 Americans polled -- was the lowest since he took office and just 2 percentage points above the No. 2 choice, former president Bill Clinton. Bush peaked at 39% in December 2001. Last year he was at 13%.

Sen. Clinton has been No. 1 on the list of most admired women since December 2002 (first lady Laura Bush was the top choice in 2001). This year, the senator was the choice of 18% -- her highest rating since December 2000 but just barely above entertainer Oprah Winfrey.

The top five places in each gender:

Women.

- Sen. Clinton, 18%.
- Winfrey, 16%.
- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 5%.
- Actress Angelina Jolie and Laura Bush, 3%.
- Former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher (U.K.) and Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan), 2%.

Men.

- President Bush, 10%.
- Former president Clinton, 8%.
- Former vice president Al Gore, 6%.
- Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, 5%.
- Rev. Billy Graham and former South African president Nelson Mandela, 3%.

Gallup says each number has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

USA Today, December 27, 2007

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, speaking Wednesday in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.

" This is the very first day and the first event of what we're calling 'Big Challenges, Real Solutions' - that's our theme, that's what we believe this election is about. ...

It's not going to be easy, this job never is - it's the hardest job in the world. But it's a job that I believe is going to make such a difference again in the lives of Americans.

On Jan. 20, 2009, someone will raise his or her hand to take the oath of office in front of our Capitol. And then that person will go to the Oval Office. And on the desk in the Oval Office will be a stack of problems. Ending the war in Iraq. Trying to figure out how to get the economy working again for middle-class and hard-working Americans. Trying to make good on our hope and goal of providing health insurance to the 47 million without it, and the millions more who have it - except their insurance company won't give them the help they need when their doctors say they require it. ...

Picking a president starts in eight days with the caucuses right here in Iowa. You have an awesome responsibility. The entire country, and even the world, will be watching. I want you to ask yourself, who will be the best president? Who, if something happened that none of us can predict now, would be there able to respond and act on behalf of our country immediately? Who can use experience and qualifications and contacts and ideas and plans to get us moving together again? If you will go and stand up for me, I will stand up for you every single day in the White House. "

The New York Times, December 27, 2007

PELLA, Iowa -- With turning out supporters for the Iowa vote crucial, Michelle Obama pleaded with voters on Wednesday to caucus for her husband, Barack, as former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea stumped for Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Elizabeth Edwards and daughter Cate will blitz for John Edwards.

Michelle Obama launched a marathon week of stumping for her husband in smaller, more-intimate gatherings such as one at the Des Moines Area Community College, next to a shuttered Maytag factory that has served as a symbol in this campaign of U.S. policies that send manufacturing jobs overseas.

Surrogates for the three Democratic front-runners -- Obama, Clinton and Edwards -- will be flooding Iowa in the coming days, either campaigning with the candidates or fanning out through Iowa's 99 counties.

"We need you working with us to do this. We need you standing with us. We need you to be our precinct captains. We need you knocking on doors. We need you going to caucus. There are many people in this room, as you know, who have never been to caucus. We need you there, and bringing four more people," Michelle Obama said.

The Clintons and their surrogates started Wednesday afternoon at Mount Pleasant Community High School in former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's hometown.

First Vilsack, then Bill Clinton spoke for Hillary Clinton. Then Vilsack and Bill Clinton set off to do their tour for Hillary Clinton, while Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, and Christie Vilsack went off to campaign on their own.

The Clinton campaign even has a name for their surrogates: They are calling them "Hill's Angels."

"I hope all of you, like the governor and I, will caucus for Hillary Clinton," Christie Vilsack told a crowd of about 300 people at Pella High School.

Edwards surrogates will also include actors Danny Glover, James Denton, Madeline Stowe and Ben "Cooter" Jones, as well as his parents, Bobbie and Wallace Edwards.

Today, Eric Holder, who was top deputy in the Clinton Justice Department, will campaign for Obama.

On Saturday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick -- a Chicago South Side native -- will be with Obama and then will break off on his own Sunday.

On Wednesday, Obama was introduced at events by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.).

On Saturday, Michelle Obama's mom, Marion Robinson, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) will be in Iowa, and Schakowsky will be deployed through the state through the night of the Jan. 3 caucuses.

By Abdon Pallasch and Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times, December 27, 2007

MOUNT PLEASANT, IOWA - The Clinton-Obama fight over foreign policy experience accelerated Wednesday afternoon as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign released an expanded list of foreign policy specialists from Bill Clinton's administration who are supporting her candidacy.

Mrs. Clinton's new list stands as a new challenge to Senator Barack Obama, who started the fight last Friday over which one of them had more support from former Clinton diplomatic and military hands.

The new list of supporters includes 160 ex-Clintonistas, plus another 72 flag officers, foreign policy experts, and member of Congress who have committee assignments that include foreign affairs.

Mr. Obama - who asserted Friday that more of Mr. Clinton's former aides were supporting him like former national security adviser Anthony Lake and former N.S.C. aide Susan Rice - has released a list of 45 names. His campaign has said that list is incomplete, not including people who are remaining private for now, but more names are likely to come soon.

The Clintons just arrived at their first event in Iowa of her final campaign swing – which she has labeled "Big Challenges, Real Solutions - Time to Pick a President" - in the run-up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Mrs. Clinton is about to speak, but she was introduced by Mr. Clinton (with their daughter Chelsea nearby), who hailed "the independent contributions she made in advancing this country's search for peace, freedom, and security" during their years in the White House.

By Patrick Healy, The New York Times, December 26, 2007

Remember the debate last month when Campbell Brown of CNN asked Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to explain an earlier reference to the difficulties of competing in "the all-boy’s club" of presidential politics?

Mrs. Clinton seemed reluctant then to spell it out, responding instead with these carefully measured words: "Well, it is clear, I think, from women's experiences that from time to time, there may be some impediments."

But in a new online essay on Glamour magazine's Web site, Mrs. Clinton spells it out:

"As a young woman, I was reminded daily of what I couldn't do - the schools I couldn't attend, the sports I couldn't play, the jobs I could never have," she writes. "Young women today have a much different fortune and it is their plight, their determination, their resolve that guide me."

It stands to reason that Mrs. Clinton would write about the gender aspect of her campaign in a magazine aimed at young women. In fact, the magazine, which has invited all the candidates to guest-blog between now and Feb. 5, asked her to address young women and what they need to know in this election year.

But gender is an aspect that she lately has soft-pedaled, particularly after bloggers and some female columnists chided her for projecting herself as a strong leader while simultaneously complaining that men were beating up on her.

In Glamour, she sharpens her argument about why women should vote for her.

"This campaign is about making history," she writes bluntly.

"But I am not running for president because I am a woman," she writes in a familiar phrase, but refining it. "I am running because I want to be the president who will prioritize the policies that matter most to women, who will stand up and fight, who knows the power of a woman's voice."

She adds that she has watched young women "get involved in my campaign because they've grown up being told by their parents and teachers that anything is possible and they want to see me prove it."

Mrs. Clinton also paints her candidacy as inherently one of change, using "change" to refer both to having a woman in power and to changing course. "What I've learned most of all is how deeply they believe change is possible and what they are willing to do to make it happen," she says of the women working for her election. In a slam at her rivals, particularly Senator Barack Obama, whom she doesn't name, she adds: "Change is just a word if you don't have the strength and experience to make it happen."

Time will tell if "making history" resurfaces in Mrs. Clinton's closing arguments in Iowa.

By Katharine Q. Seelye, The New York Times, December 26, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa -- With snow and sleet pounding her hotel window, campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle dialed in to an early-morning strategy debate a few weeks ago among the top advisers of Hillary Clinton, who were bickering over stumbles that had caused Sen. Clinton to lose her edge in Iowa opinion polls.

Strategist and pollster Mark Penn insisted the campaign shouldn't abandon its "strength and experience" message. Picture former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he said.

Others on the call, including advertising adviser Mandy Grunwald, wanted to shift the focus of commercials and campaign stops to feature the warm and positive side of Sen. Clinton -- a concept Mr. Penn once dismissed as "too Mary Tyler Moore."

Ms. Solis Doyle, in her pajamas, stopped putting on her makeup and cut in. "Hillary's character is being attacked," she said, according to people on the call. "Now's the time to put Hillary as a person front and center. Right?" Over the phone came the chorus from the advisers. "Right." The debate was over. A tactical shift to humanize the candidate and stress her likeability began immediately.

Looking close to invincible two months ago, Sen. Clinton finds herself in a tightening race for the Democratic presidential nomination. With eight days to go before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Ms. Solis Doyle, a 42-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants who never ran a presidential effort before, is trying to re-energize Mrs. Clinton's campaign.

For both, it's the fight of their careers. In the caucuses, Mrs. Clinton faces a strengthening Barack Obama and a consistently competitive John Edwards. The three are in a statistical dead heat. Although Mrs. Clinton retains a strong lead in national polls and her change in message is playing well, if she loses Iowa, she could be hobbled going into New Hampshire and other primaries. By this month, her problems here had stirred speculation about a campaign shake-up, including a demotion of Ms. Solis Doyle.

Yet even as this idea circulated, Ms. Solis Doyle was gaining influence inside the campaign. She is moving beyond executing strategy to helping make it. She has overseen new commercials featuring personal stories of "the Hillary I Know" and an all-county blitz through Iowa in a "Hill-a-Copter." She talks and emails with her boss several times a day, with prompts like "Smile more." She is making budget decisions, including a recent call to double the length of commercials in Iowa to 60 seconds.

Sen. Clinton dismisses speculation about her organization. "There's no turmoil, no shake-up," she says. "I have total trust in Patti, who's my campaign manager, confidante and friend."

As for Ms. Solis Doyle herself, "I'm tough as dirt," she says. "Becoming a target [of rumor] won't get me off my game."

After operating from the Washington area for months, she has moved to Iowa full time to oversee a paid staff of hundreds, plus countless volunteers. Among her challenges is asserting control over some big egos. The campaign has two power centers: longtime advisers to former President Clinton -- "the white boys," insiders call them -- and "Hillaryland," a group of people, mostly women, who've been with her since she was First Lady.

Ms. Solis Doyle's source of power is the bond she has with the candidate. She was the first person Mrs. Clinton hired in 1991, during Bill Clinton's presidential run. When he won, she became the first lady's scheduler and a steady presence during crises, from Whitewater to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Mrs. Clinton took part in her aide's wedding and held a baby shower for her in the East Room. "Patti channels Hillary," says scheduler Kim Molstre. Policy director Neera Tanden adds, "She is the first and last person Hillary talks to on any issue. Nobody knows Hillary better than Patti does."

When she got the top post in Mrs. Clinton's presidential effort earlier this year, some more-experienced campaign pros figured Ms. Solis Doyle was picked for her devotion, or to win points with the Hispanic community. "There were a lot of doubts whether Patti was up to the job," says Harold Ickes, a senior campaign adviser. "She has dispelled that in spades."

One worry was that her closeness to the candidate could blind her to problems she ought to spot and address. After other Democrats went on the attack during an October debate, Ms. Solis Doyle sent out a fund-raising appeal saying the candidate was "one strong woman." That led some to accuse her of "playing the gender card."

Ms. Solis Doyle says her biggest problem isn't running the campaign per se but living apart from her two young children, who remain with her husband in Washington. Ten days ago she flew home to try to pack about two weeks' worth of Christmas decorating, shopping and baking into about 24 hours, including making sopa de fideo Mexican noodles for her 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. Ms. Solis Doyle has missed teacher-parent conferences and her children's holiday programs at school this year. When she left for the airport to return to Iowa, she sobbed in the cab.

Patti Solis grew up a gangly girl with cat-eye glasses and armfuls of books in the working-class Pilsen section of Chicago, the youngest of six children. She was the favorite of her father, Santiago Solis, who first entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico with almost no education. (Both parents and the four siblings born in Mexico became U.S. citizens later.) When the first son got involved in Chicago politics, Patti and other family members handed out leaflets and attended his rallies. She went to Northwestern University on scholarship and followed her brother, who became an alderman, into Chicago politics.

At the start of Bill Clinton's presidential bid in 1991, a Chicago political consultant he'd hired sent Ms. Solis to Arkansas to work on the campaign. She was assigned to Hillary Clinton.

"Who's Hillary?" she recalls asking. "Ah, man, I don't want to work for the wife." She was even surer after meeting "this lady in long blond hair with a headband."

But soon the two were on the campaign trail, with a trip to Florida. "It was barely short of disaster," Mrs. Clinton recalls. "Neither one of us knew what we were doing." Though they had grown up very differently -- Sen. Clinton in an upper-middle-class suburb and Ms. Solis Doyle in a mainly immigrant city neighborhood -- both were driven, and they found common ground in their strong fathers.

When the Clintons moved into the White House, Ms. Solis Doyle became scheduling director for the first lady. There, what her family and friends call her "Latina queena" persona emerged: playful, loud and domineering.

"I would be tongue-tied because Patti was so sweet and pretty," recalls Jeff Forbes, who worked as President Clinton's scheduler. But, he adds, "When it came to protecting Hillary, if you weren't with her you felt the pain, and deservedly so."

While working in the White House, Ms. Solis married Jim Doyle, a corporate lawyer. Mrs. Clinton, on a trip to Chicago, met her aide's parents and praised Mr. Doyle to them. When Ms. Solis Doyle had her first baby, Mrs. Clinton urged her to bring her crib into the White House. Often a "baby sleeping" sign would be hanging on her office door.

Ms. Solis Doyle proved her chops as a strategist helping in Mrs. Clinton's New York Senate campaign in 2000. She was credited with helping define Mrs. Clinton more broadly than as a former first lady and making sure she spent a lot of time in critical upstate counties. In recent years, she ran Sen. Clinton's political operation.

For the presidential run, Ms. Solis Doyle assembled a campaign team in Arlington, Va., that was heavy on longtime Clinton advisers who had worked together for years. While she sat atop the organization chart, Mr. Penn, with confidence in his firmly held opinions, took the lead in setting the strategy and message. Ms. Grunwald, who has done the Clintons' commercials for years, became another big player. Also at the top of the hierarchy was Terry McAuliffe, campaign chair, who is close to the Clintons and is a fund-raising machine.

For the first several months, the campaign surged on Mr. Penn's message of "strength and experience," on robust fund raising (though Mr. Obama raised more at the start) and on endorsements from establishment figures.

But in August, the campaign faced a fund-raising scandal. The Wall Street Journal disclosed that big contributor Norman Hsu, who had bundled together nearly $1 million in donations, brought in some of them from people who seemed unlikely to be able to afford them. Within days, he was exposed as a fugitive from an old grand-larceny charge. Sen. Clinton gave up all of the donations.

In October, Sen. Clinton gave her rivals an opening to challenge her more forcefully, as she stumbled when asked a debate question about the wisdom of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Ms. Solis Doyle braced for negative reaction to her candidate's attempt to explain both sides of the issue. In the following days, she and Mrs. Clinton discussed the senator's immigration-reform plan, which includes an "earned pass to citizenship." Ms. Solis Doyle told Mrs. Clinton that if her father -- who twice entered the U.S. illegally before managing to come legally -- were still alive, "he would agree that immigrants should play by the rules and work hard."

Then on Nov. 10, when all the candidates showed up in Des Moines for an important night of dinner speeches, Sen. Obama gave a powerful address, setting in motion a surge in Iowa polls. Suddenly, Mrs. Clinton was on the defensive. "We're getting the crap beat out of us," Ms. Solis Doyle told her team several days later.

Fighting back, Sen. Clinton criticized Sen. Obama's health-care plan as not "universal." She slammed him for saying his foreign-policy experience included having lived in Indonesia as a child. When her team chided him for having aspired to the White House even as a youth, his campaign called it a desperation tactic. Some Iowa voters were turned off.

Ms. Solis Doyle decided to move to Iowa for the next two months. On Nov. 18, at her last full weekend at home before the caucuses, she prepared dinner for her family while listening to a CD of her late father's favorite Latino music. While daughter Solis (called "Lee") and son Joey watched a video, she played a spirited game of Scrabble with her husband, who once worked for Mr. Penn's polling firm but now runs a policy research firm.

Soon, Joey crawled into her lap. Ms. Solis Doyle told her kids, "I promise that when this campaign is over, I'm taking a year off to focus on being your mom."

Back in Des Moines, Ms. Solis Doyle, switching from stylish suits to jeans, snow boots and a suede hat, assembled her staff in their windowless headquarters in an office park. "We can't give up on excitement and passion," she told them.

Coffee-fueled, she was running around the office shoeless by day's end, pepping up workers at the phone banks. Her cellphone ring tone is the theme from the Broadway show "Rent," and campaign workers broke out in song when they heard it.

In recent weeks, Ms. Solis Doyle, Ms. Grunwald and communications chief Howard Wolfson have been taking the lead in shifting the focus to the candidate's "likeability" instead of her readiness to be commander-in-chief. It's a move that Mr. Penn agrees with, though he describes the new strategy as consistent with his message of "having the right combination of strength and experience, with compassion."

Former President Clinton, too, has stepped up his input. "He's the best political mind in the world," Ms. Solis Doyle says. "Of course I'm listening to him."

The stakes are high, tempers hot. Ms. Solis Doyle blew up two weeks ago when a campaign official in New Hampshire was quoted as questioning Sen. Obama's electability, given his acknowledged cocaine use as a young man. "I won't put up with this. It's inappropriate," Ms. Solis Doyle said, accepting the official's resignation. She frowned when Mr. Penn stepped out to talk to the media after the final Iowa debate Dec. 13 and ended up referring to the cocaine issue again.

The heightened tension has made Ms. Solis Doyle much less patient. Some messages from friends, although encouraging her to hang in there, make her bristle. "Stop it," she fired back in one email. "I know what I'm doing and I'm doing it."

Ms. Solis Doyle redid her boss's calendar to ensure that Sen. Clinton, and her husband too, would be in Iowa nonstop except for two days last weekend and two days for Christmas.

After the final Iowa debate, Ms. Solis Doyle jumped into an SUV in Sen. Clinton's motorcade and headed to another campaign event. While the senator talked to a group of 50 women at a supporter's home, Ms. Solis Doyle slipped into the master bathroom to work, cellphone to her ear and tissues on her runny nose.

She arranged for Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd to hitch a ride with Sen. Clinton on her private plane for an unexpected Senate vote (which was then canceled). She set up Iowa appearances for basketball great Magic Johnson, a Clinton supporter, as well as a bus filled with Mrs. Clinton's childhood friends.

A few minutes later, off the phone, Ms. Solis Doyle realized her candidate had already left in her motorcade. She headed back to the campaign office. On the way, she called a colleague. "It's cold, I'm tired, I'm up all night," she said. "We have only a few days left before Iowa."

By Monica Langley, The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2007

First, a Hillary Clinton supporter asked Bill Cobb if she could put a campaign sign in front of his Boone, Iowa, home. Then a backer of Barack Obama showed up. A few days later, a canvasser for John Edwards came by.

Signs for all three candidates now adorn Cobb's lawn, making it ground zero in a battle among Democratic presidential candidates to woo voters in Iowa's first-in- the-nation contests next month. With just 1,240 people having taken part in the caucuses in Boone County four years ago, the campaigns are competing for the support of even individual voters such as Cobb.

The relatively small numbers of voters involved in the caucus means the campaigns are putting a premium on on- the-ground organization because a close race will be decided by a candidate's ability to turn out the vote.

"Organization is key to winning the Iowa caucuses,'' said Gordon Fischer, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party and an Obama supporter. "Because it is a caucus, people have to come out, date and time certain, and publicly declare their support for a candidate. In order to get people to make that kind of commitment, you really need to have a great ground game.''

Turnout

Caucuses make far greater demands of voters than primary elections, which usually only require the pull of a lever or push of a button to cast a ballot. On Jan. 3, Iowa caucus-goers will need to travel to their precincts, possibly through a snowstorm. Then, they will engage in a multiround process of public negotiation and cajoling with friends and neighbors --unlike the Republicans, who can keep their votes private -- that may last more than two hours.

How many people decide to make that commitment will depend on variables such as the weather and the participants' level of excitement about their choices.

The Democratic candidates are deploying unprecedented resources to ensure that Iowans turn out -- and champion their cause once the voting begins. The campaigns of Illinois Senator Obama, 46, and New York Senator Clinton, 60, have each fielded at least 300 paid staffers -- and many more volunteers -- to fan out across the state.

As in all Iowa's 99 counties, the votes in the Democratic stronghold of Boone remain up for grabs. To get an edge, the campaigns of the three leading Democrats have added their own arsenal of tactics to the standard campaign techniques of phone calls, mailings and door-to-door canvassing.

Softer Side

The Clinton camp is trying to capitalize on her support among women and emphasize her softer side. To do so, the campaign has relied on people like Georgina Cavendish, 21, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania last year, then moved to Boone County this summer.

Cavendish has spent the time since forging deep connections with community leaders, organizing house parties and attending local Democratic committee meetings. She said she is now on first-name terms with many of the county's caucus-goers.

Clinton "can't be in every community,'' said Cavendish. "We're her ambassadors.''

On a recent Sunday afternoon Cavendish went door to door delivering copies of her candidate's endorsement by the Des Moines Register and leaving handwritten notes. She said that before canvassing, she tries to organize meet-ups at homes of older women who bake brownies for the campaign staffers and volunteers.

Younger Voters

Obama's campaign, meanwhile, is focusing on younger voters. Matt Kireker, a 2007 Princeton University graduate, has organized a 30-member "Barackstars'' group at Boone High School, where most of the 200-member senior class is eligible to caucus, since 17-year-olds can participate as long as they turn 18 by Nov. 4, 2008.

Kireker said he isn't deterred by the fact that efforts to recruit these voters in past elections haven't translated into big turnouts at the polls. "The idea that you only focus on previous caucus-goers is baloney,'' Kireker said.

The Obama campaign is also deploying college students on their winter break. On a recent Sunday, two such volunteers dropped in on a family brunch in Boone. Fifteen minutes later, the dozen likely caucus goers said they were leaning toward Obama. Every one of them would receive a follow-up phone call, Kireker said.

Building on '04 Support

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, is focusing on the support he built among rural and union workers when he ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004 and split the county's vote with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

As a rural area, Boone is fertile ground for Edwards, 54, who has campaigned in the county more than any other candidate, said Cheri Johnsen, a campaign volunteer and precinct captain in Madrid.

She said she delivered policy books to people's doors, including homes in remote areas. The campaign is also distributing a DVD about the ``systematic neglect'' of rural America.

Cobb, a railroad engineer, said that while his union has endorsed Clinton, he likes Obama's oratorical skills. For now, though, he is leaning toward Edwards, whom he sees as the "toughest'' candidate to take on a Republican in November.

"We're confused,'' said Cobb, 57.

By Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg, December 26, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) - After a day off for Christmas celebrations, US presidential contenders hit the campaign trail full tilt Wednesday, just days before voters in key states begin to narrow the field of White House hopefuls.

Top contenders could afford no more than a two-day holiday before resuming their fervent courtship of voters in states like Iowa and New Hampshire, whose early nominating contests give them an outsized role in choosing each party's candidate for the national vote in November.

Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, locked in a pitched battle for the Democratic nod, were to begin tours of Iowa, which kicks off the party selection process on January 3.

Under existing rules, Democratic candidates who receive less than 15 percent of the vote in Iowa are considered nonviable, and their backers have the choice of either going home or casting their ballots for their second choice.

That is why the three leading Democratic candidates -- Obama, Clinton and former senator John Edwards -- have been courting the supporters of candidates who may not receive 15 percent -- most likely New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Senators Joe Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, and Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

On Sunday, Obama picked up the endorsement of The Sioux City Journal, an Iowa newspaper, which described him as a Democratic candidate "who best understands this critical moment in our nation's history."

The Des Moines Register, the main newspaper in the state, has endorsed Clinton among the Democratic candidates.

Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate now running third, elected to knock on doors in Nashua, New Hampshire, handing out donuts and chatting up voters, his campaign said. New Hampshire holds its bellwether primaries on January 8.

Republican Senator John McCain meanwhile was to hit the schools, civic clubs and coffee shops of Iowa in the days just after Christmas, while breakout Republican contender Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, was scheduled for fundraising in Florida.

Huckabee has come from nowhere in the polls to take a lead in Iowa over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and even threaten Rudy Giuliani's status as national frontrunner for the Republicans.

The Giuliani campaign has taken the high-risk strategy of largely bypassing Iowa and New Hampshire to focus on Florida, which votes on January 29, and then other big states such as California and New York on February 5. But with his national poll lead slipping, the former New York mayor was to join the rest of the field in Iowa after Christmas, promising to go all out after a brief hospital stay last week for "flu-like symptoms."

"The Republicans are starting to see you really can't skip Iowa," Chuck Laudner, who head the state's Republican party, told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

The Iowa caucuses are coming earlier than ever in this year's compressed electoral calendar, followed by the New Hampshire primaries on January 8 and other states through to "Super Duper Tuesday" in February when a cluster of states hold primaries simultaneously.

The early contests tend to give states where they are held a disproportionate role in the selection process, and often bring surprises, sometimes knocking a perceived frontrunner off the field.

"Losing both New Hampshire and Iowa can destroy a candidacy. Winning both is almost a sure path to the nomination," Paul Finkelman, a professor at Albany Law School, wrote in an Internet commentary earlier this month.

The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates will be formally nominated at their respective party conventions in late August and early September, but the nominee is generally known long before then.

This year's race has the potential of sweeping the first American woman to the White House if Clinton wins, or the first African-American if Obama triumphs.

A poll published December 20 in USA Today found Clinton and Obama locked in a dead heat on 32 percent in New Hampshire. And in the Republican race for the state, Romney had seen his lead over McCain narrow to single digits.

But USA Today said the main finding of its latest poll in New Hampshire was uncertainty, with more than four of 10 voters in each party saying they may change their minds before the primary election.

"That fluidity could magnify the impact of late-breaking news, last-minute gaffes and the Iowa caucuses that will open the presidential season five days earlier," it said.

AFP, December 26, 2007

WASHINGTON, Iowa - Barack Obama's soaring, inspirational message seems to work its magic on most voters in his audiences, sending them off with a warm and fuzzy we-can-change-the-world feeling.

Not Stan Potratz.

"There's just an air of eloquent naivete about him," Potratz, 62, said after a town hall meeting here last week.

Even as Obama has drawn virtually even with Hillary Clinton in some early-state polls, he still faces doubts from would-be supporters on whether he can deliver on his vision.

In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, Iowa Democrats regarded Clinton as the stronger leader, by 36% to 28%, and the more experienced, by 45% to 9%. But 56% valued a new direction and new ideas even more.

Challenging Obama face-to-face last week, Potratz said, "You can talk better than the other people. [But] there's a certain unreality about listening to you."

"I don't think those Republicans are going to roll over and play dead," continued Potratz, who sells sheep-farming supplies. "You can be nice to them, but is that going to work?"

The first-term senator assured Potratz he's not naive. Obama said he's accustomed to Chicago's rough-and-tumble politics. He said he knows how to stand his ground, but would invite Republicans and independents into the fold. "What I know is you don't start out by making enemies, you start out by looking for allies. And, then, if you find enemies, you knock 'em down," Obama said. "That's part of how I want to break the gridlock."

Natalie Rhebb, 51, a preschool teacher from West Des Moines who is considering Obama, Clinton, John Edwards and Joe Biden, said she thought Obama delivered a "very passionate" presentation in Waukee, Iowa, last week.

But when asked whether he had enough experience, she replied, "I don't know."

Last week, after an Obama event in Nashua, N.H., Lois Ayer, 61, an English teacher, said the senator was "inspiring," but she prefers Clinton "because I like her grasp of the facts."

Larry Sonner, 71, a retired minister from Urbandale, Iowa, said Obama is "sincere" but "he has to get things through Congress and that's going to be very difficult." Still, he leans toward Obama.

"I see the JFK factor strong in him, lifting hope for this nation that doesn't feel very hopeful right now," Sonner said. "There are some ways where Hillary's experience will serve us well, but I think she's just kind of part of the establishment and can't get above that."

Potratz, the skeptic who confronted Obama and remains undecided, said it's conceivable that a President Obama could rally the public to his side to triumph over powerful foes. "But can he do that? I don't know," Potratz said.

By Michael Saul, New York Daily News, December 26, 2007

After a day off to celebrate Christmas, the 2008 presidential candidates were headed back on the trail Wednesday, throwing their campaigns into overdrive with just eight days until the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa and 13 days to the New Hampshire primary.

Most candidates were returning to those two early voting states, with a majority parking in Iowa until the voting ends.

The notable exception to that plan is Rudy Giuliani, who's spending his time in Florida. Giuliani has taken a national approach to his campaign rather than focusing on the early primary states. With a recent slippage in the national polls, some are doubting his strategy of focusing on the Sunshine State and Feb. 5, when 19 states are holding Republican primaries.

"I think Rudy's decision not to go to Iowa may prove fatal," said Democratic strategist Liz Chadderdon. "I think (Mike) Huckabee's surge in Iowa is really costing Rudy. There are new national polls out. Rudy is falling and Huckabee is rising and I think it's all because of the Huckabee surge in Iowa.

"Iowa is first in the nation. It's tradition for candidates to win Iowa to build momentum into the rest of the primaries, and I think he's made a huge mistake. "If we're walking into Feb. 5 and it looks like we've already got a winner, I don't think Feb. 5 is really going to matter all that much and I think Giuliani's gamble will not have paid off," Chadderdon said.

The question of whether Giuliani can lose the early states and still be competitive is one even Giuliani is talking about. He says he's not worried about the recent drop in the polls, and his strategy was always to start winning after losing. "We are thinking ahead to Feb. 5 when you have Illinois, California, New York and all those places," he said, acknowledging that he doesn't expect to sweep all the states that day. "We are not going to win all of them. We are ready for that. We're ready to lose a few and then rebound in others. ... These strategies turn out to be very, very bright if you win, or they turn out to be very wrong if you lose, and we will find out," he said.

Giuliani could stay alive until Florida votes. Also unknown is who will emerge from the early states as the socially conservative alternative to his moderate-to-liberal views and whether that candidate will have enough steam to roll past Giuliani.

In Iowa it's a toss-up between Huckabee and Mitt Romney, with the former Massachusetts governor and much of the GOP establishment warning that the former Arkansas governor is too moderate on illegal immigration, crime, taxes and spending.

In New Hampshire, it's a virtual tie between John McCain and Romney, who's pounding the Arizona senator for opposing the Bush tax cuts. Tax cuts are a potentially decisive issue in New Hampshire, which has no general sales tax or state income tax.

But for the near-term, McCain's still trying to shore up support in Iowa. The campaign embarked on a three-day tour of rallies and meet-and-greets through the Hawkeye State Wednesday.

South Carolina will be wide open depending on who wins the two lead-off contests. Huckabee is light on cash and organization in the first primary in the South. Fred Thompson has all but collapsed in the polls, McCain lost a brutal South Carolina primary in 2000 and Romney's Mormon faith turns off many Christian conservatives who make up one of the Palmetto State GOP's biggest voting blocs.

On the Democratic side, frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are hoping for a belated gift - a win in Iowa to set them up for a happy primary season and the party's nomination.

Both Obama and Clinton on Wednesday kicked off a nine-day campaign streak through Iowa, with each battling to be seen as the candidate who symbolizes change and experience.

Though the match-up between Obama and Clinton has been pitched as the choice between change and experience, respectively, the candidates have tried to embrace both attributes in the early test states. In a press release Wednesday, Clinton's campaign cited the "war abroad and a troubled economy at home" as reasons to pick the New York senator, describing her as "tested, ready to lead." But the statement wedded that image with the description of a candidate who has "35 years of making change happen."

Likewise, Obama's campaign swing is named the "Stand for Change" tour.

But Edwards has the strongest organization in Iowa and is well-positioned for the final post-Christmas push. He'll need it to surge from a statistically insignificant third place to a win.

To achieve that goal, the Christmas truce on negative campaigning is likely to weaken, if not collapse entirely. Outside groups already have started and the top-tier candidates may find it impossible not to follow suit.

Already, sniping has begun. On Sunday, Obama suggested that Clinton can't win because her national unfavorability ratings are so high - 49 percent in the last FOX News-Opinion Dynamics poll. "If you start off with high negatives, then you're playing on a very short field. And it's hard for you then to persuade those who might be persuadable to come into your corner," he told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Meanwhile, pro-Edwards unions such as Service Employees International and the Carpenters' have been running radio ads touting Edwards' hostility to free trade deals. Edwards frequently rails against the corrupting influence of money in politics. Obama has called on him to stop the radio ads, which he says are financed by unlimited and undisclosed donations - exactly the scenario Edwards opposes.

Elsewhere, the Clinton-backing American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union has launched a radio ad that knocks Obama's health care plan.

Obama's plan seeks to lower costs to broaden insurance coverage. He has argued that Clinton's plan lacks a mandate for coverage and won't cover all the uninsured. But that is the same argument made about Obama's plan in the AFSCME ad.

"With all these plans there is one fundamental difference, either everyone is covered or some are left behind. CBS News reports Obama's plan, according to independent experts, leaves as many as 15 million uninsured," the ad says.

The ad also gives the phone number for Obama's Senate office in Washington, D.C., and tells people to call and complain about his plan for expanding health care coverage.

Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene said Clinton's plans for universal health care and other proposals will help the middle class. She warned against efforts to reject it.

"Ebenezer Scrooge would probably say, 'Well, just don't offer health care and have the free market fend for themselves.' Well, you can ask Tiny Tim how that worked out for him," Greene said.

But Tobin Smith, founder and chief investment strategist for ChangeWave Research and a FOX News business analyst, said any plan for universal coverage will be bad for the economy. "There is no question that if you wanted to write a prescription to ruin - take our growing economy and put it into recession, take 'Hillary care,' wrap it up with a little health care coverage and you have a recession," Smith said.

By Carl Cameron, Major Garrett and Malini Bawa, FOX News, December 26, 2007

Republican and Democratic presidential contenders are back in action today for the home stretch leading to next week's Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary a week later. Where they head first may reveal something about their short-term strategy.

The Democratic front-runners seem to be favoring Iowa, with Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama heading there, and John Edwards taking advantage of their absence to campaign in the Granite State.

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney hopes to head off a John McCain surge in New Hampshire with appearances there, while Mr. McCain heads to Iowa. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee will also be doing a little campaigning in Iowa before replenishing their campaign coffers for the final sprint with fund-raising appearances in Florida.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, tied in the Iowa polls, together will make a total of 16 campaign stops in the Hawkeye State over the next two days. Mr. Obama, hoping to close the sale, will campaign exclusively there through the Jan. 3 caucus date, according to a preliminary schedule.

Mr. Edwards will do a campaign event in Nashua, N.H., two town hall meetings and two organizing sessions. Mr. Romney also will campaign in New Hampshire, shifting gears from his usual "Ask Mitt Anything" question-and-answer sessions to a schedule heavy with photo ops that will allow him to do more events to counter the increased threat from Mr. McCain, now in a statistical dead heat with him there.

By Elizabeth Holmes, The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2007

Iowa Often Sees High Fervor, Low Turnout

They have become a useful, though very tricky, class of images in this roller-coaster ride of a presidential campaign. Call them the "hangdog" candidate photographs: They capture the politician with eyes downcast, looking tired, stressed. When the headline is about poll numbers dropping, fundraising tanking or verbal gaffes from soon-to-be-cashiered campaign advisers, the hangdog candidate image is sure to make its appearance.

Levi Knapp, one of Sen. Christopher J. Dodd's 80 field organizers in Iowa, had never been on ice skates before. Surrounded by his boss and about 15 other campaign staffers, he held gamely to the rails at Brenton Skating Plaza in the city's East Village neighborhood and occasionally tried to move forward. "I'm from California. We don't have a lot of ice rinks in Laguna Beach," said Knapp, 33. "Hey, it's as good a time as any to learn."

Rush Hour as 6 Candidates Zoom Back to Iowa

For the Democrats, it's largely a three-way fight among Clinton, Obama and Edwards.

Her "inevitability" on the line, Clinton launched a "Bring a Buddy to Caucus" campaign in an effort to get first-time women caucus-goers through the wintery weather on caucus night.

"We have hundreds and hundreds of women in the 90s who want to caucus for me," Clinton said this month in Bettendorf, Iowa.

It's do-or-die for Edwards in Iowa. Four years ago he came in second here. He needs to hold onto his old voters and add to that total, especially in farm country. Edwards isn't taking his old supporters for granted. "You know I learned a valuable lesson a few years ago. A lady comes up to me after an election and she said, 'You know Edwards, I would have voted for you, but you never asked me.' I'll never make that mistake again," he told town hall attendees Dec. 14 in Elkader, Iowa.

Among Republicans, former Gov. Mitt Romney and Huckabee have the most at stake here. Romney's early lead has slipped as Huckabee's surprise surge among the state's conservatives has launched him into the role of Iowa's front-runner.

Romney has banked on early victories, creating a wave of momentum, has spent millions in the state and brags about his Iowa organization. "The number of precinct captains and county chairs is second to none," he recently told reporters in Storm Lake. He has bolstered that organization with more than $16 million in TV ads, many of them attacks on Huckabee.

Huckabee needs to hold onto that lead under assault from such attacks. His evangelical supporters need to rally because a loss here for the man once thought a long shot could return him to second-tier status.

One possible beneficiary of the Romney-Huckabee brawl could be Thompson who could then re-emerge as the strongest Southern candidate.

A third-place finish in Iowa could be like plasma for his struggling campaign. "The future looks bright and a lot of people are watching now," Thompson told supporters just before the Christmas break. "A great number of people are undecided if those polls are to be believed."

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and McCain have banked it all on later states; McCain in New Hampshire on Jan. 8, and Giuliani in Florida at the end of the month and again on Feb. 5's Super Duper Tuesday when more than 20 states vote.

Giuliani's strategy of de-emphasizing early states would be unprecedented if it succeeds. But then, if there's any election where such a scheme might work, it could be this one.

By Jake Tapper, ABC News, December 26, 2007

Presidential candidates were obliged to pretend yesterday that they would rather spend Christmas exchanging gifts with their families than trading insults with each other in the freezing electoral battlefields of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Their irritation at missing a full day's campaigning so close to the Iowa caucuses on January 3 has been compounded by having to pull their hardest punches and soften negative tactics for fear of being seen as a Grinch, a Scrooge, or - even worse - someone desperate to get elected.

At this stage momentum - or "The Big Mo", as George Bush Sr once put it - is everything. So for those who don't get a vote in the caucuses, the primaries, or even in the presidential elections, The Times is offering a chance to be your very own candidate by playing Momentum.

Cut out your chosen candidate as a counter and get down into the mixture of high ambition and low blows that is a primary campaign - taking for your guide the Republican candidate Mitt Romney. He did his best to be festive by holding a carol service with supporters on Monday but could not resist launching one more assault on the tax policies of John McCain, who is fast closing on him in New Hampshire. Mr McCain's campaign had an easy response: "Give it a rest," it told Mr Romney. "It's Christmas."

Hillary Clinton was, like others, running a Christmas TV advertisement. She was shown wrapping up presents and sticking on labels such as "universal healthcare" and "alternative energy". Critics said it reminded them how, even at this time of year, all she cares about is public policy.

Her fellow Democrat Chris Dodd is a desperate man, barely registering in the polls despite campaigning relentlessly for the past year. He has now moved his entire family to Iowa and promised to buy only Iowan-made (and apparently antique) presents for his long-suffering children. They posted a sign outside their home in Connecticut reminding Santa Claus of their temporary address. Yesterday he promised to go ice skating with aides and serve them hot chocolate.

Most of the 15 candidates still running for the presidency hope to use Iowa, which is holding its caucuses earlier than ever before, as a springboard for the New Hampshire primary on January 8. The combination of these two elections have, for more than 30 years, set the tempo for the nomination process elsewhere in America.

Although Mrs Clinton is way ahead in national opinion polls for the Democratic nomination, she is in a tight three-way fight with John Edwards and Barack Obama in Iowa. Mr Obama, who is neck-and-neck with her in New Hampshire and South Carolina, believes he is building momentum at just the right moment to overtake her.

Rudy Giuliani, who is losing momentum in the Republican race at just the wrong time, is now concentrating on later and larger states, having, in effect, conceded defeat in the first two contests. He spent Christmas Eve reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to needy children in Harlem, New York, and assuring reporters that despite his health scare last week he was "cancer-free".

Today he is scheduled to appear in Florida. One of his Republican rivals, Mike Huckabee, will also be in the Sunshine State, hosting a fundraiser as he tries to build the finances and organisation to match his soaring opinion poll rating.

Mr Romney and Mr Edwards have a series of campaign stops in New Hampshire, some scheduled so early that they will take place before many voters have got out of bed.

Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, as well as Joe Biden for the Democrats and Fred Thompson for the Republicans, are scheduled to speak in Iowa. All hope for a spurt of momentum and fear a sudden loss. But anyone trying to work out how to play the game should look no further than Bill Clinton who experienced both 16 years ago. He was expected to win New Hampshire easily but was hit by claims that he had slept with Gennifer Flowers, a former nightclub singer, that he had dodged the Vietnam draft and smoked cannabis at Oxford.

He denied all charges with varying degrees of credibility but slumped 20 points in the polls before a masterful performance in a television interview in which he held hands with Hillary and they professed everlasting love. He ended up coming second in New Hampshire and went on to win the nomination as the "Comeback Kid".

Pick up that Momentum and you're on your way.

By Tom Baldwin, The Times, December 26, 2007

Iowans will emerge from Christmas today to be bombarded with messages and phone calls from Hillary Clinton - or Barack Obama, or John Edwards or Mitt Romney.

After just a two-day break, candidates will fan out across the Midwestern state today, ahead of the January votes, the first in the primary phase of the presidential election.

Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, launches a tour called "Big Challenges, Real Solutions - Time To Pick A President", while Barack Obama, her main rival for the Democratic Party's nomination, will fly in from his home in neighbouring Illinois for a full day's campaigning, and will not leave the state until the early hours of Jan 4.

Though Dec 26 is not a public holiday in the US, the unprecedented earliness of the Iowa caucus has produced unseen levels of campaigning in the normally quiet week between Christmas Day and New Year.

Campaigns have no qualms about recommencing speech-making, phone calls and TV ads while Christmas meals are still being digested. Most broadcast commercials have a seasonal theme, with Mrs Clinton wrapping presents labelled "Universal Health Care" and "Alternative Energy".

Eric Woolson, Iowa campaign manager for Republican contender Mike Huckabee, who launched the first Christmas ad last week, said: "Obviously Christmas Day is for family and people don't want to hear about a caucus, but then you start pushing right away. Iowans are tuned into this process, and they know the caucuses were originally in mid-January so this way they get 10 days fewer commercials."

Robocalls, which the Huckabee campaign says it doesn't use, are considered irksome by many voters, including Mrs Jackson, who lives in the town of Mingo.

"I listened to one or two early on, but now I hang up them. They call at all times, even up to 11pm. And on Sundays. It's rude," she said.

In a recent survey the Pew Research Centre found that half those who received automated calls hang up as a matter of course. Nonetheless campaigns persist in using every marketing technique at their disposal.

The current campaign is the biggest and most expensive ever held. Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama have each raised in the region of $90?million, which pays for a lot of ads, a lot of mail-shots and a lot of calls, both robotic and human.

By Alex Spillius, The Telegraph, December 26, 2007

MANCHESTER, N.H. - It would be wrong to read too deeply into a few empty seats at a few campaign events in the days leading up to Christmas. Oh, but let's do it anyway.

One of the truly sad visages of this presidential campaign was an Associated Press photo of then-candidate Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, speaking in a room jam-packed with empty chairs in Manchester. Mr. Brownback soon downgraded himself to "former candidate."

In the days before Christmas, dreaded empty seats ("D.E.S.'s") pocked the New Hampshire political landscape. Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York played to about 60 people and 10 empties at a tiny town hall in Hopkinton on Saturday, his first public event after returning from an illness that required a hospital stay.

The day before, an aide to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York was seen frantically folding up seats shortly before Mrs. Clinton arrived for a small gathering at a store in Concord.

That night, Mitt Romney and his wife spoke in an American Legion hall in Rochester that included several unused chairs, which were eventually removed. (It could have been worse; the crowd seemed positively Brownbackian about 15 minutes before Mr. Romney arrived.) Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, stood before his audience and marveled at the incredible turnout there of about 90 people. "It's Friday night!" Mr. Romney declared (correctly). "You all should be out shopping!"

For what it's worth, Senator Barack Obama drew about 400 to the same hall the night before, and in a heavy snowstorm. Not that Mr. Obama received a unanimously warm reception in Rochester.

The Illinois Democrat was admonished by a voter for allegedly giving short shrift to a woman and her son who had asked him for a photo during a visit to Dover earlier this year. "You said, 'make it quick,'" the woman said. "I like you, but that comment really surprised me."

Mr. Obama parried, "I spend more quality time with every single voter than just about anybody out there."

He allowed that he might not have seen the child, or that he might have been distracted.

Iowa's Shadow

New Hampshire voters seem somewhat insecure these days about being overshadowed by Iowa. For the past two decades, the states have coexisted as a kind of "1" and "1A" in early-voting supremacy. But Iowa is clearly the "It" state of late 2007, maybe a consequence of Senator John Kerry's winning strategy in 2004 in which he focused almost exclusively on Iowa in December and January, scored an upset victory in the state and rolled from there to the Democratic nomination.

In recent weeks, most of the major candidates in both parties have spent most of their time in the Hawkeye State (notable exceptions being Mr. Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona). Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, even moved his family there.

While attention will shift to New Hampshire after Iowa's caucuses on Jan. 3, the condensed voting calendar has rendered the Granite State's moment in the spotlight shorter, to just five days, because its primary is Jan. 8. Mike Huckabee is even encouraging some New Hampshire voters to vote later. "If you're supporting someone else, the primary for you has been moved to February," Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said in the northern outpost of Berlin.

Still, you can't beat the quaint pastoral setting of New Hampshire for a sound stage. Mrs. Clinton's setting in Concord was straight out of Currier and Ives: the candidate standing in a country store, surrounded by crates of apples and squash, icicles in the windows. (And no empty seats were visible in the photos.)

"Making change isn't about politics and personalities," Mrs. Clinton said in Concord. She has been appearing with her mother, Dorothy Rodham, and daughter, Chelsea; and her events have featured testimony from supporters, constituents and old friends about "The Hillary I Know."

But don't call this a "likability tour," as some reporters have (and the Obama campaign, with no small hint of derision). Mr. Clinton's aides wince at the term, believing that it signifies a contrived effort to engineer something a candidate needs to convey naturally. It also plays into a perception that Mrs. Clinton's enterprise is overly stage-managed. Alas, not every Clinton surrogate got the memo.

"The key is likability," said Lou D'Allesandro, a New Hampshire state senator and a Clinton supporter. "Once people get to get to see her, up close and personal, the likability will follow."

A few feet away, Mrs. Clinton was being swarmed by admirers, looking very liked indeed.

By the next day, during a visit to a Y.W.C.A. in Manchester, Mrs. Clinton had aced likability and had moved on to lovability. "First of all, I love you," one young woman, Katie Schelzel, told Mrs. Clinton before asking her a question about what she would do to support nonprofit organizations like the Y.W.C.A. "Really, I mean it," she said. "I tell everyone you're my best friend."

Someone then handed Ms. Schelzel a microphone and she repeated the "I love you" part for those who might have missed it.

Rudolph Giuliani has entered a turbulent period in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, marked by what his aides acknowledge are missteps, sharp shifts in strategy and evidence that reports about his personal life have hurt his national standing.

A $3 million investment in radio and television advertising in New Hampshire, a belated effort to become competitive in this state, is now viewed by the campaign as a largely wasted expenditure.

A Boston Globe poll published Sunday found that support for Giuliani had dropped in New Hampshire over the past month, even before any fallout from the decision on Thursday by an ailing Giuliani to have his campaign plane turn around and take him back to St. Louis, Missouri, where he spent the night in the hospital.

Some of Giuliani's advisers are frustrated at the extent to which his decision not to compete aggressively in Iowa has pushed him to the side of the stage at a moment when the political world's attention is focused on the caucuses there that will kick off the election season in less than two weeks.

Giuliani's initial campaign theme, built around his record as mayor of New York, has given way to a new one: "Tested. Ready. Now." But its introduction, in a speech last Saturday in Tampa, Florida, drew little attention on a day when most of the other Republican and Democratic presidential candidates were grabbing the spotlight in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Compounding his problems, Giuliani won the kind of attention last week that a candidate with declining national poll numbers and a history of treatment for prostate cancer would just as soon avoid after he abruptly entered the hospital in St. Louis and stayed there overnight.

His aides declined to provide details of what had happened to Giuliani, other than he was complaining of flulike symptoms, or what tests he might have undergone. The situation grew even more muddled when Giuliani disputed what his campaign had said about his condition, saying that in fact he had been suffering from a severe headache and that his doctor would be able to issue a definitive statement this week after seeing test results.

As a result of all this, what might have been a one-day campaign-trail story was still reverberating on Sunday.

Giuliani's decision to maintain a light schedule of public appearances compared with his rivals, particularly Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Senator John McCain of Arizona, has stirred concern among some prospective supporters who fear that he does not appear hungry for the job, a criticism that shadowed him when he ran for senator in New York in 2000.

Giuliani is still viewed as a very strong candidate with continued high potential in a very unsettled field. He could be helped by the unusual calendar of nominating contests, with the chance it provides for him to pick up large numbers of delegates on Feb. 5 and recover from any early setbacks.

"We have always run a campaign that is based on a long-term strategy of getting the most delegates," said Mike DuHaime, his campaign manager.

Still, the difficulties within Giuliani's campaign come as he faces changes in the political landscape that do not appear to be to his benefit. For much of the year, he was helped by his positioning as tough on terrorism and by the perception among many Republicans that he was their best weapon to block Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, were she to win the Democratic nomination.

But issues like immigration are proving far more decisive among Republicans than terrorism, especially since the violence in Iraq has diminished. Clinton is struggling to win her own party's nomination, which has had the effect of undercutting what had been one of Giuliani's biggest selling points.

Giuliani's closest advisers in this campaign include a number of longtime loyalists who, though seasoned in New York City politics, have not run a national campaign before. One of the key questions from the start of his entry into the race has been the extent to which Giuliani would open up this circle.

To a certain extent, he has done this. Acting on the recommendation of Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee chairman, Giuliani named DuHaime, a former political director of the Republican National Committee, as his campaign director, and DuHaime brought a number of veterans of the Republican committee with him.

But Republicans who have dealt with the campaign say that it is more Anthony Carbonetti, who has been a senior adviser to Giuliani since his early days in New York politics, along with other New York insiders, who have Giuliani's ear, and who is, with the former mayor, driving many of the major decisions in the campaign. The two camps were described by some campaign officials as culturally uneasy with one another.

Des Moines, Iowa - A legend in the world of political organizing, 49-year-old Teresa Vilmain has a simple job Jan. 3: Get Hillary Clinton through Iowa intact.

As head of Clinton's Iowa campaign, Vilmain shuns publicity. But she's renowned among Democratic party professionals, a networking whirlwind with a peerless Rolodex and ubiquitous Forrest Gump-like campaign history.

An Iowa native who settled in Wisconsin more than a decade ago, Vilmain was tapped last June to shore up the Clinton effort in a place where the New York senator had little history and faced her biggest political obstacles.

The hiring ended speculation that the former first lady might overlook Iowa. And while the Clinton campaign has been second-guessed about many things here, its organizational mettle is no longer one of them.

The Iowa caucus process is so personal, laborious and peculiar that getting the mechanics right can be the difference between glory and oblivion (ask Howard Dean).

"There is nothing (in politics) more organizationally intense than this," said Vilmain, who has worked all over the country but has a special expertise in two battleground states: Iowa and Wisconsin.

Vilmain has been described more than once as Clinton's secret weapon here.

"Teresa Vilmain could organize Jell-O," is how veteran Democrat and commentator Susan Estrich put it recently.

In Wisconsin, Vilmain has helped elect Sen. Herb Kohl and Gov. Jim Doyle, to name just two. She ran the state for former President Clinton's 1996 campaign and Al Gore's 2000 campaign, and she lent a late hand in 2004 for John Kerry. All three were Democratic victories, the last two by less than a percentage point. Wisconsin was the closest state in America in 2004.

"I think it's not overblown to say that in both of the very, very tight presidential races over last two times . . . Teresa's organizational ability and get-out-the-vote ability really were instrumental," Doyle said. "One of the often-asked questions in campaigns, if she's somewhere else, is 'What would Teresa do?' " Doyle said. "And because everybody has her cell phone - everybody in the world - you call her up and talk to her."

Growing up the sixth of eight kids in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Vilmain went to her first presidential caucus in 1972 at the age of 13. The Democratic caucuses are held in more than 1,700 precincts around the state. This one was in her own house. Her mother, Ruth, was active in the party.

First caucus in 1979

"They caucused everywhere - in the bedroom, the bathroom, the dining room, anywhere they could find space," said Ruth Vilmain.

Ruth's daughter worked her first caucus campaign in 1979 for Ted Kennedy. Trippi, who ran Dean's 2004 campaign, remembers working with Vilmain as $15-a-day county organizers. It was the first of three times Vilmain left college to join campaigns (she never finished).

In 1987, she went to work for early Democratic front-runner Gary Hart. One day, Vilmain put Hart on a plane to Miami, to find out later he went to meet his paramour, Donna Rice. When the Rice affair became public, the Hart for President campaign was over. Vilmain joined future nominee Michael Dukakis, running her first Iowa caucus in 1988.

She says some things about Iowa remain the same. Some have changed.

"It starts earlier. More money. More staff. More negative," Vilmain said. "Iowans don't like the negative. They don't like character attacks. They want a conversation about the issues. Blogs. Real-time reporting. E-mail. We didn't have 'rapid-response teams' (in 1988). You had 'communication shops.' You didn't have 'war rooms.' You had time on the communications side."

The current top Democratic campaigns - Clinton, Barack Obama and Edwards - have about three times the staff that Iowa winner Kerry had in 2004 (he had fewer than 100).

Tackling turnout issues

"It's 10 times more sophisticated than 2004," said Vilmain, referring to the way campaigns target potential supporters through phones, mail and door-knocking.

While all three organizations earn respect here, each has its own turnout issues to deal with.

Edwards typically has come in third in Iowa polls, but his supporters have a strong history of caucusing. His rural strength helps because the caucus system rewards candidates whose voters are spread around the state over those with deeper support in fewer places.

Obama now tops many polls, but some of his most fervent supporters - young voters - are notoriously unreliable caucus-goers.

Clinton's research suggests that many of the Iowans who support her - especially in her target demographic of middle-aged and elderly women - have never caucused before. So the campaign has tried to make it less daunting, launching a "Take Your Buddy to Caucus" drive.

"My favorite group in this process, and we have hundreds of them, are women in their 90s," Clinton told a crowd in Cedar Rapids this month. "They don't get around so well . . . (but) we'll send somebody to shovel the walk," Clinton said.

"To really be successful, you really need to bring in new people that hadn't been there before," said John Norris, who ran Kerry's winning Iowa effort and supports Obama in this race.

'Order out of chaos'

"It's like running a beehive," Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant and friend of Vilmain's, said of the Iowa campaign. She describes Vilmain's job as part baby-sitter (training scores of young staffers); part list-maker; part personal assistant (attending to Bill and Hillary Clinton on their visits); and part taxi dispatcher (moving candidates, staff and surrogates around the state amid snow, ice and fog that have shut down airports and made roadside wreckage a part of the landscape).

An aide for a rival campaign said the Iowa caucuses are about "bringing order out of chaos, and (Vilmain) does that really well."

Colleagues say a big part of Vilmain's effectiveness is personal, a blend of manic tempo, meticulousness, toughness and party-hearty fun.

She showed her backbone 20 years ago in the Dukakis campaign, when the Boston headquarters took so long to pay its bills that Iowa field offices were being shut down, the local party stopped providing voter lists and Vilmain began paying staffers out of her own pocket. Angry and fearful that the campaign's delinquency would hit the papers, she ordered the Iowa staff to stop talking to headquarters.

Boston got the message and paid its bills. After the caucuses, when the 29-year-old Vilmain was scolded over her mini-rebellion and told that her role would be diminished, she quit and never returned to the campaign.

'She knows everybody'

Vilmain's meticulousness takes many forms, from her computerized records of Christmas gift-giving to the Birthday Book she sends out each year to more than 1,200 friends and relatives so everyone she knows will know the birthdays of everyone else she knows.

"Whenever we have family gatherings of any kind, you will find lists taped up to all the cupboards letting everybody know where they need to be and when they need to be there," said mother Ruth.

Despite her self-admitted love of order, Vilmain is also known for mixing morale-boosting fun with the drudgery of campaign work. "She feeds people . . . she brings people into her own home," said Robin Schepper, a friend who has worked for the White House, the Democratic party and several presidential campaigns. "You're always laughing."

The Vilmain social calendar includes summer dance parties at her Dane County home and "Rolodex round-ups" in which Friends of Teresa converge at Washington bars.

"She knows everybody," said Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's national campaign manager in 2004.

Vilmain, whose mentor was a legendary party insider named Paul Tully, has trained a small army of younger organizers. The rival Democratic campaigns in Iowa are filled with people she has worked side by side with in the past.

"In Wisconsin politics, Democratic politics, it's Teresa's proteges that really take over these campaigns," Doyle said.

Drawing 80,000 people

Vilmain helped Doyle win his first general election in 2002 after supporting his primary opponent, Kathleen Falk, a good friend. She also guided his transition. With Doyle and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as clients, she turned down offers from Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe to serve as the party's 2004 general election strategist. McAuliffe dogged her with phone calls from big-name Democrats (Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton) until she said yes.

"She comes in, puts her charts up on the wall. She's got her magic markers, her hair flying," said McAuliffe, who is now national campaign chairman for Clinton.

Vilmain's job in 2004 included brokering the debate schedule among the Democratic contenders, and after Kerry emerged as the nominee, dispatching organizers to the battlegrounds.

Vilmain ended the campaign in ultra-competitive Wisconsin. She helped organize perhaps the biggest campaign event in the state's modern history, a Bruce Springsteen appearance that drew 80,000-plus people to the capital. When members of the crowd were asked to take out their phones to conduct the "world's biggest phone bank operation," they shut down the cell towers within 15 minutes.

GOP consultant Bill McCoshen of Madison said that "people on the Republican side that do this for a living know who the competition is," and "she's the best."

Vilmain started the current cycle with Vilsack's long-shot presidential bid. She became available to Clinton when Vilsack dropped out.

Deference to expertise

Democratic consultant Backus credits Vilmain with taking a "no-reward, high-risk job." Iowa was always a potential minefield for Clinton - where a front-runner's advantages in money and fame are diluted by the painstakingly personal nature of the campaign.

"We had a lot of catching up to do," McAuliffe said.

From the outside, the Clinton campaign is sometimes seen as a caldron of clashing personalities and opinions, with speculation rife about internal fights over strategy and clout.

"Teresa gets to deal with that problem, not me. I'm glad," said Iowan Norris, who said he got little interference from the national Kerry campaign when he ran the state four years ago.

Vilmain said that "contrary to popular belief, people are very open" in what is known as "Hillary World."

"You give up your life" in this job, Vilmain said, but "I'm glad I did it."

McAuliffe insisted that there is plenty of deference within the campaign to Vilmain's special expertise.

"I call her all the time. The president calls her all the time. Hillary Clinton calls her all the time," he said. But "we've never run a ground operation in Iowa. She is running that show out there."

Said McAuliffe: "Our success in Iowa is going to be what Teresa Vilmain can put on the ground.

By Craig Gilbert, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 24, 2007

DES MOINES - Given that he's polling at just 1% here, you might think Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd's Christmas party at a downtown saloon would be a lackluster, ill-attended affair.

You would be so wrong. Bolstered by Iowan idealism, the knowledge that it's nearly impossible to accurately poll the caucuses and an election history replete with startling upsets, supporters of caucus also-rans Dodd, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson are still doggedly looking on the bright side.

Ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's late gallop from the rear of the Republican pack to the front has stirred hope among the Democrats' dark horses. Never mind that Huckabee got his opening because GOP voters were much unhappier with their field than Democrats are with their Top 3 - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

"There is a lot more game left," said Harold Shaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, a Dodd backer insisting ebulliently that everything would fall into place for his man, whose shock of white hair bobbed in the beer-swilling crowd of youthful staffers.

Shaitberger was with John Kerry in 2003 when he was still at only 4% in the polls - just weeks before he pulled off a stunning come-from-behind victory over Howard Dean.

Steve Gerencser, who worked for Dean, is now Dodd's caucus director and blithely confident that Iowans can deliver another surprise. "I've seen this roller coaster before," he said. "Half of the electorate is still undecided. This is still wide open."

Undaunted by getting national headlines only when they deny they are really running for vice president or secretary of state, all three "also-rans" are meeting voters in coffee shops, union halls and veterans posts, hoping for a last-minute boomlet.

On Friday, while Edwards addressed several hundred people in West Des Moines, Richardson spoke to a few dozen gathered quietly in a community center 50miles away in Newton.

"The other candidates have all these fancy Secret Service agents and thousands of people taking care of them. I have this one Iowa kid," Richardson lamented good-naturedly as the aide adjusted his microphone.

A lot of the listeners were curious Iowa political tourists, not supporters. "I'm kind of a junkie on this stuff and I had the day off," said Bryan Tipton, 45, of Newton. "This is the second time I've seen him. He's great. But I'm voting for Edwards."

All three "second-tier" Democrats have avuncular demeanors and impressive résumés, which could appeal to late-deciding Iowans still not entranced by the leaders.

Biden's ad says: "Remarkable things can happen in the swirling dark cold of a January night."

Iowans will tell you it's nice to take a stand for an underdog before the caucus rules force you to pick a more viable second choice.

"This is a unique process here. My guy doesn't have a chance, but he's the one I think is the best, and I'm going to vote for him, goddamnit," said Iowa State English Prof. Dick Zbaracki, a Biden fan. "Then I guess I'll probably switch to Hillary."

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - A clash between Christmas vacations and the U.S. election calendar has left presidential campaigns in Iowa struggling with a shortage of student volunteers to call voters, distribute pamphlets and drive people to the polls.

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Clint Van Wuffen stood on a mountain of dirty snow outside the entrance to the Mall of New Hampshire yesterday, a chill wind flapping the blue McCain sign he held in his hands. "McCain! Whooo!" he and a a half-dozen other McCain campaign workers yelled, their words almost lost in the wind and the deafening traffic rushing around them. But, to their delight, three cars in a row honked. "Whoo!"

On any other Christmas Eve, Van Wuffen, 30, would be getting ready for a big family dinner at his sister's house back in Phoenix, but not this year. With the Jan. 8 primary just around the corner, Van Wuffen, like scores of campaign workers across the state, is staying in New Hampshire to squeeze in as much campaigning as possible - and to get back to work early tomorrow.

Most campaigns declared a yuletide hiatus in door-knocking and phone-calling yesterday, imposing a quiet period that will last until tomorrow morningm to avoid offending voters.

But many campaign offices continued working into the afternoon yesterday, as staff members put out yard signs, drew up assignments to election-day posts, built voter databases, and prepared for an onslaught of volunteers who would be arriving from across the country in the final two weeks of the campaign. (Most campaigns also continued advertising; according to WMUR-TV in Manchester, viewers would see a campaign ad almost every commerical break throughout Christmas Eve and Christmas Day).

But even the diehards planned to stop at some point to celebrate Christmas with fellow volunteers and staff members, to attend church, cook dinner, or take in a movie during the period when the campaigns go dark.

Theoretically, Corinne Roller, 25, a regional field director in Concord for Hillary Clinton, would have had time to make a quick visit to her family home in Charlottesville, Va. But Roller is one of three dozen or so Clinton staff members who decided to stay in New Hampshire. "We just wanted to stay here, so we could get right back to work on Wednesday," Roller said. "I love my family, but they totally understand the importance of what's going on up here."

The campaign, she added, has come to feel like family. Local supporters stop by the Concord office, a little gray clapboard house on the south side of town, with cookies or chili for the staff. Roller, who lives in rural Hillsborough with her boyfriend, a regional field director for the campaign in Keene, planned to go to church in Portsmouth with some Clinton staff last night and then spend Christmas Day together, as well.

Other campaign workers have marshalled their families to visit them. Kristy Stuart, 29, the field director for Mitt Romney's New Hampshire campaign, persuaded her sister, Lisa Roney, 22, to fly up from South Carolina to spend Christmas with her. "I was really bummed I couldn't go home for Christmas," she said, as she showed her sister around the Manchester office yesterday. "I totally bribed her."

"That's OK," Roney said. "It's better than being the only one with the grandparents."'

Romney's staff would have a hard time feeling lonely in New Hampshire, though. Yesterday, the campaign held a staff lunch and a secret Santa gift exchange at its Manchester headquarters, which was decorated with Christmas trees from a staff member's family's Christmas tree farm. They planned to get together for an "Orphans' Christmas" dinner at a Chinese restaurant last night.

And today, Emily Cantin, a 24-year-old member of Romney's field staff, plans to host an afternoon celebration at the apartment she shares with her brother in Manchester. Her parents, who live in Marlborough, Conn., are driving up to help serve pies, breads, and an assortment of hors d'oeuvres for about seven Romney staff members. Cantin is ready to celebrate. "I did all my shopping online at 3 a.m.," she said with a laugh.

Many of McCain's staff made it home for a quick holiday visit. But for Van Wuffen, the full-time volunteer for the campaign who stood in the snow with fellow campaign workers outside the Mall of New Hampshire yesterday, the trip would cost too much for too short a time.

So after sign-waving and a group lunch, he planned to head back to Brentwood, where he is staying alone at the home of a McCain supporter who is away in Phoenix visiting her sister for the holidays. He said he might watch his new "Bladerunner" DVD or catch up on some sleep. "It's kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Van Wuffen, who works for a government consulting firm and was granted a month's leave to volunteer for McCain. "This is a candidate I feel very strongly about."

He is also busy soaking up the local culture. He said he might drive down to Boston today to take some pictures of Fenway Park for his nephews. He sent everyone back home in Arizona a jug of maple syrup, which he had never tasted before. "It's unbelievable!" he said..

By Lisa Wangsness, The Boston Globe, December 25, 2007

US presidential hopefuls raced to consolidate their support and win over wavering voters before the Christmas and new year holidays, with both the Republican and Democratic contests looking increasingly unpredictable as voting nears.

Candidates had a greater sense of urgency as they sought to drive home their messages, aware that festive celebrations are likely to distract attention from the final stages of campaigning for next week's Iowa caucuses.

Polls show Hillary Clinton, the longtime Democratic frontrunner, locked in a dead heat with Barack Obama in Iowa - which holds the first of the state-by-state nominating contests on January 3 - with John Edwards still in contention.

The Democratic race also remained too close to call in New Hampshire, which votes on January 8.

Among Republicans, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, continues to lead the field in Iowa but polls show Mitt Romney, the one-time frontrunner, clawing back lost ground.

Mr Romney is ahead in New Hampshire but has a diminishing advantage over John McCain, while Rudy Giuliani is trying to protect his narrowing lead in the national polls - underscoring the fluid nature of the Republican race.

Both contests have become increasingly acrimonious as the polls tighten, with all the candidates exchanging verbal jabs over the weekend.

Mrs Clinton, senator for New York, was drawn into a renewed spat with Mr Obama, senator for Illinois, after he claimed that many former officials and advisers from former President Bill Clinton's administration were backing his campaign.

"Why is the national security adviser of Bill Clinton, the secretary of the navy of Bill Clinton, the assistant secretary of state for Bill Clinton, why are all these people endorsing me?" Mr Obama asked. "They apparently believe that my vision of foreign policy is better suited for the 21st century."

Mrs Clinton dismissed her rival's remarks as "silly". "This is not a campaign between advisers," she said. "This is a campaign between real people with experience and qualifications to become president on day one."

The dispute came as former President Clinton takes an increasingly central role in his wife's campaign, drawing hundreds of Democrats to events across Iowa.

Mr Obama is seeking to overcome perceptions - encouraged by the Clinton campaign - that he lacks experience, particularly on foreign policy matters.

Mrs Clinton, meanwhile, has spent the past week attempting to demonstrate the softer side of her personality to tackle perceptions that she is cold, calculating and lacking in charisma.

On Saturday, she appealed to women in New Hampshire to help her become the first female US president.

"When I'm president, we're not going to have to work so hard to help families take care of their children and their parents while they work," she said.

In the Republican race, Mr Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, launched twin offensives against Mr Huckabee in Iowa and Mr McCain in New Hampshire, questioning both men's records on tax cutting.

By Andrew Ward, Financial Times, December 24, 2007

Hillary Clinton has retaken a big lead with Iowa Democrats, according to a new American Research Group poll.

Other recent surveys have suggested a tight three-way race among Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, and some had Obama in the lead. But American Research showed her with 34% among likely caucusgoers, to 20% for Edwards and 19% for Obama.

The Dec. 20-23 sampling of 600 voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

New York Daily News, December 25, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US presidential candidates Monday took a brief breather for Christmas before hurtling into the home straight of the most unpredictable and gruelling White House nominating race in many years.

All but one of the Republican and Democratic contenders were spending the festive break away from the battleground state of Iowa, which kicks off the two parties' selection marathon on January 3.

But from Wednesday, Iowa will host a frenetic sprint as all the runners descend on the wintry state seeking to breast the finishing tape, or at least end in a credible enough position to carry them through to later races.

There was little Christmas cheer among the top-tier Democrats as, heading into the break, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama kept up their mutual sniping with polls showing the former first lady's lead in Iowa evaporating.

In the fluid Republican field, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was unabashed in defying political correctness and showing a television spot stressing that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ.

The Baptist minister has come from nowhere in the polls to take a lead in Iowa over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and even threaten Rudy Giuliani's status as national frontrunner for the Republicans.

While pitching his message to evangelical conservatives in Iowa, Huckabee said on CBS television Sunday that he would be president "of all America."

"And that's how I served as governor," he said. "People look at my record and they didn't see that I put a tent out on the capitol grounds and had healing services, and I didn't replace the dome with a steeple."

In her own festive broadcast, Clinton was shown wrapping presents marked with her signature policies: universal healthcare, alternative energy, bringing troops home from Iraq, and nursery school education for all infants.

Obama, the Illinois senator bidding to be America's first black president, appeared with his wife and two young daughters in front of a Christmas tree and log fire to stress his core message of hope and change. "In this holiday season, we're reminded that the things that unite us as a people are more powerful and enduring than anything that sets us apart," he said in his seasonal spot.

For most of the candidates, Christmas Eve marked the start of a two-day break to spend time with family and friends in their home states before the last hectic bout of New Year's campaigning in Iowa.

Democratic contender Christopher Dodd was alone in staying in Iowa with his family after rolling up a "Twelve Days of Results Tour" -- extolling his policy achievements rather than a partridge in a pear tree. But the Connecticut senator said he would not be campaigning as such, observing "it would take a tin ear to give a stump speech on Christmas Eve."

Ahead of next November's national vote, the Iowa caucuses are coming earlier than ever in this compressed calendar, followed by the New Hampshire primaries on January 8 and other states through to "Super Duper Tuesday" in February.

The Giuliani campaign has taken the high-risk strategy of largely bypassing Iowa and New Hampshire to focus on Florida, which votes on January 29, and then other big states such as California and New York on February 5. But with his national poll lead slipping, the former New York mayor was to join the rest of the field in Iowa after Christmas, promising to go full bore after a brief hospital stay last week for "flu-like symptoms."

Interviewed on ABC News, Giuliani said tests had shown no return of the prostate cancer that forced him out of the New York senate race against Clinton in 2000, and stressed he was feeling "hale and hearty." Clad in a red sweater, Giuliani took a humorous nod at the exhausting pace of the 2008 marathon in a Christmas ad that listed his own policy priorities. "With the primaries coming so early this year, I've got to tell you, I'm having a little trouble getting my holiday shopping done," he said, offering the same gift to all voters -- a safe America, low taxes and a fruitcake.

AFP, December 24, 2007

FORT DODGE, Iowa - At his final campaign stop last Tuesday, former President Bill Clinton called attention to his wife's international experience. She visited 83 countries, he said. In polls of many nations, people preferred her to all other candidates of both parties. And when it came to making peace in Northern Ireland - which he described as one of his proudest achievements - Hillary, he claimed, had laid the groundwork by reaching out to Irish women.

In Bill's telling of it, by the time the leaders of the various factions sat down, they had already heard an earful about the need for peace from their wives, thanks to Hillary's intervention with Irish women.

It was a passing remark, but noteworthy in one respect: For all of the Clintons' efforts to woo women voters by trumpeting the history-making aspect of electing the first female president, neither Bill nor Hillary has emphasized the idea that there might be a substantive difference in having a woman in office - that a woman might be able to achieve things that a man could not.

Like women who have been elected to top offices in other countries - such as the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the current German chancellor, Angela Merkel - Hillary Clinton has been careful to present herself as exactly the equal of men, not different because of her gender. There is obvious political peril in claiming that women think differently than men - it's a can of worms that most successful female candidates have been reluctant to open.

But Democrats are so distressed by America's low image in the world that many primary election voters seem to be looking for the biggest possible change of image in the White House. And that makes them receptive to the first woman president or, perhaps even more emphatically, the first African-American president.

Now, as some globally minded Democrats get ready to cast their votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, it is hard not to believe that somewhere in the back of their minds they are assessing the relative merits of the first black or the first woman, and wondering which would do more to change the world.

Unlike Clinton, Illinois Senator Barack Obama openly suggests that his background - both as the son of parents of different races and as a person who spent part of his childhood in Muslim-dominated Indonesia - would enable him to appeal to other nations on different terms.

"The morning I am inaugurated, America will look at itself differently, and the world will look at America differently," he has said repeatedly on the campaign trail. And he makes clear that the difference will not be just symbolic: He has said he would cite his years in Indonesia as a way to gain credibility with leaders of Muslim countries, and would point to his African grandmother to create a bridge to the Third World.

There is little doubt that Obama's background gives him a unique stature - and that having him as the symbol of America could alter perceptions of the United States in Africa, Asia, and South America. Emphasizing the multiracial aspect of the United States to a multiracial world could give the American Dream new currency: It would prove that American values are applicable to everyone. Such a possibility is obviously thrilling to the Democrats who've flooded Obama's campaign events.

There is excitement around Clinton, too, of a different sort. She has pushed the idea that her election would be a benchmark in the struggle for women's equality, and she tells of the 90-year-old women who've remarked that they were born before women could vote and want to see a woman president before they die.

But others have suggested that having a woman as commander in chief could mean more. Swanee Hunt, former US ambassador to Austria, an arch-admirer of Hillary Clinton, has built a study center at Harvard University around the idea that women view foreign policy differently than men - and that there would be fewer conflicts if women had an equal say in world affairs. Hunt has recommended that the United States require, as a condition for its cooperation, that half of all peace delegations be women - believing that women have a greater stake in maintaining peace agreements.

Clinton hasn't dared suggest such a thing. But with her primary rival saying that his background could change the world, the door is open for her to try. There clearly are risks, but there could be rewards as well.

By Peter S. Canellos, The Boston Globe, December 25, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa - It was Christmas Eve and her family was all together back in Arkansas. Except for her. But Sarah Huckabee wouldn't leave Iowa. Huckabee, daughter of the Republican presidential candidate and Iowa front-runner Mike Huckabee, decided along with the small staff of four that runs the Huckabee campaign office here to remain through the holiday. "If one of us is going to stay, all of us are going stay," she said, near a banner that read "Merry Christmas and a Huckabee New Year."

This year, politics has to be thicker than blood. But she isn't alone in her dedication. With the compressed political calendar, the campaign staffs here have had no choice but to keep working. As Kevin Madden, press secretary to Mitt Romney, says of Romney's headquarters here: "Des Moines never closes." And indeed, Gentry Collins, Romney's state director, was hitting the mall Monday afternoon, his Christmas shopping for his three young children unfinished, all the while talking of turnout rates and precinct-to-precinct strategies.

On the day before Christmas, the city was nearly empty. A leading hotel favored by campaign staff members and journalists was 15 percent full. But those who've stayed behind to work on presidential candidates' campaigns are more restive than restful, waiting eagerly to resume the battle Wednesday about a week before the caucuses. The next few days will be crucial in a state that is essentially a tossup on both sides.

Even the so-called dead zone before Wednesday won't truly be that. Mixed among ads touting post-holiday markdowns, the on-air campaigns will continue.

The problem, other than the calendar, lies in the numbers. The race is so close to call on the Democratic end that no one can look you in eye and tell you who will win. On Sunday, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama took it as far as they could, even with a snowstorm almost paralyzing the state.

Clinton winged in early from New Hampshire only to have weather scuttle her last planned event of the day. Depending on the poll, Clinton and Obama are neck and neck with John Edwards coming up on the rail.

Meanwhile, Republicans Huckabee and Romney are waging their own tight struggle. Theirs pits momentum against organization. Earlier Monday, Huckabee took advantage of the relaxed Christmas news cycle by storming the cable-news networks. His daughter, who has a high-level role in the campaign, watched as he was interviewed for more than 10 minutes on CNBC.

"A good chunk of time," Iowa campaign manager Eric Woolson said, approvingly.

"That's the tie I bought for him," Sarah Huckabee said.

But after Mike Huckabee finished the interview, Democratic strategist and Edwards adviser Joe Trippi came on and opined that, after visiting a Huckabee event at a mall, he doesn't have the resources to compete, his "candidacy has outstripped his supply line." Sarah Huckabee frowned. "He knows that from one visit to the mall?" she said.

Resources are what the Romney camp is counting on. The campaign has built an elaborate network of supporters here only to see Huckabee sweep by in the last month. "Organizationally we're staying the course," Collins, Romney's state director, said.

Romney's challenge, Collins said, is fighting both in Iowa and New Hampshire to win. By contrast, his rivals Huckabee and John McCain have each concentrated on winning only one of those states.

"We also don't have the risk. If Mike Huckabee loses in Iowa, he's in deep trouble. If John McCain doesn't win in New Hampshire, he's in big trouble," he said.

Romney won't return to Iowa until the end of the week. He'll begin the post-Christmas campaign in New Hampshire. Edwards will also spend Wednesday in New Hampshire before coming to Iowa on Thursday. Huckabee is returning to Iowa early Wednesday for a pheasant hunt.

Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama will both come back to Iowa on Wednesday.

Late Monday afternoon, Obama's Des Moines office was humming even as Clinton's and Edwards' offices were closing for the holiday. The single-floor structure on Locust Street was filled with more than 70 staff members and volunteers, some wearing Santa caps, poring over precinct maps. That evening, the mother of the campaign's state director was to cook dinner for the staff.

Obama's challenge in the coming days will be responding to critical TV ads launched by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which is loyal to Clinton, and the Service Employees International Union, which is loyal to Edwards. "We just have to keep our head down and get to work," said Obama's Iowa press secretary, Tommy Vietor.

Also hitting the ground running after Christmas will be Sen. Joseph Biden, who is making a spirited final bid to inject himself into the mix.

It was the spring of 2004, and Senator John Kerry had just secured the Democratic presidential nomination. But as huge sums of money began pouring into his campaign, his top strategists had more on their minds than just getting ready for a tough race against President George W. Bush.

Behind the scenes, they were fighting over the lucrative fees for handling Kerry's television advertising. The campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, became so fed up over the squabbling that she told the consultants, led by Robert Shrum, one of the most prominent and highly paid figures in the business, to figure out how to split the money themselves.

Divvy it up they did. Though the final tally has never been publicly disclosed, interviews and records show that the five strategists and their firms ultimately took in nearly $9 million, the richest payday for any Democratic media consultants up to then and roughly what the Bush campaign paid its consultants for a more extensive ad campaign.

Shrum and his two partners, Tad Devine and Mike Donilon, walked away with $5 million of the total. And that was after Cahill, in the closing stages of the race that fall, diverted $1 million that would otherwise have gone to the consultants to buying more advertising time in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to defeat Bush.

Questions about how the Kerry campaign could have become such a bonanza for one small group of advisers - and whether the fees squandered money that could have been used for courting voters - are still reverberating inside Democratic circles as the 2008 campaign moves into high gear. And with more money than ever on the line this time around, resentment has been building, donors and other operatives say, at how, win or lose, presidential elections have become gold mines for the small and often swaggering band of media consultants who dominate modern campaigns.

As a result, the Democratic presidential hopefuls are seeking to impose more controls on the consultants. In doing so, they are moving more into line with their Republican counterparts, who by and large have kept tighter rein on how they handle their media teams, which shape the candidates' messages, produce their television ads and buy the air time.

The three leading Democrats - Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards - are all clamping down. They are following what has become an almost standard practice among Republican presidential nominees by paying their media advisers flat fees, or placing a cap on their payments, rather than making payments based on a percentage of the amount they pay television stations to broadcast their commercials.

Even with the changes, media consultants in both parties will continue to be paid handsomely for their work in the 2008 campaign, and their business continues to be one of the largest and most lucrative in politics.

But beyond the internal pressures to limit payments to consultants, campaigns face increasing pressure from the Internet as an alternative for disseminating political videos. That development is reducing reliance on expensive television advertising time, diminishing the control of consultants over their candidates' images and threatening more fundamental changes.

Already, the shift in the way consultants are being paid is far-reaching. The old approach allowed the fees to shoot up with increases in advertising in hotly contested races. Critics say it also provided a built-in incentive for the consultants to run more ads - a concern that has led to infighting in many races.

In interviews, aides said Clinton, of New York, and Edwards, of North Carolina, had negotiated flat fees with their top consultants. And Obama, of Illinois, has capped what his consultants can earn, which will convert their more traditional percentage deal into a flat fee once his ad spending passes a certain threshold, his aides say.

"That is a startling change in the way major Democratic presidential candidates operate," said James Thurber, a professor at American University in Washington who has studied political consultants.

Like other consultants, Shrum, who with his partners also earned about $3 million of the $7 million in fees paid by Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, defended the fees he earned. "I don't make any apologies for the fact that I managed to make a career out of something I love to do," Shrum said.

Shrum, who is not involved in this year's race, has been criticized for favoring the same populist themes in both the Gore and Kerry losses. But he and other Democratic consultants say the work has become even more difficult as the presidential campaigns get longer, the audiences become more fractured and the attacks and counterattacks force them to churn out more and more ads. They also said that they often had to pay subcontractors to help, and that the Republican consultants could afford to charge less because they earned more doing similar work for corporate clients.

Leaders in both parties say the presidential nominees could each spend more than $200 million on television ads next year. That compares with $177 million for Bush, who also paid about $9 million in fees for his re-election campaign in 2004, and $150 million for Kerry in that race.

"Flat fees are definitely the way to go, because they remove any question of a conflict of interest in making the ad buys and they keep the fees from drifting higher," said Leslie Kerman, a Democratic campaign-finance lawyer who has long pushed for lower fees.

But, Kerman said, the top consultants, who revel in the combat of politics and their celebrity status, will still take home at least two to three times as much as pollsters and other political consultants.

"Democratic campaigns tend to treat media consultants like rock stars, and the consultants will still want to be paid like rock stars," she said.

For instance, if Clinton were to win the Democratic nomination, her aides say, she would pay a total of $5 million in fees to a half-dozen advisers - including Mark Penn, her top strategist; Mandy Grunwald, her media consultant; and Howard Wolfson, her communications director - for their work on her ads in both the primary and the general elections.

Clinton would also pay a commission of just under 2 percent of her television advertising expenditures to a time-buying firm unaffiliated with her consultants. That firm would pick the best moments to run the spots and bargain with the television stations over the cost of ad time.

This means that if Clinton were to spend $200 million on ads, she would pay the same total of $9 million in fees as Kerry did, but gain one-third more air time. Were she to pay her media team under the same terms enjoyed by Kerry's team, she would end up paying them $11 million to $12 million in a $200 million television campaign, or $2 million to $3 million more than the Kerry operatives received.

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, would not disclose the dollar level of the caps on his fees. But he said that the caps were likely to keep the fees for all of Obama's consultants "well below" the 6 percent to 7 percent rate that Democratic presidential candidates have paid in the last several elections.

Still, Obama's campaign illustrates how the relationships between consultants and campaigns have raised concerns about conflicts of interest. His campaign manager, David Plouffe, is on leave from his regular job as a partner in Axelrod's consulting firm, and he is now overseeing Axelrod's ad purchases. But both Axelrod and Plouffe say the caps on the fees have eased any concern about a potential conflict since Axelrod's firm will essentially be working free after the caps are hit, eliminating any financial incentive to recommend increased advertising spending.

Joe Trippi, who was criticized for accepting a percentage of the ad buys while he managed Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004, said he and two associates were now being paid $17,500 a month to create ads for Edwards.

Among the Republicans, Mitt Romney, who has spent the most so far on advertising, seems to be closely following the approach used by Bush. Using flat fees of $250,000 to $500,000 apiece, Bush's campaign paid far less in 2004 to its ad strategists, led by Mark McKinnon, a Texas-based consultant, than Kerry did. But it also spread its money around to other consultants, including nearly $5 million to National Media Inc., a time-buying firm, to research the best audiences for its ads and place them on a broader mix of outlets.

Over the years, the Democrats have tended to build their advertising teams around a few highly paid stars whose focus is politics, while the Republicans often spread their fees among a broad mix of political consultants and ad executives from Madison Avenue. Democrats have tended to pay slightly higher percentages of their advertising budgets in fees and commissions, but those small differences have often added up to millions of dollars in additional compensation.

Gerald Rafshoon, who owned an ad agency in Atlanta, recalled that he received a 15 percent fee, then the standard for commercial accounts - roughly $2 million, including his expenses - to create and place about $13 million of ads for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Perhaps the most celebrated Republican effort, the so-called Tuesday Team that produced the upbeat "Morning in America" ad for Ronald Reagan in 1984, received $4 million, mostly in flat fees, said Douglas Watts, the campaign's media director. That amounted to 11 percent of a $36 million ad budget.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton's re-election committee slashed the fee percentage, and a small group of consultants split $7.1 million on just over $100 million in ads for the campaign and the Democratic Party. They included Dick Morris, the strategist; Penn, the pollster; and William Knapp, a media consultant.

In 2000, Gore's campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid almost $7 million in fees to Shrum, Devine, Donilon, Knapp and the campaign's chief media consultant, Carter Eskew, on roughly $100 million in ads. The fees, which also covered the cost of a number of contractors, amounted to about 7 percent of the budget.

By contrast, Bush and the Republican National Committee paid a combined $8.7 million in fees, or about 6 percent, on $145 million in ads.

Tony Coelho, who managed part of Gore's bid, said he had "a huge fight" with Shrum and Devine shortly after the Democratic primary season over how to divide the campaign's tight cash reserve between television ads and field organizing.

Coelho said he thought the consultants had "a real conflict" in that they were "setting up the media buy, and they were getting a commission on the media buy on top of that."

"And to a great degree," he added, "the media consultants won the battle, but we lost the war. If you had put more into the political operations in Ohio or one of two other states, Gore would be president."

But Shrum and Devine said Bush, who had raised far more money, was spending twice as much as Gore on advertising in crucial states, and the Gore campaign had no choice but to try to close that gap.

Devine said the ads helped bring Gore back from a 17-point deficit in national polls to the cliff-hanging finish. "I was in no way going to move money to media if it was in any way going to diminish our chance of winning," Devine said.

The Kerry campaign's decision to divert part of the fees near the end of the 2004 race helped fuel the efforts to clamp down on the consultants, and Shrum said he and his partners recognized that "sometimes you have to be willing to take less money if you're committed to the thing."

But the bigger change may come as the Web redefines the entire media world. John Brabender, a Republican consultant who is working for Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign, said that 5 percent to 10 percent of advertising expenses were already going to the Web. And Trippi, who helped pioneer the use of online fund-raising during Dean's campaign, said the Edwards campaign had produced attack videos for the Web for as little as $800, a tiny fraction of what it costs to create and broadcast a television commercial.

"A new generation of people who got into politics in 2004 can see the big changes with the Internet," Trippi said, "and many of them have now moved up to field director and are a cycle or two away from running campaigns. And the way the Net is going, by the time they get there, the old commission structure will be dead, and everyone will have flat fees."

By Christopher Drew, International Herald Tribune, December 25, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Hattie Irving, an 81-year old Iowan, has never participated in her state's presidential caucuses, but she plans to this time - to support Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The upbeat pre-Christmas tone of the 2008 presidential campaign is about to shift.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa - If there were any doubts how competitive the presidential race remained, fresh proof could be found Sunday in the itineraries of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who risked testing the holiday patience of voters as they campaigned across the state before suspending politicking for a Christmas break.

"I'm grateful for your attention," Mr. Obama told voters along the way. "I want to wish you all the happiest holidays."

With 11 days remaining before the presidential nominating contest opens in Iowa, followed five days later by the New Hampshire primary, candidates gave a nod to the holiday season through their television commercials. But they devoted their time with voters to drawing distinctions with their rivals and refining their closing themes.

As holiday shoppers finished their purchases, Mr. Obama used the moment to renew his call to ban toys imported from China with more than a trace amount of lead. He called for independent testing of toys to protect American consumers.

Mrs. Clinton sought to remind voters of her experience, saying, "Do we take a leap of faith and once again bind the wounds of those who hurt, create a country that we're proud of, assume the leadership and moral authority of the world that we should, or will we continue to just slowly but surely fall backwards?"

Among Republicans, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York addressed voters at a restaurant in Hampton, N.H., and a coffeehouse in Hampstead, appearing animated after a health scare caused him to be hospitalized one night last week. When a woman praised his administrative abilities but added that she feared he did not have the kind of Washington experience that Senator John McCain of Arizona did, Mr. Giuliani said, "John would be a really good adviser."

Mr. Giuliani then quickly praised Mr. McCain, calling him "a really fine man" and "a hero of mine."

As a Boston Globe poll on Sunday showed that Mr. McCain had pulled within a statistical tie of former Gov. Mit Romney of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney ignored Mr. Giuliani and drew distinctions with Mr. McCain, particularly on immigration and the Bush administration's tax cuts.

"Right now, Senator McCain and I are both battling for your support and your vote," Mr. Romney told an audience in Peterborough, N.H. "He's a good man, but we have differing views on this."

Mr. McCain was on vacation, but his senior adviser, Mark Salter, responded in a terse statement, saying: "New Hampshire is on to you, Mitt. Give it a rest. It's Christmas."

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who spoke at a Texas church and held a fund-raiser before returning to Arkansas for the holidays, defended the religious message of his Christmas advertisement being broadcast in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Appearing on "Face the Nation" on CBS, Mr. Huckabee said he was campaigning to be "president of all America, to be the people's president," not only to represent Christians.

None of the Republican candidates campaigned Sunday in Iowa, where snow, ice and high winds complicated travel once again. By nightfall, Mr. Clinton had canceled an appearance in Decorah and Mrs. Clinton had scrapped a stop in Dubuque.

If there was a question of why some candidates bothered to campaign on Sunday, given the proximity to the holiday, the prospect of not turning out large crowds or the potential of alienating Iowans, conversations with voters during the day put the matter to rest.

Joyce and John Amdor, who live in western Iowa near the town of Defiance, came to a meeting for Mr. Obama in Harlan. They have seen virtually all of the Democratic candidates, but remain undecided.

"I think this is about as important a thing as we've got to do in the next week and a half," Mrs. Amdor said. Before turning to leave the event, Mr. Amdor added, "It's almost immoral if we don't participate."

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - To hear Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her allies tell it, all this talk of a polarizing Hillary is hooey. Just look at how she won over Republican areas of New York state, they say, and you'll see how she can win over red states once they get to know her better.

Outside the Price Chopper in Hudson, N.Y., on a recent rainy afternoon, the reaction to that thesis was, shall we say, a tad skeptical.

"Hillary Clinton!? I Haaaate that woman," retiree Albert Smith bellowed. "I don't want her back in the White House."

Asked of she had been a poor senator, Smith paused. He cocked his head and dropped his voice considerably. "Actually," the Republican mused, "I'd have to say she's been okay in the Senate. She knows the issues. She's been fine."

Welcome to New York's 20th Congressional District, a Republican stronghold where the image of Clinton is, like most everything about her, multilayered and complex.

It's easy to find Republicans and independents ambivalent or hostile toward Clinton's presidential campaign. Some voters pointedly note that she never made good on her promise to create 200,000 jobs in struggling upstate New York, and others lament that a Clinton presidency would only mean more polarization in America.

But even those who dislike her tend to give her credit for learning the intricacies of her adopted home state and fighting for it. If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, there's at least some evidence amid the farms and depressed rural villages across New York to suggest she could wear well over what may be the longest general election campaign in presidential history.

"I think she's really shown she can do the job," said Republican Ellen Crawford, a family advocate from Columbiaville. "A lot of people around here are very strong Republicans and the fact that so many of them are undecided about whether they'd vote for Hillary Clinton for president says a lot about the job she's done."

Does Clinton's success in Republican leaning New York counties prove she can win over Republicans across the country? No.

It's true that in her 2006 Senate re-election campaign Clinton won 58 of New York's 62 counties, compared to just 15 counties in 2000. But Clinton spent $35-million in a horrible year for Republicans to beat a little-known former Yonkers mayor, John Spencer, who spent a fraction of her money.

"That was a function of no real opposition. I don't think that Hillary really wants to point to her last race as indicative of a tough race where you're really tested," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who had planned to run against Clinton for the Senate seat in 2000 until prostate cancer sidelined him, told the St. Petersburg Times. "I'm the only Republican who has a chance to win New York."

A Dec. 4-10 Quinnipiac University poll found Clinton leading Giuliani 53 percent to 32 percent in New York, increasing her lead by 7 percentage points since October.

But as strong as Clinton performed in 2006, her landslide win still fell short by 3 points of the 70 percent share fellow Democrat Elliot Spitzer received in the New York governor's race.

Besides, winning upstate New York, where Republicans tend to be the moderate Rockefeller variety, is hardly akin to winning upstate South Carolina. Or Florida's Panhandle, for that matter.

Still, Clinton demonstrated in New York that she can change people's negative perceptions of her.

'Fighter for New York'

"Absolutely," said Fred Dicker of the New York Post, the dean of the Capitol press corps in New York. "She's seen as a fighter for New York and is perceived as a skilled politician who's not necessarily an archetypal liberal. ... She has impressed many, many people who are Republican-oriented with her knowledge and interest in issues that matter to them."

This congressional district, dotted with hardscrabble towns, apple and dairy farms overlooking breathtaking vistas, and a few yuppiefied downtowns to please transplanted Manhattanites, stretches 140 miles between the Hudson River Valley to Lake Placid in the Adirondacks.

It's the birthplace of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but even he couldn't win this Republican stronghold when he ran for president. President Bush won it by 8 percentage points in 2004, and 7 percentage points in 2000, though a Democrat did unseat a Republican for the District 20 congressional seat last year.

It was in this district, at the rural Pindars Corners farm of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that Clinton in July 1999 announced a "listening tour" of New York as a precursor to formally announcing for the Senate.

What started off as a battle of titans - Clinton vs. Giuliani - turned into a lopsided contest between Clinton and Long Island Rep. Rick Lazio. Though he matched her roughly $40-million in spending, Lazio never proved to be serious competition.

Pundits derided the listening tour as a phony political show, but in many respects it signaled the kind of senator she would be.

Throughout her first term she constantly visited local communities, particularly in struggling Republican upstate New York, and her attention to detail showed. Local governments came to see that she was accessible and responsive to their requests for support of flood relief or economic development grants. She dug in and learned their issues.

"The term I would use for her, which I don't think we can apply to enough public officials, is that she's genuinely curious," said Plattsburgh-North Country Chamber of Commerce president Garry Douglas.

He describes himself as a "very conservative" Republican, and said Clinton would make 2008 the first time he had voted for a Democrat for president. "To get to know Hillary personally is to like her. It has moved many thousands of people upstate beyond whatever impression that may have had of her. She's disarming, she's real, she's genuine."

Peter Gregg of the New York Farm Bureau recounted Clinton's visit to the Washington County Fair last year, a vignette he said is typical of Clinton.

No guarantee

"Her advance people said she probably wouldn't be able to stay long, and then she literally stayed for hours. She really took a great interest in chatting with farmers and learning about what they were exhibiting," said Gregg, noting that farmers' initial skepticism of Clinton disappeared fast. "We love her."

That's hardly a universal view, though. Talk to enough people in this congressional district and it's clear there's no guarantee Clinton would win it in a presidential contest. But they also suggest the candidate whom many people think they already know, perhaps too well, is not so predictable.

"She came in and everybody said she's this carpetbagger who just wanted a stepping stone to the White House. But then people saw that she's extremely well-prepared, did her homework, and really paid attention to upstate New York," said 66-year-old independent voter Nikole Mook, who manages book sales at the Saratoga Springs Library. "My next door neighbor wears a shirt that says, 'I don't speak to Democrats,' and I think even he thinks she's been a good senator."

That doesn't mean he'll vote for a President Clinton, though.

By Adam C. Smith, St Petersburg Times, December 25, 2007

DES MOINES--The photographers started yelling as Hillary Clinton boarded the helicopter.

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Roughly half of Democratic Party supporters in the United States want Hillary Rodham Clinton as their presidential nominee next year, according to a poll by Opinion Dynamics released by Fox News. 49 per cent of respondents would back the New York senator in a 2008 primary.

Illinois senator Barack Obama is second with 20 per cent, followed by former North Carolina senator John Edwards with 10 per cent. Support is lower for Delaware senator Joe Biden, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich, and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel.

On Dec. 22, Biden called on Iowa voters to support his bid, saying, "If you conclude today, tomorrow or any day up to the 3rd that I'm the most qualified person in this race, don't get sucked into saying he may be the most qualified but he can't win. I can win if you caucus for me. I can win if you caucus for me."

But Grove has a backup plan.

If Richardson fails to qualify under Iowa's complicated system of counting Democratic caucus votes, Grove says he will switch his vote to former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Edwards, the former vice presidential candidate, is sort of the bridesmaid of the Democratic Iowa caucus. While most polls show Edwards running a close third behind Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the polls also say that Edwards is the most popular second choice among potential caucus participants.

Second choices usually don't fare well in politics. In Iowa, though, being second could be critical to success.

When Iowa Democrats caucus on Jan. 3, candidates who receive less than 15 percent of the vote are considered nonviable. Their backers have the choice of either going home or casting their ballots for their second choice.

The three leading candidates, Obama, Clinton and Edwards, should get roughly three-quarters of the Iowa caucus vote, according to polls. All three campaigns have been heavily courting the supporters of candidates who may not receive 15 percent -- most likely Richardson, Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

Most everywhere Edwards goes in Iowa, he talks about what a stellar group of Democrats are running for president. He avoids criticizing the second tier of candidates. Before many campaign rallies, Edwards meets privately with undecided voters selected by his staff.

The other candidates are making similar efforts to reach out to supporters of their competitors. The courtship is soft sell because nobody wants to offend the backers of other candidates by saying that their guy is probably toast.

The courtship has led Clinton, Obama and Edwards to treat the second-tier candidates with deference. When Biden was asked during a recent debate about some racially insensitive remarks he made, Obama quickly jumped to Biden's defense. Clinton and Edwards applauded Biden.

Meanwhile, voters who think they have already found Mr. or Mrs. Right are still shopping for Mr. or Mrs. Almost Right.

Grove, a 64-year-old retired school superintendent, attended an Edwards rally in Council Bluffs. It was the third time he had seen Edwards speak. He has also gone to two Richardson speeches, one Clinton speech, one Obama speech and, even though he is a Democrat, to speeches by Republicans Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul.

"It's fun going to these things," Grove said. "It's the beauty of being retired." Grove picked Edwards as his second choice because he likes Edwards' emphasis on helping restore rural America and his populist message about the declining middle class. "I like his fighting spirit," he said.

Grove was moved by a new video that the Edwards campaign showed before the rally. The video included photos of a shuttered textile mill in Edwards' boyhood home of Robbins, N.C., and Edwards in football pads and footage of his father, Wallace, recalling how he taught his son -- who had come home bloodied one day from school -- never to start a fight but never to walk away from one, either. Wallace notes that his son whipped the bigger boy the next day.

Grove said that if that video were shown across the state, Edwards would win Iowa. "Most of my career has been in small towns and, in Iowa, they are disappearing," Grove said. "His message really resonates with you. I just personally like him."

At a rally in the small town of Le Mars, which bills itself as the "Ice Cream Capital of the World," Winter asked Edwards pointed questions. Why should Democrats believe he is the strongest candidate, he asked, given that Edwards didn't win the Democratic nomination in 2004, that the Kerry-Edwards ticket didn't carry North Carolina in 2004 and that Edwards lost his debate with Vice President Dick Cheney in 2004?

Edwards responded by saying he had "the seasoning and the toughness" to win the White House. He noted a recent CNN poll that showed him as the only Democrat who would defeat every potential Republican candidate in the fall.

"You learn," Edwards said. "You grow. You get stronger."

Winter, a 24-year-old law student from Sibley, Iowa, said later that he was leaning toward Clinton as his second choice.

"His answer essentially is that he is very self-confident -- he believes in himself," Winter said of Edwards. "The problem with that is he is not running against himself. He's running against other people."

A poll by Iowa State University found that 22.7 percent of likely Iowa caucus participants say Edwards is their second choice. Obama was the second choice of 20.1 percent of those surveyed, while 13.8 percent favored Clinton as their second choice. Other polls also have shown Edwards leading as a second choice.

"That is good news for Edwards," said James McCormick, chairman of the political science department at Iowa State. "He and Obama are running neck and neck for second choice. That is why it is a little bit dangerous to count Edwards or Obama out.

By Rob Christensen, The News & Observer, December 24, 2007

IN the state of New Hampshire, where Hillary Clinton is locked in a neck-and-neck struggle with Barack Obama, her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, the Clintons learnt long ago that the race for the White House is not to the swiftest, but to the candidates with the staying power and the grit to slog to the finish, through embarrassments and reversals.

The Clintons were visiting an organic yoghurt factory during Bill's 1992 White House campaign. His affair with Gennifer Flowers, a nightclub singer, had already been revealed when suddenly an old letter emerged exposing him as a Vietnam draft dodger.

He went into the cooler room, lay down on the floor, stared at the ceiling and thought, "It's over." But Hillary stayed in control. "She really carried the ball," said Meg Hirschberg, the wife of the factory owner. "He was very upset and distracted, but she smoothed everything over. She's tough." Bill Clinton went on to crown himself "the comeback kid", even though he only came in second in New Hampshire. As his wife's campaign stumbles and loses momentum, her team are recalling how Bill got through his near-death experience to create the new legend of Hillary, the "comeback girl".

The bar is being set so low that insiders say she would have to lose three of the earliest voting states to Obama ? Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina ? before becoming seriously rattled. One or two losses would not be enough.

"The Clintons are famous for having the drive to keep going through the toughest crises and constantly fighting against the odds," said Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff. "If you don't have that fire in the belly, you're not going to make it."

Karl Rove, the architect of President George W Bush's victories, last week described the "longest leadership selection contest in the democratic world" as a mess. "Next fall we'll elect a president who's spent two years rocketing around the country in an aluminium tube and sleeping in strange hotel rooms on a brutal, exhausting campaign trail," Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

The marathon endurance test has left its mark on Hillary Clinton's 60-year-old face. A picture on the Drudge Report website last week showed her with the bags and crow's-feet of a woman who has spent the past year drumming up votes and fundraising coast to coast, prompting Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, to ask, "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?"

Women age, men mature, Limbaugh suggested unkindly. As if to confirm this thesis John McCain, the 71-year-old Arizona senator who describes himself as "older than dirt, with more scars than Frankenstein", has reemerged as a potential Republican winner, even though his campaign collapsed in acrimony in the summer. His resurrection suggests that the long-running primary season has the merit of allowing voters to kick the tyres of all the candidates before declaring a preference.

Tom Edmonds, a Republican consultant who predicted McCain's demise last summer, said: "I can see a scenario where the guy I beat up on could be a safe haven for Republican voters." Yet last week brought a last-minute surprise for the tried and tested McCain, who was accused of doing legislative favours for a female lobbyist, a charge that he vehemently denies.

As the campaigns enter the final stretch, dirt has been flying liberally. In the National Enquirer last week John Edwards, the Democratic candidate, was accused of impregnating Rielle Hunter, a video film-maker who worked on his campaign.

Hillary Clinton boasted in Iowa that there are no skeletons left in her cupboard. "I've been vetted. I have been in the political arena in our country very intensely for 16 years," she said. But Obama has also been tested ? ironically by Clinton's camp.

His ability to cope with the stresses of the campaign, despite efforts by Clinton's supporters to draw attention to his youthful cocaine use and Muslim roots, has been one of the strongest recommendations in his favour.

When Obama began running, he looked exhausted as he struggled to cope with the rig-ours of life on the road, his Senate responsibilities and duty towards his young family. As he tells it, his campaign chant "Fired up, ready to go" comes from a robust lady in South Carolina who inspired him when he was dog-tired and miserable.

Yet it is Clinton who looks lined now and Obama who is on a roll. Betsy Myers, a senior member of his campaign, said: "Over the summer it was tough. The polls were tough and the press were tough, but Barack held steady. He's never given up and never let go and that bodes well for his leadership style."

Hirschberg, who witnessed Clinton's composure 15 years ago, said last week she was backing Obama: "I've been impressed by the way he's conducted himself on the campaign trail. In the past couple of weeks the Clintons have bared their fangs. It's a side of them that is really unsavoury."

Panetta believes that Clinton has the power to crush Obama's challenge. "She clearly has had some setbacks and Obama's giving her a real race. The campaign has shown him to be a very credible candidate, but it is testing his ability to sustain his momentum," Panetta said.

"The most important thing Hillary has to do is hold steady and not look as though she is panicking in any way."

By Sarah Baxter, The Sunday Times, December 23, 2007

DES MOINES -- Chris Dodd, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, has been rolling across Iowa in what he calls the "Twelve Days of Results" tour. It's like the 12 Days of Christmas -- only with themes such as "Results To Protect Homeowners" replacing all that "10 Lords a-Leaping" business.

Each camp has its own age-related preoccupations. Clinton's people are deeply anxious about the weather -- icy sidewalks = broken hips = stay-at-home seniors. Obama's staff is organizing a bus caravan from the Chicago suburbs, where many University of Iowa students live, to caucus points near the university's main Iowa City campus, a school official said. The dorms at Drake University, Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa will remain open during the first week of January, which could help Obama compensate for a winter break that could seriously hamper his turnout.

Iowa law allows out-of-state students who spend nine months of the year in-state to vote, but the Obama campaign's push to squeeze every vote from their ranks has sparked outrage from the Clinton camp, which accuses them of trying to "manipulate" the outcome.

Clinton has tried to maximize her demographic strengths too, albeit in a quieter, less controversial way, organizing handicapped-accessible vans and carpools to shuttle elderly Iowa voters who might otherwise be shut in by bad weather.

"None of these candidates can afford to be a Johnny One-note. All of them are appealing across-the-board, but they all have relative strengths and they are clearly targeting them," said University of Iowa politics professor Cary Covington.

Obama enjoys a more than 2-to-1 advantage, 41 to 19 percent, over Clinton among 18-to-44 year-old voters, according to a University of Iowa Hawkeye State poll taken in late October. His performance among younger voters was by far the best performance by any candidate in any age group.

Hillary Clinton's lead among older voters isn't quite as pronounced, but it's the highest of any candidate in the 45-and-older category at 31 percent.

John Edwards, whom many Clinton supporters believe (and some actually hope) will win, has staked out the generational middle, attracting a caucus-best 26 percent of 45-to-60 year-old Democrats.

If history's any guide, Clinton has an edge. In 2004, only 4 percent of 150,000 Democrats who caucused were under the age of 21, and Howard Dean's effort to mobilize college and high school students fizzled for lack of a solid statewide organization.

Moreover, the average age of caucus-goers is about 54, with a majority of them women, according to studies of recent polling. In part, that's because caucusing, unlike the 10-minute in-and-out process of primary voting, is a three-hour, evening-long event that doesn't tend to attract younger people, who are more likely to have crowded social and work schedules.

Obama's campaign says his overwhelming popularity with young voters is intended to put him over the top, not replace his already solid support from other demographic groups. They are framing their own pitch to older voters, selling his prescription drug plan and ensuring he records personalized messages for small rural radio stations with an elderly audience.

But there's no denying his special appeal to the under-30s. His top Iowa operative, Steve Hildebrand, says Obama has created a far-reaching youth recruitment effort with chapters in all the state's four-year and community colleges. He's also gone after 17-year-olds, capitalizing on a quirk in state law that allows teenagers to vote in the caucus if they turn 18 before the November 2008 general election. "They've been some of our best volunteers and, more importantly, they've done a remarkable job getting their parents to vote for Barack," said Hildebrand, whose effort has reached 200 of the state's 320 high schools. Hildebrand predicts Obama's presence will increase under-21 turnout from 4 percent in 2004 to 8 or 10 percent this time.

That doesn't impress Clinton's top strategist Mark Penn, a vocal critic of Obama's out-of-state student effort. Clinton is "especially strong with older voters and, I'll tell you, they certainly make up a lot more than 4 percent," he said.

Clinton isn't narrow-casting to senior citizens (as she does with women voters) but there's been an undeniable Ben Gay whiff at some recent campaign appearances. She often touts the support of one formerly hostile 102-year-old Iowa man, has run TV ads featuring her 88-year-old mother, Dorothy Rodham, and often emphasizes her appeal to women "in their 80s or 90s."

That creates logistical challenges to Clinton's operatives in rural counties, who are building a transportation network that will function even in a blizzard.

"It's major ... We have a lot older people living way out in the country and we have to get them into town," said Clinton precinct captain Jim Erb, mayor of Charles City, in the hard-frozen, north-central part of the state. "They're a big part of our strategy, so it's going to be key for us to get them out on caucus night."

By Glenn Thrush, Newsday, December 23, 2007

When Hillary Clinton launched her campaign nearly a year ago, the media buzz deemed it near impossible for the likes of Barack Obama and John Edwards to overcome her daunting campaign machine. The endorsements, the money, and the cream-of-the-crop strategists combined with the former First Lady's incumbent image to make her the clear-cut choice of the Democratic Party establishment.

For one thing, it has been a victim of the media hype it helped create. The campaign's warnings that Iowa was going to be a tough state for Clinton fell mostly on deaf ears. "Iowa was always going to be a challenge and we consistently said that," says Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson. "Nobody hands anyone a presidential nomination." But her campaign also failed to invest in Iowa until it was nearly too late. While Obama and Edwards spent the better part of the year moving in hundreds of staff and building relationships with grassroots Democratic constituencies, Clinton in the last month belatedly added a hundred staffers.

And while the Clinton campaign hired the best and brightest faces to run its Iowa shop, there's only so much that can be done without the resources or the candidate. A month away from the caucuses, Clinton had spent 52 days in state, visiting just 38 counties compared with the 99 visited by Edwards and the 68 by Obama. Since then, her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle has moved out to Iowa to personally oversee the operation here, while Clinton has spent an additional 11 of the last 14 days in the state, adding another 14 county visits.

"She has never really been ahead here in Iowa," says Arthur B. Sanders, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines and author of Losing Control: Presidential Elections and the Decline of Democracy. "Her national lead made it easy to assume she would win here as well, especially since her national campaign gave off an image of her 'inevitable' victory. And a national press that had not spent time here, did not really understand how different the situation was here."

Clinton has also shaken up her message in recent weeks, trying on different hats: angry Hilary; warm-and-fuzzy mommy Hillary; commander-in-chief Hillary; insurgent change-candidate Hillary. "It's a very close race in Iowa, and quite naturally, the Clinton campaign has decided to throw in everything it's got, plus the kitchen sink," says Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "She's both the candidate of change and the candidate of experience, the candidate with a hard side and a soft side, and the candidate of the establishment past and the progressive future. Maybe voters are getting confused, or maybe she's patching together just enough voters to win or tie. We'll all find out together on January 3rd."

In the last week, Clinton straddled both the past and future. She's paraded an impressive stream of former Clinton administration officials - including former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, former Veteran Affairs Secretaries Togo West and Hershel Gober, former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark and, of course, her husband, President Bill Clinton - through Iowa while declaring herself an agent of change. "Somebody said at one of my events a little while ago, "You know it looks like it take a Clinton to clean up after a Bush," and I'm ready for the job if that's what it takes," Clinton said at a town hall event in Johnston, Iowa last week.

In harkening to the 1990s, Clinton risks alienating voters who want change. The majority of likely Democratic caucus-goers, 56%, believe change is more important than experience, according a December 19 ABC News/Washington Post poll of likely caucus-goers. Of those, half said they support Obama and 23% are committed to Edwards. Clinton only garnered 15% of the change vote. Conversely, 33% of those polled said they preferred experience over change, and Clinton lead amongst those voters 49% to Edwards? 15% and Obama?s 8%.

Wolfson argues that it takes experience to bring about change: "Hillary brings a lifetime record of accomplishments to this campaign - and yes, some of them were during the '90s. We think voters are asking - at a time when every candidate is talking about change - who actually has a record of accomplishing it their entire adult life?"

Next week, Clinton will roll out her final pitch to Iowan voters, a tour entitled 'Time to Pick a President, in which she's expected to underline her experience in the White House and promise to restore the nation's good times. "Her closing argument is that America faces huge challenges and has enormous opportunities, and that the nation needs a president with the strength and experience to lead on day one and make the changes we need," Wolfson says. The jury's still out on whether the Democratic base in Iowa will buy the idea of insider experience as an effective force for change. But not for long.

By Jay Newton-Small, Time, December 23, 2007

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois were tied in three of the earliest Democratic presidential contests of the new year, and the freshman senator appears poised to overtake the former first lady.

Mrs. Clinton has been touting her experience as a key policy adviser and advocate during the two terms of her husband's presidency, saying she is "ready to lead," while Mr. Obama, in the third year of his first term in the Senate, has been running as the candidate who will break the polarizing gridlock of the past to achieve sweeping political and policy changes in Washington.

In Iowa, where 57 delegates were at stake, the two were dead even with 28.3 percent each last week, according to an average of the last six polls in the state compiled by Real Clear Politics, which tracks all the state-by-state presidential polls. A Washington Post/ABC News poll of 652 likely caucus voters conducted over four days, from Dec. 13 to 17, showed Mr. Obama leading by 33 percent to 29 percent.

In South Carolina's Jan. 26 primary, with 54 delegates at stake, two recent polls showed the two rivals in a statistical tie. A SurveyUSA poll of 496 likely voters conducted over two days last week showed Mrs. Clinton edging Mr. Obama by a razor-thin 41 percent to 39 percent. A CBS News poll released Thursday had Mr. Obama at 35 percent and Mrs. Clinton at 34 percent. Both polls had error margins greater than the gap between the two leading candidates.

"It's very close. A significant number of voters here wait until the final two or three days of the campaign to make up their mind," said New Hampshire Democratic strategist Jim Demers, who is backing Mr. Obama.

In California, one of nearly two dozen states that will hold primaries on Feb. 5, a Field Poll last week said Mrs. Clinton held a 14-point lead, but that her support had dropped significantly from 45 percent to 36 percent since October. Mr. Obama trailed with 22 percent.

"We have Obama up both in South Carolina and Georgia," pollster Matt Towery said. "Both have high African-American participation in their Democratic primaries. The African-American vote as reflected in the polls is usually the last demographic group to consolidate. But this consolidation is now occurring."

By Donald Lambro, The Washington Times, December 24, 2007

DES MOINES - If there's one thing many Iowans want for Christmas, it's a silent night.

"Give us a break, please," said Joanne McInteer of Independence, Iowa. "They all started too early, and I think for Christmas they should all call a truce. Christmas should be about Christmas."

But a truce is not to be. While the candidates are taking time off on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, they're not shutting down their message machines.

Blame it on Iowa's Democratic and Republican parties scheduling their caucuses for Jan. 3 - the earliest ever - to preserve the state's first-in-the-nation status. In 2004, Iowa waited until Jan. 19, allowing for a longer Christmas interlude.

"It actually bothers me a lot," said Ben Humphrey, a Drake University law student. "In years past, there's been kind of a ceasefire for these two weeks. Now you've got to put up with all the political ads as well as the Christmas ads."

Or political ads dressed up for Christmas. Many of the campaigns tried to show their sensitivity by dressing up their ads with holiday cheer

Barack Obama, his wife and their two young daughters posed Hallmark Card-style in front of a brightly ornamented Christmas tree and fireplace. Hillary Clinton put up an ad that featured her labeling gifts not with their recipients' names, but wonky policy prescriptions.

Republican Mike Huckabee, who trained as a Baptist minister, ran a cozy family scene, but with a cross image apparent in the background arrangement of light and shadow, setting off days of speculation on whether it was intentional. (Huckabee said no.) Rudy Giuliani, in a fire-engine red sweater, featured a jokey Santa cameo.

Bucking the trend, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney launched a decidedly uncharitable TV ad saying ex-Arkansas Gov. Huckabee pardoned a pack of vicious killers.

For all their grousing, some Iowans have decided the political noise at a time better suited for caroling is worth it.

"I guess I don't really mind all the saturation and the political coverage," said Gregory Fields of Burlington, leaving a Hillary Clinton campaign stop at 10 on Thursday night. "Considering what's been going on with the Bush administration, this couldn't get going soon enough."

By Michael McAuliff, Daily News, December 22, 2007

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Flanked by her mother and daughter, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton sought on Saturday to shore up her support among women in the tightening U.S. presidential race.

Less than two weeks before voting begins in the state-by-state process to select party candidates, the New York senator who would be the nation's first female president touted her plans to expand paid family leave and boost child-care funding to help working mothers.

"We can do a better job in America in supporting families," Clinton told about 120 voters in the lobby of the Young Women's Christian Association offices in Manchester, New Hampshire, as her 27-year-old daughter, Chelsea, and her 88-year-old mother, Dorothy Rodham, sat in chairs beside her.

In Iowa, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Clinton's rival, criticized her and candidate John Edwards for failing to stand up to corporate interests or improve how government works while they served in the U.S. Senate.

"I find it interesting when people say 'vote for me because I know how to work the system in Washington,'" the first-term senator told voters in Indianola. "We don't need somebody who can play the game better, we need somebody who will put an end to the game playing."

Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, said in a statement that Obama's attacks "seem to increase as momentum for our campaign grows."

'EVERY LITTLE THING MATTERS'

The race in both early primary states has become a statistical dead heat between Clinton and Obama while Edwards is trailing not far behind in Iowa ahead of the November 4, 2008, presidential election.

In a sign of just how tight the race is, Clinton dispatched her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, to once again campaign for her in Iowa, and she planned to return to the state on Sunday for more campaigning just before the Christmas holiday.

"For Hillary Clinton every little thing matters from here on," said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. "She wants to keep her core voters of working-class Democrats energized, but the more upscale Democrats with professional jobs, especially women, are going to be key for her."

Clinton's national advantage over Obama shrank slightly in December to eight points from 11 points last month, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released this week.

Plenty of voters seem to be undecided with just weeks to go before the January 3 Iowa caucuses and the January 8 New Hampshire primary.

Tom Gillenwater, a construction worker from Indianola, said he initially liked Democratic long-shots New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd.

But he said that Obama may have changed his mind because of his plan to make health care insurance coverage negotiations public.

"I was undecided ... but I really liked what he had to say," Gillenwater said. "I pay for my own health care and it's just hard, it keeps going up each year."

IOWA PAPER BACKS ROMNEY

On the Republican campaign trail, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won a key Iowa endorsement and crisscrossed New Hampshire in a bid to fend off a mounting threat from Arizona Sen. John McCain's surging campaign.

Romney lost the Des Moines Register newspaper endorsement to McCain, but on Saturday he won the backing of the Sioux City Journal.

"Romney combines an outsider's new face with a proven track record of success in both the private and public sectors," the newspaper said in an editorial.

McCain, a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war who gave George W. Bush a run for his money in the 2000 election, is climbing in polls following a flurry of endorsements.

One New Hampshire survey this week by American Research Group shows him tied with Romney, who has already lost a big lead in Iowa to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"For Romney right now, the certainty he had about being a front-runner is gone," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of politics at Princeton University. "If Romney loses New Hampshire, his status could fall very quickly. There's a lot at stake right now."

By Jason Szep, Reuters, December 22, 2007

WATERLOO, Iowa -- Black churches are not typically a mainstay of Iowa politics, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former president Bill Clinton sought one out here on Sunday morning, appealing to one of the state's largest minority populations with just 11 days left until the caucuses.

Five precincts in Waterloo, with a total of 40 delegates, have significant African American populations, and the Clintons considered this pocket of the state important enough to brave stormy weather for one final visit, less than two days before Christmas. The former president also visited here days earlier.

The Clintons arrived shortly after noon, flying in from their home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and arriving after a service at Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church had begun. They were joined by Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, and his wife, Christie; former Denver mayor Wellington Webb; and Bob Nash, a former Clinton administration official and current campaign official. The church was more than half-empty, with only a few dozen people in the pews.

Hailing Christmas as "the birth of the God of second chances," Bill Clinton introduced his wife as a "giver" and encouraged congregants to vote. He cited Romans, saying the Bible instructs people to "be good citizens as well as good followers of the Lord."

"For as long as I have known Hillary, she has been giving of herself to benefit others. I think we want that sort of giver to lead our country," Clinton said.

"In this Christmas season, I think the thing I would like to say most, after 36 years of knowing her and 32 years of marriage: we are all supposed to be givers. Day after tomorrow, we will give. But every day for 36 years she has given. And I believe, if you will make her the next president, she will be a giver to America and the world and we will be proud," Clinton said.

Sen. Clinton took the podium, declaring, "This is the day the Lord has made." She delivered an abbreviated, softer version of her standard stump speech to rousing responses from the congregation.

"This is a time, not just for those of us who run to be president but for all of us, to resolve that in this Christmas season we will be instruments of peace and change," she said. "And as we think about the choices that face us, let us remember all of those for whom we speak. Because when you go, as I hope all of you will, to participate in the caucuses Jan. 3, you will be there not just for yourselves and your families but for so many who cannot."

In her closing, Clinton said she is about to "give the people of Iowa a well-deserved time out from politics" over the Christmas holiday. But she promised she would think of this as she went to her own church on the holiday: "I will always do my very best to make the kind of changes that will give people not just hope but results."

By Anne E. Kornblut, The Washington Post, December 23, 2007

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Hillary Rodham Clinton remains the most popular contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in the United States, according to a poll by Hart/McInturff released by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. 45 per cent of respondents would vote for the New York senator in a 2008 primary.

Illinois senator Barack Obama is second with 23 per cent, followed by former North Carolina senator John Edwards with 13 per cent. Support is lower for Delaware senator Joe Biden, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and Connecticut senator Chris Dodd.

On Dec. 21, Richardson discussed the election, saying, "This presidential race should be decided on who has the best plan to get out of Iraq because Iraq is at the center of whether America can come together again, whether we can have a health care plan, whether we can have clean energy and create jobs. Because of the huge expenditures we've made in Iraq we can't focus on our domestic priorities."

THE political fallout of the Great Depression ended Herbert Hoover's presidency in 1932, but like so many ex-presidents who dream of running or governing again, the political bug was hardly out of his system.

Four years onward, during Franklin Roosevelt's first run for re-election, Hoover was denouncing elements of the New Deal as fascist. And in late October 1940, days before F.D.R. won an unprecedented third term, his Republican nemesis went to Ohio and warned of a gathering totalitarian storm - in the White House.

"I do not suggest that Mr. Roosevelt aspires to be a dictator," Mr. Hoover said in Columbus. "It is however understatement to say that he has builded personal power to a dangerous point in this republic." He went on to compare the "sinister" and "insidious" accumulation of power in the administration to "the rise of every dictator in Europe."

If this slashing attack was singular in its doomsday rhetoric, it was also prophetic of a coming trend: The emergence of former presidents as meddlers in modern politics. The nation's current crack politico, Bill Clinton, continued that tradition last week while campaigning for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Clinton courted voters across Iowa with family friend Magic Johnson, and so preoccupied voters at one stop here that his wife briefly stood by with nothing to do. More pointedly, he said on "The Charlie Rose Show" recently that supporters of Barack Obama were willing to "roll the dice" on the presidency, and he regularly casts doubt on Mr. Obama's relatively brief two and a half years of experience in the United States Senate.

Campaign analysts say that whatever benefits Mr. Clinton brings his wife through his popularity and charisma could be offset somewhat by obscuring her high profile and her message, and by reinforcing the negative opinions that many voters have of the couple.

By a mile, American presidents are not men of small egos. A wallflower could not survive the nomination process and the general election, especially its current 22-month incarnation. But as partisanship intensified in the 20th century, and politics became increasingly defined by the personalities of party leaders, presidents and ex-presidents have found it hard to remain offstage, silently watching their successors, or would-be successors, grapple with the job - especially during campaigns.

The stakes may have proved too enormous for presidents to remain silent. If they could no longer be the nominees, then they would be pundits of the first order - men with credibility on Oval Office matters by dint of once sitting in the chair themselves.

"Most ex-presidents are really ambivalent; it's a great load off their shoulders, but they're also on the outside looking in, and they really miss it," said James P. Pfiffner, a professor of public policy at George Mason University. "And the men who want to succeed the president - they really feel how much these leaders loom large."

Hoover and Roosevelt, Truman and Stevenson, Eisenhower and Nixon (and Goldwater), Johnson and Humphrey, Reagan and Bush Sr., Clinton and Gore: The former men could drive the latter to distraction, interfering with political strategy and making unhelpful comments. Vice presidents suffered especially; it wasn't easy being your own man when the Big Man was still around.

Or your own woman. When it comes to Mrs. Clinton's campaign, Mr. Clinton isn't going anywhere. And while their situation is unique - an ex-president endorsing, defending, and, yes, meddling with his presidential-candidate-cum-wife - Mr. Clinton is also playing a very familiar role. He is a dominant figure not simply because of his wife's candidacy, but because he is still the last elected leader of the Democratic Party and the architect of its shift toward a more moderate, pragmatic politics - as well as the only Democratic president since Roosevelt to serve out two terms.

His power in a Hillary Clinton administration is an abiding question for many voters: Could he become a meddler in chief who is not only delving into a new president's business, but doing it from inside the White House itself?

"While Bill Clinton of course thinks his wife would be a great president, let's be honest: her election would get him back in the Oval and in power, all of which he seems to crave," said Stephen J. Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University.

A lack of chemistry with their heirs apparent has particularly spurred many presidents and ex-presidents into action, especially when their legacies were in the balance.

Harry Truman pleaded with Adlai Stevenson to run in 1952, only to urge him to show more grit. Class differences and temperament made the intellectual Stevenson and give-'em-hell Harry an odd fit; Stevenson's "reluctance to commit himself had begun to strike Truman as not only tiresome but perhaps something of an act," David McCullough wrote in his biography of Truman. Ultimately, Stevenson turned to the president for guidance, such as when choosing a running mate.

Few withheld their blessings as did the popular if remote Dwight Eisenhower, who, during the 1960 election, famously dissed his vice president, Richard Nixon, by saying he could come up with a major idea Nixon contributed if he had a week to think about it. In 1964, recalled Lara M. Brown, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, Eisenhower produced a list of his Republican choices for the presidency and omitted Nixon, to his former lieutenant's chagrin. (Ike said he took Nixon at his word that he was done with politics.)

As the race for the nomination progressed that year, Eisenhower weighed in that he preferred a "responsible, forward-looking" Republican, a comment widely seen as an attempt to influence the primary in favor of a more congenial moderate like Nelson Rockefeller. Once Barry Goldwater became the standard-bearer, the two held an awkward, staged meeting filmed for a TV ad in which Ike, at one point, seemed to be lecturing Goldwater, the perceived ideologue and extremist, on the need for self-restraint.

The American military escalation in Vietnam under Lyndon Johnson became a colossal drag that Hubert H. Humphrey could not escape in 1968: He never found a way to run against Vietnam (in essence, against Johnson) as many Democrats wanted. Cartoonists at the time depicted Humphrey as a tiny figure trapped in Johnson's pocket.

"Humphrey had a domineering master, but an unpopular one," Garry Wills wrote in "Nixon Agonistes," a book written largely during the tumult of the 1968 campaign. "Johnson had to cope with a legend, but a dead one." Referring to Eisenhower's long shadow, Wills wrote: "Nixon had to live for years as the acolyte to a living miracle of popularity." Indeed, when Nixon accepted the nomination in Miami, he declared, "Let's win this one for Ike," as if he still needed to cling to the more popular leader's coattails.

In 1980, former President Gerald Ford made one of the most direct interventions in a campaign when he and the Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, discussed Ford's joining the ticket as vice president. Word circulated that this would amount to a co-presidency, an idea that Ford appeared to promote.

"Ford, especially, overstepped his bounds and made himself sound like he would be — well, like he would be what Dick Cheney is today," said Professor Brown, who was an education official in the Clinton administration.

Reagan in 1988, and Mr. Clinton in 2000, looked to their vice presidents' candidacies to varying degrees as referendums on their own records in office. Neither president was particularly involved, though Mr. Clinton almost certainly would have been had Al Gore not benched him.

Mr. Clinton is now savoring a second chance. Working with his wife's advisers, he has been an active participant in campaign strategy. He recently christened her a "change agent" - a twist after promoting her as a steady and consistent Washington hand - and is betting that Mrs. Clinton can only win her tough primary battle if she is regarded as best able to deliver the change that she and her top rivals are all promising.

"When you really sit back and think about it, it's extraordinary what Clinton is doing as an ex-president" said Mr. Pfiffner. "He is the first two-term president since F.D.R., and like F.D.R., the Clinton team is basically running for a third term."

By Patrick Healy, New York Times, December 23, 2007

Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) -- For college students, winter break is a time for vegging out and relying on mom and dad to do the laundry.

Iowa election laws allow out-of-state students attending college there to vote, and 17-year-olds can vote in the caucuses as long as they are 18 years old by election day.

With a recent CNN/Opinion Research Poll showing a three-way tie in Iowa's Democratic race between Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards, campaigns are trying to draw new voters.

While all three candidates have worked to generate support and excitement on campuses, the Obama campaign is committing a lot of time and energy on trying to pull out college students across the state, hoping its candidate's inspirational style and message of hope resonates with young voters.

In the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses, only 17 percent of all caucus-goers were between the ages of 17 and 29, and the majority of that age group was made up of people over the age of 22.

If one compares those figures to the fact that more than 65 percent of caucus-goers that year were over 45 years old, it's easy to understand why courting the traditional Iowa caucus attendee can prove more successful than relying on college-age voters.

The 2008 caucus date throws a whole new logistical wrinkle in the quest to get young voters out on the evening of January 3.

The date falls two days after New Year's Day, meaning an untold number of students registered to vote in Iowa will be on winter break and not on campus.

"They're no longer going to be centrally located and easy to contact and stay in touch with and keep involved," Sanders said of college voters. Sanders said campaigns might be able to motivate students to attend their local caucuses, but admitted it is a daunting task. "If you can manage to do that and get a substantial portion to do so, it could be beneficial," Sanders said.

Josh Mahoney, a junior at University of Northern Iowa, is a prime example of the logistics conundrum facing both voters and campaigns. He plans to caucus for Obama but will be spending his holidays at home, out of state.

Mahoney talked about his plans for caucus day when he introduced Obama at a rally in Cedar Falls, Iowa, earlier this month. "I'm going to drive 4½ hours from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in my Toyota Camry 1993 model. It's terrible and I'm embarrassed, but I'm going to come all the way down here and I'm going to caucus," he told a crowd of students.

For Mahoney and others who have to travel a distance, a spell of bad weather could make it difficult to get out and caucus, something aides to several campaigns conceded was already keeping them up at night.

In an effort to keep tabs on students, the Obama campaign has spent the better part of this year collecting student supporters' cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

The Edwards campaign has an organizer assigned to every college campus in Iowa who is in charge of keeping contact with students to make sure they either caucus in their home precincts or back at school.

Despite all the warning signs in the data and anecdotes from past campaigns, some young voters involved in this campaign claim 2008 could vindicate their age group and prove they are serious about participating in the electoral process.

Kris Hasstedt is a 22-year-old Clinton precinct captain and senior at Iowa State in his hometown of Ames. He said there is a different energy among his peers this election cycle.

"I remember the 2004 election, and it seemed like I was a needle in a haystack when it came to young people getting out to vote," Hasstedt said. "But I work at one of the grocery stores here which is mainly college students and a lot of them, every time I go in, there's a buzz about the candidates who they're supporting, where they're going to caucus ... it's a big wake-up call from 2004."

By Sasha Johnson, CNN, December 22, 2007

PLEASANTVILLE, Iowa - Before pausing for a brief holiday reprieve from a yearlong campaign, the leading presidential candidates on Saturday traded a fresh round of sharp exchanges over experience, campaign tactics and voting records as they worked to solidify support or change minds of voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

As he campaigned elsewhere in Iowa, Mr. Edwards replied: "As for outside groups, unfortunately, you can't control them." But speaking to reporters a few hours later, Mr. Edwards went further in criticizing the groups. Asked what he would ask them to do, he replied, "Not to run the ads."

In New Hampshire on Saturday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to highlight concerns about Mr. Obama's experience, one day after Mr. Obama suggested that more foreign policy experts from the Clinton administration were supporting his candidacy. Mrs. Clinton dismissed his assertion as inaccurate, saying: "I'm holding myself out, I'm not holding myself out by leaning on advisers."

On the Republican side of the ticket, Mitt Romney engaged Senator John McCain for the first time in months, taking him to task for voting against President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. At a house party in Tuftonboro, N.H., Mr. Romney said, "He didn't want tax cuts for the rich. That sounds like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry." A spokesman for Mr. McCain dismissed the criticism, saying Mr. Romney had changed his position on the tax cuts.

The fierce exchanges underscored the fluidity of the race - and the potential threats Mr. Edwards and Mr. McCain posed to their opponents - with less than two weeks before the nominating contests begin. Adding to the competitive mix is that several independent groups, which are prohibited from coordinating activity with campaigns, have recently begun deploying their resources here on behalf of favored candidates.

The criticism began on Saturday with Mr. Obama warning Iowa voters that an outside group, with links to Mr. Edwards, had reserved $769,000 in television commercials beginning the day after Christmas. The independent advocacy group, called Alliance for a New America, is known as a 527, and is run by Nick Baldick, who ran Mr. Edwards's campaign four years ago.

"I suspect that if John called his former campaign manager and political director and said we're not going to engage in 527 activity that it would probably have some influence, don't you?" Mr. Obama said in a brief interview.

Questioned by reporters, Mr. Edwards declined to call on the groups to refrain from running ads that benefit him. Later, he said: "I would prefer that all the 527s, not just this one, that all the 527's, stay out of Iowa."

Mr. Obama's aides believe their candidate faces the greatest threat from a flurry of new advertising messages - on television, mail and telephone - from these organizations. At least three groups not affiliated with the Clinton campaign are spending money on her behalf in Iowa, while at least two groups supporting Mr. Edwards are investing money promoting his candidacy.

In the closing days of the Iowa campaign, experience has re-emerged as a key theme. Mr. Obama sought to defend his foreign policy credentials, saying his three years of service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his judgment should allay any voter concerns. "Even by the standards of Washington," Mr. Obama said, "I have dealt more with foreign policy than, let's say, Bill Clinton had, when he became president, or Ronald Reagan he was governor at the time.”

In New Hampshire on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton pointed to a list of 80 former Clinton advisers who support her. She said it was "silly" of Mr. Obama to raise the question of why people former advisers like Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton's first national security adviser, were supporting Mr. Obama.

"You can have lists of people who are advising you, but what matters is who's sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office and who's ready to be president on Day One," Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Milford, N.H.

With perhaps even more uncertainty in the Republican race, Mr. Romney spent the day in New Hampshire, calling Mr. McCain "a good man and a national hero." But Mr. Romney seized upon one element of the record of Mr. McCain, who is now running second to Mr. Romney in statewide polls. "He voted against the Bush tax cutes, twice," said Mr. Romney, repeating the charge again slowly for emphasis. "He voted against the Bush tax cuts. That's failing Reagan 101. Reagan taught us all, taught almost all of us in the Republican Party that lowering taxes would grow the economy and was good for our economy and good for individuals."

By Jeff Zeleny, New York Times, December 23, 2007

All the anti-Hillary books have the ugly Hillary on the cover; for my book, I used one that people accused me of photoshopping (I didn't). Same person.

That the good pictures, and the bad, could have been taken hours or at most days apart, and generally reflect nothing more than the trials of the trail, is intentionally lost in the reality that a picture is worth a thousand words, even when it isn't.

So how is Hillary doing? Or rather, how is she looking?

Has she started aging badly in the last two weeks?

Is 60 suddenly too old to be president? Since when?

I've been canvassing the pictures and they're a mixed bag. In some of them she looks composed and cheerful, in some of them she looks determined and fired up, and in some of them she looks, well, tired. And her age.

Which is most certainly not too old to be president, or almost anything else, even a mother if you're willing to go to the extremes of fertility treatment.

So why the hag attack? Ronald Reagan never got called a hag, even when he was more than a decade older than she was, and forgetting the sort of details that Hillary is usually criticized for remembering?

She needs Nancy Pelosi's botox doc, noted one of the nastier messages I got, forwarding one of the nastier articles. Does she? When the first woman Speaker took over nearly two years ago, there were almost as many articles about her impeccable looks and style -- read, her unlined skin and Armani's -- as there were about her platform and policies. Actually, the platforms on her shoes got as much attention as the ones she stood for.

In the case of Pelosi, who for the record is older than Hillary, the line was that she looked too good, cared too much, tried too hard; that she should look her age, not a decade or two younger, and dress less well, not like a woman on top of the world. Imagine: just because she was.

Those who have covered women candidates, or covered the coverage of them, know well the importance of such things as clothes and lipstick, and the disproportionate attention given to how a woman looks, compared to all those middle aged guys in rumpled suits. But the issue of aging takes it to a new level.

We live in a society in which men and women are viewed very differently when it comes to aging. We're accustomed to thinking of men in their fifties and sixties as being at the top of their game and on top of the world, oftentimes with women half their ages on their arms. We're accustomed to thinking of women that age as being old, done, past their prime. The boon in the anti-aging business, focused heavily on women, the success of books like Nora Ephron's, about the lengths she has gone to in dealing with her neck, reflect the ambivalence many women struggle with when it comes to aging gracefully.

Does aging gracefully mean you look your age or you don't, that you embrace your maturity, and everything that comes with it, or judge yourself and your peers by the difference between how old we are and how old we look? Not easy, in a world where men with grey hair do better, in everything, than similarly coiffed women do.

I've long believed that, whether you agree with her on the issues or not, the Hillary Clinton candidacy is a test of more than her positions and qualifications for the presidency. It's also a measure of how our society, the media included, judges women, especially women who are smart, ambitious, and over 45.

If she's an old hag, there are a lot of us around. If we start seeing our fate as tied to hers, whether we're the ones tying it together or not, it just might be enough to propel her to victory. Hags for Hillary. Why not? Happy holidays.

By Susan Estrich, FOX News, December 23, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled Saturday to lock in votes in key states for the 2008 presidential nominations before the Christmas-New Year holiday.

Braving snow and subfreezing temperatures in Iowa -- where Obama kept up a hectic schedule of appearances -- and in New Hampshire, where Clinton met with a group of women early Saturday -- both tried to win over voters one by one to gain an edge.

The two states will be the first to vote on who will be the Democratic party's presidential candidate next year.

Just 12 days before Iowa holds its caucuses and 17 before New Hampshire's primary vote, the two are neck and neck in each state, according to various polls.

But with Christmas and New Year falling during that period, and many voters away from home for the holidays, every minute counts -- a loss in both states could doom the campaign of either candidate.

In New Hampshire, Clinton sought to boost her lead among women voters, talking about her experience as a working mother and how Republicans made it difficult to help out families.

"When I'm president, we're not going to have to work so hard to help families take care of their children and their parents while they work," she said.

Obama meanwhile raced across Iowa looking to cement the slight lead polls give him in that midwest farm state, with at least eight appearances scheduled this weekend.

He had to keep his eye meanwhile on Hillary Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, who was also in Iowa campaigning for his wife.

The Des Moines Register reported that Bill Clinton pulled in about 600 enthusiastic supporters people to a rally Saturday at a school in West Des Moines.

"I must say you're like an early Christmas present for me -- there's so many here and you're in such good humor and it's so early in the morning," he said.

The two candidates' messages have gelled around the theme of experience (Clinton) versus change (Obama), with both now melding the themes to claim they would be the better president.

In a campaign ad released Thursday, Clinton says: "I have 35 years' experience making change ... This election isn't about choosing change over experience. Change only comes with experience."

Meanwhile Obama stressed he has in his political career the experience of making change happen. "When people look at my track record, they realize that not only have I been willing to step out when others weren't willing to step out, but I've been able to actually attract those around an agenda for change," he told NBC television Friday.

Clinton and Obama's jousting was soft compared to the sharp rhetorical knives out for Mike Huckabee, the ordained Baptist preacher who has surged from an also-ran two months ago to lead polls for the Iowa Republican caucuses.

Top rival Mitt Romney took aim at his record as Arkansas governor in releasing convicted criminals from jail and raising taxes.

The Republican establishment in Washington has also fired volleys at Huckabee, with even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lashing him for writing in an article that about the "arrogant bunker mentality" of President George W. Bush's foreign policy.

"The idea that somehow this is a go-it-alone policy is just simply ludicrous," Rice said, not mentioning Huckabee by name.

Huckabee countered in an interview on CNN that he is a mainstream Republican. "I talk about issues that people care about who are sitting around their kitchen table. It's not just the cookie-cutter Republican issues of, we're going to cut taxes; we're going to lower spending," he said. "I'm talking about things like health care, how much it costs to get to work every day when gas prices go up. And I'm talking about things like hunger and poverty, taking better care of this environment. Those are things a lot of Republicans don't talk about, quality of education," he said.

Meanwhile, the gruelling campaign took its toll this week. Rudolph Giuliani, who leads Republican polls nationally but lags in third place or worse in the first three states to vote, checked into a hospital for a day reporting flu-like symptoms.

And Tom Tancredo, an early Republican comer known for his hardline stance for a crackdown on illegal immigrants, dropped out. Analysts say that once other candidates moved toward his position, realizing the potency of it, they pulled his supporters away.

"We had immigration .... Then everyone realized the majority of the people agree with us," Bay Buchanan, Tancredo's campaign chairwoman, told Politico.com

AFP, December 23, 2007

MILFORD, N.H. - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton hit back Saturday afternoon against Senator Barack Obama's contention that he had more support than she did from foreign policy advisers from Bill Clinton's administration.

Speaking to reporters at a diner here, Mrs. Clinton pointed to a list of 80 former Clinton advisers who support her and said Mr. Obama's statement "wasn't accurate." She said it was "silly" of Mr. Obama to raise the question of why former Clinton aides such as Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton's first national security adviser, were supporting him.

"You can have lists of people who are advising you, but what matters is who's sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office and who's ready to be president on Day One," Mrs. Clinton told reporters at a diner in Milford, N.H.

"I haven't been going around talking about my advisers - he has," she added. "It's important to pick the person who can make the best decisions, who is tested and who is a leader. I'm holding myself out - I'm not holding myself out by leaning on advisers."

By Patrick Healy, The New York Times, December 22, 2007

MILFORD, N.H. -- In the spirit of the season, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton passed out candy canes to reporters here on Saturday. Then she took numerous questions. All this just one day after Clinton sat down for a rare off-the-record session with her traveling press corps in Manchester on Friday night.

Playing a little Mrs. Santa Claus with the media? Perhaps.

But Clinton is also in close competitions both here and in Iowa, and her advisers believe she can gain an edge if she keeps showing more of her personal side. Although she is the first to admit she is uncomfortable opening up in public, Clinton has tried her best over the last week, holding "The Hillary I Know" events with testimonials from supporters, bringing her mother and daughter onto the campaign trail and now, apparently, charming the press (arguably one of her least favorite segments of society, given her history with the media, ranking somewhere in the neighborhood of the vast right-wing conspiracy).

During her press availability, Clinton got her favorite type of question: A substantive one. She was asked about a comment Sen. Barack Obama made the night before about having more foreign policy advisers from the former Clinton administration on his side. Her advisers had jumped on the remark as it happened, circulating the quote to the press corps, and the senator followed up with objections of her own.

"Well, obviously, we demonstrated that that was inaccurate," Clinton said (her team said it counts more foreign policy advisers from the 1990s than Obama's, underscoring a running feud in the foreign policy establishment over which candidate has a better approach). More to the point, though, Clinton said, is whether a candidate has the experience to make a good judgment call, regardless of who the advisers are.

"At the end of the day, the president has to make the decisions," she said.

She stopped short of comparing Obama to George W. Bush, who was elected with little foreign policy experience and relied on his advisers during his campaign to shore up his credibility. At earlier moments, Clinton has drawn that parallel. But she did say that Obama "has opened the door" to the discussion by bragging about his advisory team.
Before taking questions, Clinton wandered through the River House Café shaking hands with patrons, as dozens more gathered carrying signs outside, with Chelsea Clinton, 27, trailing close behind. Although Chelsea Clinton has declined all interviews, she warmly embraced regular voters, asking several, "Are you going to support my mom?" One elderly lady replied: "I love her."

"I like that answer," Chelsea Clinton said, beaming. The woman then asked where Chelsea's grandmother, Dorothy Rodham, who has been traveling with the entourage, was. Chelsea replied that she had stayed outside during the event. "She's 88," Chelsea told the woman, describing her grandmother as a "rock star."

When it came time for the miniature press conference, Sen. Clinton deliberately worked her way around the press scrum first, giving each participant a chance to grab a candy cane from a cup. And without skipping a beat, she smiled and admitted it was her effort to "sweeten up the press first."

WE can only imagine what is going on inside John McCain's head when he contemplates Mike Huckabee. It can't be pretty. No presidential candidate in either party has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator, and yet in a wartime election he is being outpaced by a guy who has zero experience and is proud of it.

Attention Bill Clinton: If that's what this election is about, it's already over. No matter how much Hillary Clinton, Mr. McCain or Rudy Giuliani brag about being tested and vetted, it's not experience that will be decisive in determining the next president.

For many, Mr. McCain's long record of experience may be a liability even greater than his party-bucking moderation on immigration and his bear hug of President Bush on Iraq. What his resume mainly does is remind a youth-obsessed culture of his age. When Gallup asked voters in August to rate traits as desirable or not in the next president, the "undesirable" percentages for being a member of a racial or ethnic minority group (13), a woman (14), a Mormon (22) or having "strained relationships" with one's children (45) all paled next to being age 70 or older (52). It's not morning in America for Reaganesque elders in the political arena anymore.

For Mrs. Clinton, the failure of "experience" as a selling point was becoming apparent even as her husband continued to push it on Charlie Rose. Last week's ABC News-Washington Post poll in Iowa found that she clobbers Mr. Obama on the question of who has the most experience - 49 percent to 8 percent. But to little end. That same survey had Mr. Obama ahead by 4 points over all because, as this year's pervasive polling matchup has it, the electorate values change over experience.

The rabid hunger for change, it turns out, has made the very idea of experience as toxic as every other attribute of the Bush White House. The once-heralded notion of a C.E.O. presidency, overstocked with "tested" Washington and Fortune 500 executives like Cheney and Rumsfeld, is now in the toilet with Larry Craig. You couldn't push the pendulum further in the other direction than by supporting a candidate like Mr. Huckabee, who is blatantly unprepared to be president and whose most impressive battle has been with his weight. In a Rasmussen poll in Florida, Mr. Huckabee even did well among foreign-policy-minded Republicans whose most important issue is Iraq.

But for Mrs. Clinton, the problem isn't just that the Bush years have tarnished the notion that experience is a positive indicator of future performance. She has further devalued that sales pitch with her own inflated claims of what her experience has been. Ted Sorensen, the J.F.K. speechwriter now in the Obama camp, saw the backlash coming in a recent conversation I had with him after Mrs. Clinton had mocked Mr. Obama for counting his elementary-school years in Indonesia as an asset. "Hillary should be careful about scoffing at other people's experience," Mr. Sorensen said. "It's not as if the process of osmosis gives her presidential qualities by physical proximity."

Whatever Mrs. Clinton's experience as first lady or senator, what matters most in any case is not its sheer volume, that 35 years she keeps citing. It's what she did or did not learn along the way that counts. That's why one of the most revealing debate passage so far came in an exchange that earned much laughter but scant scrutiny this month in Des Moines.

This was the moment when Mr. Obama was asked how he could deliver a clean break from the past while relying on "so many Clinton advisers." Mrs. Clinton jokingly called out, "I want to hear that," prompting Mr. Obama to one-up her by responding, "Well, Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me, as well."

Well, touche. But what was left unexamined beneath the levity was a revealing distinction between these two candidates. The questioner was right: Mr. Obama, like Mrs. Clinton, has indeed turned to former Clintonites for foreign-policy advice. But the Clinton players were not homogeneous, and who ended up with which '08 candidate is instructive.

The principal foreign-policy Clinton alumni in Mr. Obama's campaign include Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state, and Tony Lake, the former national security adviser and a prewar skeptic who said publicly in February 2003 that the Bush administration had not made the case that Saddam was an "imminent threat." Ms. Rice, in an eloquent speech in November 2002, said that the Bush administration was "trying to change the subject to Iraq" from the war against Al Qaeda and warned that if it tried to fight both wars at once, "one, if not both, will suffer." Her text now reads as a bookend to Mr. Obama's senatorial campaign speech challenging the wisdom of the war only weeks earlier that same fall.

Mrs. Clinton's current team was less prescient. Though it includes one of the earlier military critics of Bush policy, Gen. Wesley Clark, he is balanced by Gen. Jack Keane, an author of the Bush "surge." The Clinton campaign's foreign policy and national security director is a former Madeleine Albright aide, Lee Feinstein, who in November 2002 was gullible enough to say on CNBC that "we should take the president at his word, which is that he sees war as a last resort" - an argument anticipating the one Mrs. Clinton still uses to defend her vote on the Iraq war authorization.

In late April 2003, a week before "Mission Accomplished," Mr. Feinstein could be found on CNN saying that he was "fairly confident" that W.M.D. would turn up in Iraq. Asked if the war would be a failure if no weapons were found, he said, "I don't think that that's a situation we'll confront." Forced to confront exactly that situation over the next year, he dug in deeper, co-writing an essay for Foreign Affairs arguing that "the biggest problem with the Bush pre-emption strategy may be that it does not go far enough."

In a two-page handwritten letter in response to a recent column of mine criticizing Mrs. Clinton's Senate votes on Iraq and Iran, Bill Clinton made a serious and impassioned defense of her foreign-policy record. On the subject of her support for the so-called Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran this fall, Mr. Clinton wrote: "If Senator Obama, for example, had really believed it was an indirect authorization to attack Iran, he would not have stayed away on the campaign trail, but would have come back to vote against it." That's a fair point - and a fair criticism of Mr. Obama as he continues to vilify this particular Hillary Clinton vote. If voting for Kyl-Lieberman was as grave a step toward war as Mr. Obama claims, there's no excuse for his absence.

Mr. Clinton's narrow defense of his wife's Iraq vote in 2002 - it was not "a blanket authorization to go to war," he wrote - doesn't persuade me. But even if it did, her choice for foreign-policy director in 2008 makes me question her ability to profit from experience and make a clean break with the establishment thinking in both parties that enabled the Iraq fiasco. Judgment calls like this rather than failures of the press may answer her husband's question as to why the public finds her experience "irrelevant."

What Mrs. Clinton clearly has learned from her White House experience, as she reminds us, is to strike back at her critics. Unfortunately, she has assimilated those critics' methods as well. Attacks on Mr. Obama's record and views are fair game. But the steady personal attacks - the invocations of "cocaine" and "Hussein" and "madrassa" by surrogates - smell like the dirty tricks of the old Clinton haters. The Clinton-camp denials that these tactics have been "authorized" sound like Karl Rove's denials of similar smear campaigns against John McCain in 2000.

If Mrs. Clinton is to win, she won't do so by running on that kind of experience but by rising above it. Bill Clinton wouldn't have shifted gears to refer to his wife constantly as a "change agent," however implausibly, if his acute political sensors didn't tell him that Americans are not just willing but eager to roll the dice.

By Frank Rich, New York Times, December 23, 2007

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday made her closing argument to female voters in a message that could be reduced to three words.

You. Go. Girl.

Clinton, standing in a lobby of a YWCA, told undecided mothers and their daughters that her agenda for families and children is the most aggressive to help them. She touted her family care and child care tax credits designed to lessen the burden on working women.

"We can do a better job in supporting families than we do right now," Clinton said. "We give a lot of lip service to family values, but we've never really valued families in a way that we can."

Clinton, on the last of a two-day trip to this early voting state, tailored her message and appearances to female voters with whom she enjoys a sizable lead in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. She bests rival Barack Obama, 42 percent to 25 percent among women in the latest CNN-WMUR poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire. She leads overall in that poll, 38 percent to 26 percent.

A separate New Hampshire poll, released Friday from USA Today and Gallup, showed Clinton and Obama tied at 32 percent each of Democrats overall. Her outreach to women underscores the tightness of the race in this first-in-the-nation presidential primary state and the support she is trying to cement in case she falters in Iowa's three-way race.

Iowa's presidential caucuses are Jan. 3, followed by New Hampshire's primary on Jan. 8.

One voter, a self-described feminist, asked Clinton later in Keene if she thought it was acceptable to support her based solely on her gender.

"Of course I do," Clinton said with laughter. "I'm not asking you to vote for me because I'm a woman. ... But the fact that I am a woman gives this election extra significance."

With daughter Chelsea and mother Dorothy Rodham in tow, Clinton's four-event schedule highlighted what could be a history-making nomination. As her campaign released a list of 3,500 female supporters, she said there are too many challenges facing working mothers.

"We put so many burdens on families trying to do the right thing, trying to take care of their families," Clinton said.

She cited her time as a young mother in Little Rock, Ark.

"When I was a young lawyer and also a mom, I learned how difficult it was for a lot of the other women who worked in the law firm - the secretaries, the paralegals. At 3 o'clock every day, they'd all be on the phone, whispering to make sure their children were there safely. ... It was just such a time of tension and concern to make sure they got home."

Clinton highlighted her proposals to help working women with young children or who - like Clinton - take care of their parents.

"She's going to hit the ground running," said Barbara Marzelli, a mother whose son benefited from a children's health program Clinton supported. "She has the experience, the strength and the commitment - and above all, a heart - to lead the country."

Throughout the day, Clinton's supporters invoked history.

"It's been 220 years and we do not have a woman as a leader of this country," state Sen. Molly Kelly said during a mostly women's meeting in Keene. "My mother passed away this past year. She was 80. I think about that. Only seven years before she was born did women have the right to vote and we take that for granted."

The history wasn't avoided by Clinton.

"As the first mom who would ever be president, I want to set an example that, you know, being a mom and being a daughter and taking care of your family is one of the most important obligations any of us have. You shouldn't have these really false choices presented to people: We can either be good workers or you can be a parent. You can be both," Clinton said in Keene.

Clinton also turned back to her book, "It Takes a Village." She said families have to work together to strengthen their relationships.

"It sounds incredibly old-fashioned, but having a meal together really makes a difference. It stabilizes your children during the day. It gives them a chance to interact with the family," she said. "That kind of investment is every parent would like to be able to do, but so many parents can't."

By Philip Elliott, Associated Press, December 22, 2007

MILFORD, N.H. (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that even if rival Barack Obama's claim that he has more support from her husband's administration was true, the statement was "silly" because voters look at qualifications, not a candidate's brain trust.

"This is not a campaign between lists of advisers," Clinton told reporters in a packed diner. "This is a campaign between real people with experience and qualifications to become president on day one."

In Iowa on Friday, Obama suggested he had the support of more Clinton administration figures than the former first lady. Lists provided by both campaigns quickly showed hers is almost twice as large. "Why is the national security adviser of Bill Clinton, the secretary of the Navy of Bill Clinton, the assistant secretary of state for Bill Clinton, why are all these people endorsing me?" Obama said. "They apparently believe that my vision of foreign policy is better suited for the 21st century."

Clinton rejected the comment's premise.

"Honestly, it's a silly question. We have hundreds of people's support, not just people who were in my husband's administration, but people from all over the country who have expertise."

She added: "It's important to pick the person who can make the best decision, who is tested and proven as a leader."

Obama's campaign disputed Clinton's proclaimed independence, again citing her support of a 2002 Senate resolution authorizing the use of U.S. force against Iraq. "If Senator Clinton wants to make this election about who's made the best decisions on foreign policy, that's a comparison we're happy to make since Barack Obama is the only major candidate who opposed the war in Iraq and refused to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran," Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin said.

Clinton said Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq came while he was a member of the Illinois state Senate.

"He wasn't in the Congress at the time," Clinton told reporters.

By Philip Elliott, Associated Press, December 22, 2007

It's a humorous story the governor of New Mexico uses to make the point that he has now visited every county in the state.

Running fourth in the polls and needing at least a third-place finish in the Jan. 3 statewide caucuses to remain viable, Richardson told an audience of about 100 voters in Cedar Rapids on Thursday night his objective was to make them all precinct captains. "It's Iowa that makes the decision - not the pundits in Washington, not the pollsters," he said.

Precinct captains play a critical role in Iowa's system of choosing presidential candidates because each of the state's 1,781 precincts holds a separate election to choose its candidate for president. Each precinct, in turn, selects up to 11 delegates to a convention held at a later date.

Without a precinct captain, a candidate might not have an advocate to rally the caucus voters as the group winnows the field of candidates by eliminating those with less than 15% support.

Here in Linn County - the state's second most populous because it includes Cedar Rapids - Richardson is close to having a captain for all 86 precincts, according to Mike Robinson, chairman of the county's Democratic Party.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama already have captains in all the county's precincts, Robinson said.

"With a precinct captain, I think you are halfway home," said Robinson, who recalled the failure of Howard Dean's campaign to do that organizational legwork in 2004. Although he led in the polls going into the Iowa caucuses, Dean finished third behind Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Edwards. Dean's angry reaction to that disappointing finish - dubbed the scream speech by many - led to the unraveling of his campaign.

"It's a tossup right now," Robinson said. "They are racing so close that I can't begin to call it. I would not be surprised if we come out of the caucuses in Linn County with two of the candidates having identical delegates."

David Barnhart, caucus director for the Clinton campaign, was responsible for counties in the western half of the state for the Kerry campaign four years ago.

Many of Clinton's supporters in Linn and elsewhere will be first-time caucus-goers.

"We are going to people's doors," Barnhart said. "We want to answer their questions about the caucus. We want to know if they need a ride or need child care. If they need a ride, we are running a massive transportation program. We find another supporter and match them up."

The Clinton campaign expects many caucus-goers to need a ride because they are over 65 - and even if they drive, they don't drive at night.

At the other end of the age spectrum, the Obama campaign is expected to benefit the most from the decision by two of the county's colleges - Cornell College in Mount Vernon and Coe College in Cedar Rapids - to reopen dorms before the official end of the winter break so students can take part in the caucuses. The numbers appear to be small. Monica Davis, who coordinated the early returns for Cornell College, said 15 out-of-state students have signed up to return in time for the caucuses. But some plan to stay with classmates, friends or family in the area.

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, has a small campaign office across the street from Coe College. Obama's office is a couple of blocks away.

Unannounced visits to three of the campaign offices - Obama, Clinton and Dodd - and an appointment at Edwards' found the Clinton operation to be by far the largest with Obama not far behind.

The Edwards campaign is relying on a cadre of volunteers who caucused for him four years ago, such as Lauri Lumm Usher, co-chairwoman of Edwards' campaign in Linn County. "This is a numbers game and it's just old-fashioned hard work," said Usher, a graduate student in human resources who relies on her person-to-person skills to persuade voters to support the former North Carolina senator.

Statewide, the Edwards campaign says it has captains in more than 90% of the precincts while the Obama, Clinton and Richardson campaigns refused to release an estimate.

But they are working feverishly to crisscross the state in the last days before the caucuses lining up supporters who turn out for them in the new year.

On Thursday, Clinton completed a five day "every county counts" campaign in which she visited 15 counties - some of them by helicopter. And surrogates ranging from the well known - husband Bill Clinton - to the obscure - Clinton's campaign policy adviser Neera Tanden - visited the remainder.

Obama is calling his last swing through the state "stand for change" with eight stops in the three days prior to Christmas Eve and more planned beginning the day after Christmas.

Edwards is waiting until a day later - Dec. 27 - to begin his final eight-day swing around Iowa, returning to many communities that he's already visited two or more times in recent months.

Sandy Chapman, chairwoman of Edward's campaign in southeast Iowa's Lee County, held the same position in 2004. She doesn't know how her candidate will do. "I'd like him to finish first obviously, and I think it is a possibility," Chapman said. "But Iowans are very independent and a lot is going to swing in the last few days."

Back in Linn County, Jerry Corkery of Marion went to Richardson's Thursday night talk on Iraq still undecided whether he would support Richardson or Edwards. Four years ago, he supported Edwards in a precinct won by Kerry.

Corkey, who drives a cement truck, said that on the upcoming caucus night, "If a candidate needs one more person to be viable, I could just about go for anybody among the leading candidates."

By Brian Tumulty, USA Today, December 23, 2007

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Hillary Rodham Clinton is still the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in the United States, according to the George Washington University Battleground 2008 poll conducted by Lake Snell Perry and Associates and The Tarrance Group. 47 per cent of respondents would back the New York senator in a 2008 primary.

Illinois senator Barack Obama is second with 23 per cent, followed by former North Carolina senator John Edwards with 13 per cent. Support is lower for New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Delaware senator Joe Biden, and Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich.

Yesterday, Edwards discussed his chances, saying, "Having been through this before, I know what you have to do, I know what you have to do to close and what Iowa caucus-goers are looking for. They're not looking for academic, they're not looking for analytical, they're looking for somebody who speaks from right here, from their gut, and who believes deeply and passionately in what they're talking about."

POLITICAL SKILLS

National and state polls that show Hillary Clinton at or near the top of the Democratic field are a testament not just to her celebrity but to her political expertise since making her first run for elective office in 2000.

Clinton honed her skills in that race for a New York Senate seat. Aided by extensive person-to-person campaigning, she convinced New Yorkers that she would serve them well despite being a newcomer who had moved to the state to run for the office.

In the Senate, she worked to counter a liberal, partisan image and build relationships with Republicans, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had played a lead role in her husband's 1998 impeachment. She has sponsored dozens of bills with individual GOP senators - to expand health care for military reservists with Graham, for example, and develop high-tech health information systems with then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Among Clinton's challenges as a presidential candidate is that she is a veteran in public life running when the country is in a mood for change. One of her early slogans - "Ready to lead, ready for change" - encapsulated her long experience in public life (12 years as Arkansas first lady, eight years as U.S. first lady, second-term senator) as well as the change she says she embodies as a Democrat and, in particular, as a woman.

Clinton also is trying to balance the demands of anti-war Democrats in the primaries with the moderation that might be required to win a general election. She voted to authorize the Iraq war in 2002 and has refused to apologize for her vote. By contrast, this year she voted against money to fund the Iraq war because the bill had no timeline for troop withdrawal.

She's engaged in a similar balancing act on Iran. She voted to classify the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, part of Iran's military, as a terrorist group. Then, under fire from rivals who said that was inviting President Bush to take military action, she became co-sponsor of a bill saying Bush can't do that without specific congressional authorization.

Clinton also is working to neutralize another political challenge, what Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, calls her "default" image as "cold, calculating and ambitious." He says she is still vulnerable to "people falling back into that negative stereotype."

The increasingly sharp tenor of the race may be having an impact. Clinton's unfavorable rating was 40 percent in a USA Today/Gallup Poll at the beginning of this year, but it was 50 percent in early December.

In a nonpartisan Pew Research Center poll in September, Clinton was rated the least friendly of the three leading Democratic candidates. The next month, she snapped at an Iowa man who asked her about her vote on Iran. She accused him of being a plant but quickly apologized.

"It would be very easy for somebody with concerns to say, 'Aha, there's the real Hillary,'" Goldford said. "The apology was good, but it would have been better not to have had to make it."

Clinton's communication skills are often compared with her husband's and found wanting. Her stump speeches are viewed as adequate but not inspirational.

"She doesn't sell it with a narrative in the same way her husband or Ronald Reagan did. It sounds a little wonkish, and it is a little measured," says Allan Louden, a political communication professor at Wake Forest University.

Or, as the Los Angeles Times put it, her words chug along "bearing a heavy freight of statistics."

Clinton is more animated when responding to questions in the moment - whether the setting is town halls, house parties, TV interview shows, issue forums or the many debates that have earned her impressive reviews.

After a debate in June, for example, Time pundit Mark Halperin called her "commanding and presidential" while commentator Arianna Huffington said "she exhibited an effortless charm that those close to her often rave about but that the public rarely sees."

Louden says Clinton shows "intelligence and flexibility and capacity" in her responses, up to a point. "It's still measured," he says. "She gets it, that words have consequences."

Clinton has received laughs for jokes about everything from Vice President Cheney's diplomatic skills to how she sometimes prays for help in losing weight.

POLICY VISION

Clinton has broad visions of foreign and domestic policy, backed up by proposals that are at times too incremental or conservative for some Democrats' taste.

Bruce Reed, a Clinton adviser who is president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, says Clinton does not fit a stereotype.

"She is both pragmatic and progressive, and she wants hard-headed solutions to problems," he says.

As first lady of Arkansas, she angered teachers by leading her husband's drive for teacher testing. When he was in the White House, she urged him to sign the welfare-reform law that moved many recipients off government support and into jobs.

In her presidential campaign, Clinton says the global economy is not working for many Americans. Productivity and corporate profits are up, she says, but many families aren't experiencing benefits.

"It's like trickle-down economics, but without the trickle," she says.

Many of her proposals are aimed at making sure college, health coverage and retirement security are within reach for Americans, including a middle class she says is increasingly pressed.

Since the demise of her massive health reform plan in 1994, Clinton has tried to expand coverage on a smaller scale, starting with children. Her new plan would require everyone to buy insurance from private companies or one of two existing government programs, and help small businesses and low-income individuals with costs.

Clinton outlined her foreign policy vision this year in Foreign Affairs magazine.

"The next president will have a moment of opportunity to restore America's global standing and convince the world that America can lead once again," she wrote.

Clinton says America will have to get out of Iraq, rebuild its military, and relearn how to "inspire and attract" in order to meet challenges such as climate change, global health epidemics and Middle East instability that could "bring down the global economy by disrupting oil supplies."

Few Democrats would disagree with those sentiments.

DECISION-MAKING STYLE

Clinton has worked on domestic issues for 35 years and, as a first lady and a senator, international issues for 15 years. In making decisions, she relies on firsthand knowledge and an extensive network of experts, advisers and sounding boards.

Bruce Reed, who worked with Clinton when he was domestic policy adviser in her husband's White House, says Clinton consults with "a host of smart people" as well as "has-beens" like himself.

"She likes to hear a wide range of views," he says.

Clinton receives "decision memos" from her staff and "she does an enormous amount of homework," Reed says. "She's careful to weigh the evidence and makes up her mind with dispatch."

Doug Sosnik, who was political director in the Clinton White House, describes Hillary Clinton as "methodical" in her decision-making and not the type to reverse herself or agonize about it later. "She doesn't revisit it nine times," he says.

Exhibit A is her steadfast defense of her vote to authorize the Iraq war. Her refusal to apologize for the vote has drawn criticism from some liberals and from rival John Edwards. He voted the same way in 2002 and now says he was wrong.

Clinton was the driving force last year behind "The American Dream Initiative," a collection of college, health and retirement proposals developed by the Democratic Leadership Council and other progressive think tanks. She is promoting some of them in her campaign.

Reed described the process: "She gave us clear marching orders about the issues she wanted us to address and the broad range of opinions she wanted us to solicit. We presented her with detailed options. She sent us back to find out more detail, and then she made up her mind. It was exactly the way it's supposed to work."

MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Back in 1993, Clinton headed a health reform process marked by secrecy, rigidity and blown deadlines. Secrecy is now an issue in the Democratic race as Clinton's rivals accuse her of failing to release records from the eight White House years she often cites as proof that she is ready to be president. Clinton says the process is slow and there's little she can do - an assertion backed up by the nonpartisan FactCheck.org, which says the bottleneck is at the "lightly staffed" National Archives.

On the larger management picture, the surge of Sen. Barack Obama surge has led to second-guessing in Clinton's camp. But her team has consistently demonstrated resilience.

The campaign bounced back into a lead after losing the second-quarter fundraising race to Obama, for example, and reacted swiftly in December after a Clinton campaign official raised the issue of Obama's teenage drug use. Within a day, Clinton had apologized to Obama and the official had resigned.

The team also recovered after a major fundraiser, fugitive Norman Hsu, was apprehended by federal authorities and indicted on fraud charges.

Costas Panagopoulos, head of a campaign management program at Fordham University, was a legislative fellow in Clinton's Senate office for nearly a year starting in 2004. He says the office was "a very tight ship. Meetings were always on time. Things would get followed up on."

Clinton's Senate responsibilities include running her Capitol Hill office and 10 district offices across New York with about 70 people overall. Weekly memos from aides responsible for legislation, constituent services and regional offices are returned with notes from Clinton in the margins.

Philippe Reines, her Senate press secretary, says Clinton strikes a balance between hands-on involvement and "empowering" her aides to act on her behalf.

By Jill Lawrence, USA Today, December 22, 2007

After months of discussion within her campaign over how heavily she should draw on her husband's legacy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing out her Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns in a tight embrace of Bill Clinton's record, helping fuel a debate about the 1990s with Sen. Barack Obama that she thinks she can win.

As part of the Clinton strategy, the former president is playing an increasingly prominent public role as an advocate for his wife. He appears to have overcome concerns within the campaign over how closely she should associate her candidacy with his time in office and over whether his appearances could draw attention away from her.

Both Clintons are making the case that theirs was a co-presidency -- an echo of Bill Clinton's controversial statement during the 1992 campaign that voters would get "two for the price of one" if they elected him. At times, the former president has seemed to cast the current race as a referendum on his administration.

Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), the Democratic front-runner nationally but facing strong challenges in Iowa and New Hampshire from Obama, has shifted her emphasis repeatedly over the past few months as the senator from Illinois made inroads in the two states. She has tried to show a more "human" side, and on Friday brought along her daughter, Chelsea, and her mother to events here titled "The Hillary I Know."

She has tried to co-opt the message of change from Obama, declaring that she has been "working for change" her entire life. Over the past week, she injected the phrase "new beginning" into her stump speech.

But the unchanging core of Clinton's message is her experience, and in recent days she has presented the election as a binary choice: between a competent, experienced Clinton and novices such as Obama. "That's the kind of logic that got us George Bush in the first place," she said this week in Iowa.

And the main basis for her assertion is the time she spent as first lady. Bill Clinton is hitting the theme hard as the voting in Iowa and New Hampshire draws closer, pointing back to the 1990s, citing his record as his wife's, referring to the work "we" did in office and, for the most part, brushing past or ignoring the tumult of those years.

Nowhere is the back-to-the-future approach more visible than here in the state where the then-Arkansas governor overcame a scandal to become the self-proclaimed "comeback kid" in the 1992 Democratic primary and to finish second to former senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts.

Campaigning here on Friday, Hillary Clinton recalled that voters complained back then about lacking health care, fearing unemployment and facing home foreclosures. "And we listened and we acted and we had the best economy that our country has seen in a generation. And now I'm back in New Hampshire" hearing many of the same complaints, she said.

Obama has made challenging the 1990s a mainstay of his platform, saying it is time to "turn the page" on the partisanship -- and implicitly the scandals -- of the Clinton era. This is a major part of his case that he is the most electable Democrat, able to expand the electoral base to states where Hillary Clinton is still viewed as polarizing.

But the Clintons regard any discussion of the Nineties to be good for them, evoking memories of a booming economy and a time when the United States enjoyed greater popularity around the world.

Clinton is preparing to make a closing argument to Iowa and New Hampshire voters that would center on the challenges of the presidency, arguing that only she can be trusted to handle the surprises and rigors of the job, according to her senior advisers. That emphasis, on her experience and her track record, makes the previous Clinton administration a vital part of her case.

Right after Christmas, these advisers said, Clinton plans to make the case on national security grounds, citing the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as evidence that unexpected crises can arise. The argument is in some ways similar to the one President Bush made in 2004, when he campaigned on what he described as his proven leadership in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks and said the terrorist threat called for keeping him in the job. But Clinton is playing on more than just national security concerns, discussing economic security, as well.

"Time to pick a president" is the new theme, which will be unveiled in Iowa next week.

The idea of a restoration -- or as the campaign puts it, a "new beginning" -- is particularly strong in the speeches Bill Clinton is giving in Iowa and New Hampshire on his wife's behalf.

On Thursday night in Holderness, N.H., the former president returned again and again in his hour-long speech to the achievements of his administration as proof that his wife would be able to bring results if she were elected. Several times, he cited the statistics on the economic gains of the 1990s -- the rise in family income, the decline in poverty and in the number of uninsured, and the increase in students obtaining college aid ("I still know the numbers," he said).

He contrasted these gains with what has occurred during the Bush administration, casting the past seven years as a dismal detour or regression in the march of progress that began in the 1990s and would continue with Hillary Clinton's election. "Hillary says, 'My vision is that America must make a new beginning by first rebuilding the middle-class dream,' " he said.

For all his talk about the 1990s, though, the former president does not go into great detail about the role his wife played in his administration, instead simply leaving the impression that she was part of the team that brought about the decade's gains.

He credits her with helping create the Children's Health Insurance Program, after her push for universal health care failed, and he talks about her trips abroad, building ties in foreign countries and speaking out on controversial subjects such as women's rights in Beijing and female genital mutilation in Africa. He briefly mentions her assistance in achieving peace in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.

At times, his pitch for his wife is focused so much on his own accomplishments as president that it almost sounds as if he himself is running for reelection. In a two-hour interview Thursday with the Concord Monitor, he referred to his having made a "terrible mistake" while president, an apparent reference to the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, and then added: "The voters will have to make their own judgments about that. I've done everything I could, first of all, to try to be a good president and, secondly, to try to be a good after-president."

By Anne E. Kornblut and Alec MacGillis, The Washington Post, December 22, 2007

WASHINGTON - Republican John McCain says that if he is elected president, he would consider himself bound to obey treaties because they are "the law of the land." But Mitt Romney says he would consider himself free to bypass treaties if they "impinge" on his powers as commander in chief.

Democrat Hillary Clinton says "in very rare instances," she might attach a so-called signing statement to a bill reserving a right to bypass "provisions that contradict the Constitution." But Bill Richardson says if a president thinks that parts of a bill are unconstitutional, then "he should veto it," not issue a signing statement.

These contrasts are found in the answers to a Globe survey of the presidential candidates about the limits of executive power. The study is the most comprehensive effort to date to get the candidates to declare in specific terms what checks and balances they would respect, and whether they would reverse the Bush administration's legacy of expanded presidential powers.

"These are essential questions that all the candidates should answer," said Illinois Senator Barack Obama in responding to the survey. "The American people need to know where we stand on these issues before they entrust us with the responsibility - particularly at a time when our laws, our traditions, and our Constitution have been repeatedly challenged by this administration."

In 2000, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were not asked about presidential power, and they volunteered nothing about their attitude toward the issue to voters. Yet once in office, they immediately began seeking out ways to concentrate more unchecked power in the White House - not just for themselves, but also for their successors.

Bush has bypassed laws and treaties that he said infringed on his wartime powers, expanded his right to keep information secret from Congress and the courts, centralized greater control over the government in the White House, imprisoned US citizens without charges, and used signing statements to challenge more laws than all predecessors combined.

Legal specialists say decisions by the next president - either to keep using the expanded powers Bush and Cheney developed, or to abandon their legal and political precedents - will help determine whether a stronger presidency becomes permanent.

"The sleeper issue in this campaign involves the proper scope of executive power," said Richard Epstein, a University of Chicago law professor.

Six Democrats and three Republicans provided answers to the Globe survey. Three GOP candidates did not respond to the survey: Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson.

The Giuliani campaign instead provided a general statement by its top legal adviser, former Bush administration solicitor general Ted Olson. He said that a president "must be free to defend the nation," but provided no specific details about what limits, if any, Giuliani believes he would have to obey as president - in national security or otherwise.

Of the nine candidates who answered, Romney expressed the most positive view of Bush's approach to presidential power.

"The Bush administration has kept the American people safe since 9/11," Romney said. "The administration's strong view on executive power may well have contributed to that fact."

By contrast, the other two Republicans who responded - McCain and Paul - both expressed reservations about legal claims Bush has made. For example, both rejected the idea that a president, as commander-in-chief, has "inherent" power to wiretap Americans without warrants, regardless of federal statutes, as the administration has argued.

"I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law," said McCain, an Arizona senator.

Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor who studies executive power, said Romney's answers suggest that the former Massachusetts governor will probably embrace the Bush administration's legal theories on executive power.

"It's fair to say that the Democrats, Senator McCain, and Representative Paul are united in supporting a reinvigoration of checks and balances and the reassertion of a meaningful congressional role in national security affairs," said Shane.

But there were some disagreements that fell along party lines, such as the scope of the president's power when it comes to troop deployments.

McCain and Paul suggested that it would be unconstitutional for Congress to "micromanage" wars by capping the number of troops that the president may deploy to a particular nation, but most Democrats said Congress has the authority to do so.

Among the Democrats, only former North Carolina senator John Edwards refused to say that he would be bound to obey a law limiting troop deployments, instead saying, "I do not envision this scenario arising when I am president."

Similarly, Romney talked generally about a president's need to both "respect" Congress's constitutional powers over war while also remaining "faithful to commander-in-chief powers," but he declined to say whether he believed he could disregard a law capping troop deployments.

The troop deployment question was just one of several in which both Edwards and Romney declined to define the limits of presidential power. Edwards criticized Bush's "abuses," but did not categorically rule out invoking the same expansive theories of executive power in other circumstances.

But the other two leading Democrats - Clinton, a New York senator, and Obama - were both more definitive. Along with Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, and Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Clinton and Obama endorsed a more restrained approach to executive power than Bush.

The Democrats said a president must obey laws and treaties that restrict surveillance and interrogation. They also said that the Constitution does not allow a president to hold US citizens without charges as "enemy combatants" - even though Bush has won court rulings upholding his right to indefinitely imprison citizens suspected of terrorist links.

There were some differences among the Democrats. For example, Clinton, a veteran of congressional investigations of her husband's administration during the 1990's, embraced a stronger view of a president's power to use executive privilege to keep information secret from Congress than some rivals.

And while all the Democrats condemned Bush's use of signing statements, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama each said that they would use them too - just less aggressively. Obama said the problem with Bush's signing statements is not the device itself, but rather that Bush has invoked legal theories that most constitutional scholars consider "dubious" when reserving his alleged right to bypass certain laws.

"No one doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president's constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush administration has gone much further than that," Obama said.

By contrast, Biden, Dodd, and Richardson called for an end to signing statements altogether.

Among the Republicans, their stance was echoed by McCain and Paul, both of whom said they would never issue a signing statement. Romney, by contrast, praised signing statements as "an important presidential practice."

By Charlie Savage, The Boston Globe, December 22, 2007

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton is leading Republican Rudy Giuliani in the early stages of the 2008 United States presidential race, according to the George Washington University Battleground 2008 poll conducted by Lake Snell Perry and Associates and The Tarrance Group. 50 per cent of respondents would back the New York senator next year, while 44 per cent would vote for the former New York City mayor.

In a separate contest, Rodham Clinton holds a six-point lead over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Illinois senator Barack Obama holds a three-point edge over Giuliani, and a six-point advantage over Romney.

On Dec. 20, former U.S. president Bill Clinton discussed his wife's abilities, saying, "The reason she ought to be president, over and above her vision and her plans is that she has proven in every position she has ever had in life, whether it was in elected office or not, that she is a world-class genius in making positive changes in other people's lives."

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - With the presidential race tightening and little time before the first party nomination contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, candidates are trying to woo voters without trampling on their holidays.

The Iowa contest, which kicks off the state-by-state process to choose Republican and Democratic candidates for the November 2008 election, takes place on January 3, the earliest date it has been held.

Most campaigns said they considered how close to Christmas they could campaign without alienating voters. Top contenders like Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards as well as Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani chose to take off Christmas Eve as well as December 25 itself.

But Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, a long-shot Democrat who temporarily moved to Iowa to boost his bid, decided Christmas Eve was the right time to wrap up his holiday-themed '12 Days' campaign. "It's a good event to finish our '12 Days of Results' tour (in Iowa) focusing on national service," spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan said.

Political experts in the two states said they expected the campaigns to tone down their rhetoric during the holidays.

"You might see less of the mud-slinging and fighting over the issues and more the candidates trying to appeal to voters," said Dean Lacy, a government professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

But Iowa voters largely have shrugged off the barrage of campaigning this month, saying it was part of being an early voting state.

"We expect it in Iowa," said Neil Brewster, 34, a graphics designer at aerospace supplier Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids. "We here in Iowa have this privilege of being first in the nation and setting the tone for things."

The Iowa Republican Party said it expected toned down rhetoric to avoid spoiling the holiday spirit.

WHAT TONE?

Political experts said they expected most candidates to continue running television and radio ads. "My guess is that if the candidates can get some ads in during football games and parades that's fine as long as they're not angering voters with criticism of their opponents," Lacy said.

Former first lady and now New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and the other leading Democrats -- Obama, who is a senator from Illinois, and Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina -- see little loss from spending the holiday off the trail.

"It's a special time for the senator to spend with his daughters and with his wife, and we're confident that Iowans will get to see plenty of him in the days following," Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

But some political observers said the tightening race meant the contenders could not afford to take off very much time.

On the Republican side, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has seen his lead evaporate while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took the top spot in Iowa polls in the last two weeks. Arizona Sen. John McCain has received endorsements that could improve his chances.

Huckabee, who has eight events on Friday and Saturday plus a Sunday talk show interview before taking some time off, appeared to be taking a softer approach during the holiday season, a course others may not follow.

"Can you draw sharp contrasts, can you be negative during the holiday season?" said University of Iowa political professor David Redlawsk. "I don't think the risk is any larger than it is at any other time when you draw contrasts in order to take on your opponent."

By Jeremy Pelofsky, The Boston Globe, December 22, 2007

Washington, D.C. - A large number of Iowa Democrats remain undecided about whom to back in the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses, and some surprises could be in store, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa predicted Friday.

The indecision that he senses even among longtime activists could be a boost for trailing candidates like Chris Dodd, Joe Biden or Bill Richardson, the longtime senior Democrat said in an interview.

The many polls being conducted in the state are likely accurate in showing Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards fighting for the lead, Harkin said. But which will come out on top is unclear and it is an understatement to call the race fluid, he said.

Harkin has not endorsed a candidate and he said he likely will not even attend his local caucus in Cumming. In the interview, he declined to name any favorites.

His wife, Ruth Harkin, who has endorsed Clinton and campaigned for her, will caucus for Clinton, he said.

Sen. Harkin said he plans to stay home because Ruth stayed home in 2004 while he caucused for Howard Dean, whom he had endorsed that year.

In a possible indication he wouldn't have backed Clinton, he said he is abstaining in 2008 out of respect for his wife's work on behalf of the New York senator.

"I thought that was very big of (Ruth) to not go to the caucus where I was and maybe be a split with me or something like that," he said. "I'm going to be very respectful of that and return the favor this time."

Harkin said the sense of deep indecision he finds among Democrats is a result of having too many good candidates. Many might look at the second-tier candidates "and say, 'I wish they were higher up,' " he said. "I hear no negatives about Dodd or Biden."

He said he and Ruth had dinner with a group of seven other couples in Iowa last weekend, all of them active Democrats, and just two - including Ruth - had committed to a candidate.

"I was shocked," the senator said.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- Seeking to end the statistical dead heat with Barack Obama in this critical primary state, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday enlisted her daughter and mother in a campaign swing that alternated camera-ready warmth with rants against the Bush administration.

While mother Dorothy Rodham stayed on the sidelines during three New Hampshire stops, daughter Chelsea Clinton briefly stole the show.

"Princess Diana!" one fan screamed as a willowy Chelsea entered a coffee shop here.

"You are great!" one elderly man in the capital city of Concord gushed to Chelsea.

"I have good role models," the younger Clinton replied.

"I didn't realize you were so tall," a woman cooed as she sought an autograph. With a wink, the once-gawky Chelsea, 27, pointed to her black, three-inch spike heels.

Clinton's mother and daughter will tour with her again today as part of an effort to attract more female voters, one of the New York senator's strongest demographics. They appeared a day after former President Clinton came to New Hampshire to hail his wife as a "world-class genius."

Not to be outdone by her relatives, Clinton, who has been trying to show her warmer side amid polls suggesting voters prefer her politics to her personality, smiled for the cameras whenever possible.

With a new poll showing 40 percent of New Hampshire voters from both parties undecided in the Jan. 8 primary, Clinton sought to portray herself as a road-tested candidate who could reach across party lines. Under New Hampshire's flexible voting registration laws, balloters can switch parties on primary day.

"A lot of problems we face are not Democratic or Republican problems, they are America's problems," Clinton said. She deplored "a sense of fear and fatalism coming from the White House ... that has been a substitute for positive action."

Meanwhile, the campaign of John Edwards on Friday slammed Clinton's pledges to withdraw most troops from Iraq within a year of taking office and legislation she just introduced to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.50 an hour as cases of "follow the leader." Edwards, who is in a statistical tie with Clinton and Obama in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and is trailing both by 14 points in New Hampshire, has since February pledged an Iraq troop withdrawal in 2008 and since July has called for a $9.50 minimum wage. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," quipped Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz.

By Letta Tayler, Newsday, December 22, 2007

And they could debate whether Obama has flip-flopped, changed some of his views as he learned more over the years or is simply answering questions with more detail and nuance now that he is running for president.

The Democratic senator from Illinois hasn't made any fundamental policy shifts, such as changing his view on whether abortion should be legal. But his decade in public office and an Associated Press review of his answers to a questionnaire show positions changing in smaller ways.

Taken together, the shifts could suggest a liberal, inexperienced lawmaker gradually adjusting to the realities of what could be accomplished, first in the Illinois Legislature and then the U.S. Senate.

On the other hand, political rivals could accuse him of abandoning potentially unpopular views or of trying to disguise his real positions.

Take the death penalty.

In 1996, when he was running for a seat in the Illinois Senate, Obama's campaign filled out a questionnaire flatly stating that he did not support capital punishment. By 2004, his position was that he supported the death penalty "in theory" but felt the system was so flawed that a national moratorium on executions was required.

Today, he doesn't talk about a moratorium and says the death penalty is appropriate for "some crimes - mass murder, the rape and murder of a child - so heinous that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage."

Then there's another crime-related issue, gun control.

That 1996 questionnaire asked whether he supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns in Illinois. The campaign's answer was straightforward: "Yes." Eight years later, he said on another questionnaire that "a complete ban on handguns is not politically practicable" but reasonable restrictions should be imposed.

His legislative record in Illinois shows strong support for gun restrictions, such as limiting handgun purchases to one a month, but no attempts to ban them. Today, he stands by his support for controls while trying to reassure hunters that he has no interest in interfering with their access to firearms.

Obama's presidential campaign contends that voters can't learn anything about his views from the 1996 questionnaire, which was for an Illinois good-government group known as the IVI-IPO. Aides say Obama did not fill out the questionnaire and instead it was handled by a staffer who misrepresented his views on gun control, the death penalty and more.

"Barack Obama has a consistent record on the key issues facing our country," said spokesman Ben LaBolt. "Even conservative columnists have said they'd scoured Obama's record for inconsistencies and found there were virtually none."

IVI-IPO officials say it's inconceivable that Obama would have let a staffer turn in a questionnaire with incorrect answers. The group interviewed Obama in person about his answers before endorsing him in that 1996 legislative race, and he didn't suggest then, or anytime since, that the questionnaire needed to be corrected, they said.

Since he came to Washington, one piece of legislation that raises questions is the USA Patriot Act, the security measure approved after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

When he ran for the Senate, Obama called the act a "shoddy and dangerous law" that should be replaced. After he took office, the Senate considered an update that Obama criticized as only a modest improvement and one that was inferior to other alternatives.

Still, Obama ended up voting for that renewal and update of the Patriot Act.

Another disputed issue is health care.

Obama was asked in the 1996 questionnaire whether he supported a single-payer health plan, in which everyone gets health coverage through a single government program. The response was, "Yes in principle," and probably best to have the federal government set up such a program instead of the state.

Today, health care is a hot issue, and Obama does not support creating a single government program for everyone. In fact, rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards have criticized his health proposal for potentially leaving millions of people uninsured because they wouldn't be forced to buy insurance.

Political analysts don't see much danger for Obama in the changes. They aren't major shifts akin to Republican Mitt Romney's changes on abortion and gun control, so voters aren't likely to see the senator as indecisive or calculating.

"I think they allow for some adjustment," said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. "It depends on whether they're changing the core of what they're about."

In the general election, the Republican nominee would be more likely to go after the first-term senator on another front.

"If Obama is the Democratic candidate, I don't think the Republicans will be attacking him on a particular issue," said Dianne Bystrom, director of the Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. "They'd be attacking him on his experience."

Obama's Democratic opponents, concerned about turning off voters who dislike negative campaigning, haven't been aggressively using his shifts against him. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign does quietly argue that they amount to a pattern that should concern the public.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer noted Obama's positions on handguns, health care and the Patriot Act. "Voters will ultimately decide whether these are significant shifts in his views or not," he said.

One area where Obama's campaign acknowledges his views have changed is on the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages. In January 2004, Obama said he was opposed to repealing the law. By February, one month later, he supported a repeal.

His campaign says Obama always thought the Defense of Marriage Act was a bad law but didn't believe it needed to be repealed. After hearing from gay friends how hurtful the law was, he decided it needed to be taken off the books.

By Christopher Wills, Associated Press, December 22, 2007

With the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primary looming - and Iowa and New Hampshire more unsettled every day - leading Democratic presidential candidates are taking no chances in critical California, ramping up their ground game in a blue state that could serve as a key campaign backstop.

The competition is especially aggressive between New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who are engaged in a furious battle for voters in California, where the primary comes nearly a month after the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

A new Field Poll this week showed Clinton's once robust 25-point lead in this state over Obama has shrunk by nearly half since October - though she still maintains a 14-point advantage over him here.

But high-profile Clinton endorsers like the iconic co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, say that such developments only increase their focus on the coming election. Huerta will take to the road for Clinton in California this weekend in an effort targeted particularly toward women and Latinos - two critical Democratic voting blocs.

Clinton "is ahead with women and Latinos ... because people want change," Huerta said Thursday. "There's nothing more significant than to have someone like Hillary. ... Her campaign is about change, plus leadership - plus experience."

Huerta, who has been on the ground in Iowa and Nevada for Clinton in recent weeks, said she'll be heading on a seven-county California tour that kicks off Saturday in Fresno and includes Sacramento, Richmond and San Francisco. Her goal, she said, is meeting with voters around the state at more than half a dozen BYOP or "Bring Your Own Phone" parties.

The strategy involves supporters using their own cell phones - and free weekend and evening talk times - to talk up the candidate to friends, family and undecided voters at special holiday gatherings.

"We've engaged (Latinos and women) early and often, especially to get them to vote absentee," said Luis Vizcaino, spokesman for the Clinton campaign in California, who said the operation has trained upwards of 1,700 "HillStars" around the state who manage from 20-100 volunteers each.

He said many will come to the weekend parties armed with gifts for disadvantaged children - and their phones for campaign calling.

"People's minds are on the holidays and the election, and what better way to marry the two?" he said.

Obama's camp has its own targeted strategy; it recently started a statewide precinct captains program, which California field coordinator Buffy Wicks said has marshaled 250 statewide captains who are charged with reaching into every congressional district and precinct. The campaign's "virtual phone bank" is having volunteers - nearly 120,000 have signed up for duty at last count - to log onto the state voter database and make targeted calls from home to voters through election day, Wicks said. "This is a very ambitious field operation, and we're starting to see the fruits of our labor," said Wicks this week. "There are tens of thousands of people involved in the Obama campaign, and the precinct captain program will translate this energy into real organization on the ground." Debbie Mesloh, the California communications director for the Obama campaign, said the effort allows the campaign to "recruit a precinct captain, track their phone calls and do everything online," a strategy effectively employed in the past by MoveOn.org.

Both Obama and Clinton's campaign have also targeted specific appeals to crucial absentee voters in California - where an estimated 40 percent of all Democratic voters could cast their ballots by mail. Californians can begin casting early ballots on Jan. 7, and have until Jan. 22 to register to vote for the Feb. 5 primary; they can apply to vote by mail until Jan. 29.

Though former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has had an aggressive ground game in Iowa, his efforts have been low-key in California.

But at least one other Democratic candidate is aiming a message at California voters this weekend.

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and his wife, Elizabeth, were to deliver it in person with a high-profile event in the Bay Area, but the couple had to cancel their appearances with the death of the candidate's brother this week, campaign insiders said. Still, the Kucinich team planned to go ahead with what it describes as a major "peace rally" Friday at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Franklin Street in San Francisco.

The rally was to be headlined by well-known supporters of the campaign, including John Nichols, Washington correspondent for the Nation; Medea Benjamin from Code Pink; news anchor and talk show host Bree Walker; and peace activist Cindy Sheehan.

"We're feeling very excited ... the more people we get the word out to about Dennis, the more people who are genuinely interested," said Jan McAleer, a Bay Area Kucinich team leader. Still, she said, "I wish I had a dollar for everyone who said 'I'd like to have Dennis, but he doesn't have a chance.' If everyone who felt that way showed up, Dennis would win."

By Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 2007

DES MOINES - Faced with a question, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton often begins her answers with a single word: "Well." (As in, "Well, I've spent 35 years of my life...") It's hard to tell if it's a verbal tic; a one-syllable pause as she prepares a response; or a Midwesternism that has survived Wellesley, Yale, Arkansas, Washington, and New York.

Well....

As in, there were a lot of different strategies at play.

Women who like Mrs. Clinton - from her sixth-grade best friend to the Republican mother who won her help with brain research financing - joined her on the campaign trail and told very likable anecdotes about the senator. And Mrs. Clinton was self-deprecating ("I just don't like to talk about myself") but also commiserated with others who sometimes feel misunderstood ("When I read the paper and I read about me, I know there are mistakes").

The former NATO commander Wesley K. Clark, appearing with Mrs. Clinton in eastern Iowa on Thursday, portrayed her as a tough-but-compassionate commander-in-chief-in-waiting. And doctors from New York introduced her the other day by saying that her role in the 1990's health care reform effort was misunderstood, though they didn't really explain what her real role, therefore, actually was.

At some events this week, the clear message was: I am a caring person; I care about you. At other events, it was attack, attack, attack (against Barack Obama in particular). Naughty, nice, naughty, nice.

Other times it was Hillary-as-change-agent; still other times it was, I'm a known quantity, I'd be a steady hand on the ship of state (unlike, in her view, Mr. Obama).

The likeability tour is now over, and all of these strategies continue to be executed - and still, Mrs. Clinton has even more strategic decisions to make.

Does she mount a last-minute advertising attack on Mr. Obama to try to prevent him from a big win in the Iowa caucuses?

Does she focus on voters in Iowa's cities or the rural areas?

When, and how often, does Chelsea Clinton come back out to Iowa?

How does she, and former President Bill Clinton and her other allies, make the case to supporters of second-tier candidates that they should abandon those other Democrats and come over to her camp?

And, perhaps most difficult of all, does she decide to take third place in the Iowa caucuses in order to help John Edwards win (and thereby deny Mr. Obama a potentially king-making victory in the first-in-the-nation vote here on January 3)?

This last question, according to several Democratic strategists not affiliated with the Clinton campaign, is one that the Clinton campaign is likely to ask itself and answer sometime in the next two weeks. As much as Mrs. Clinton's top priority is winning Iowa, her goal of preventing an Obama victory here is almost equally important. The last thing she wants is to move on to New Hampshire and its January 8 primary with Mr. Obama riding a headwind of political momentum.

Taking third place to help Mr. Edwards would be difficult to "operationalize," in the words of one Clinton adviser. It would have to involve steering Clinton voters into Mr. Edwards' camp. Because so many of Mrs. Clinton's supporters in Iowa are first-time caucus-goers, the basic mechanics of caucus night are confusing enough; instructing these Iowans on gaming the system help Mr. Edwards would be downright perplexing.

And contrary to Clintonian impulses. Mrs. Clinton and her husband are born competitors; throwing elections is not in their D.N.A. When Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy last January, she said she was "in it to win it." There is no reason to think that she and her team have changed their minds, and indeed, Clinton advisers say they haven't given any real thought to helping Mr. Edwards beat Mr. Obama (not to mention Mrs. Clinton) in the caucuses.

At the same time, some Clinton advisers say that their internal tracking polls show that Mr. Edwards is best positioned to win the January 3 caucuses. Other advisers are confident that Mrs. Clinton's base - female voters - is the most passionate and loyal of the three leading candidates. And yet the Obama camp argues daily that it has the most momentum in Iowa right now.

All of this adds up a confusing political picture as the big Iowa vote approaches. But Clinton advisers say they feel good about some hard, clear numbers: Her 165 campaign events and retail stops over the last five days drew 8,811 people as she and her surrogates fanned out across all 99 of Iowa's counties. And, anecdotally, there were certainly voters who said they were leaning toward Messrs. Obama and Edwards but felt persuaded by Mrs. Clinton's presentation to jump into her camp, or at least give it serious thought.

It's almost always impossible to predict the results of a highly competitive Iowa caucus like this one. And perhaps the Clinton campaign will be vindicated in pursuing so many strategies at the same time. But for now, if you ask many diehard Clinton supporters if the campaign's game plan suggests a logical path toward victory, the most likely answer is probably a single word: Well....

By Patrick Healy, The New York Times, December 21, 2007

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Democratic Hillary Rodham Clinton got by with a little help from her friends - Republican ones - and family on Friday.

The presidential candidate, in a tight race with rival Barack Obama in the first primary state, was joined by her mother, Dorothy Rodham, and her daughter, Chelsea, as she appealed to female voters at the start of a two-day campaign swing.

Rodham and the younger Clinton didn't address the crowd, but state Senate President Sylvia Larsen did.

"I know about glass ceilings," said Larsen, only the third woman to lead the state legislative branch. Larsen said Clinton represented the United States on international trips, worked for children and families and was a major player in her husband's administration.

"As first lady, she was both a strategist and an idealist," Larsen said.

Clinton planned to tell New Hampshire voters how she reached across party lines and produced results - echoing television ads already on the air. She also dispatched supporters to vouch for her record and soften the sometimes harsh public caricature that has frustrated her campaign.

"This is a person who can reach common ground and never compromise her principles," New Yorker Jeff Volk said, telling the story of being stuck in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and how Clinton helped him.

"I met one of the most caring, compassionate and informed people I have ever met in my entire life," said Volk, a Republican who has given the maximum of $2,300 to Clinton's campaign and $5,000 to Clinton's political action committee in 2007.

Clinton, standing at Volk's shoulder, said only through bipartisan work can "a sense of fear and fatalism coming from the White House" be erased.

"A lot of the problems that we face in America are not Democratic or Republican problems. They are American problems and I want us to start acting like Americans again," she said. "I want us to roll up our sleeves and solve our problems."

Clinton leads Obama, 42 percent to 25 percent among women in the latest CNN-WMUR poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire. She leads overall in that poll, 38 percent to 26 percent, but trails slightly among independents. A day earlier, Obama met with a small group of New Hampshire independents to build his slight edge there.

A separate poll, released Friday from USA Today and Gallup, showed both Clinton and Obama at 32 percent general support each.

By Philip Elliott, Associated Press, December 21, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - While Republican Mike Huckabee wishes voters Merry Christmas in a television ad, a group organized by his supporters makes automated phone calls slipping the knife into his opponents.

John Edwards, lagging behind his Democratic rivals in cash, gets more than a million dollars in help from labor unions running parallel campaigns.

And Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is locked in a tight race in Iowa, has well-organized and highly strategic assistance from labor backers and EMILY's List, the pro-abortion rights fundraising group that aims to help female candidates.

Presidential candidates are benefiting - and sometimes being criticized - by independent groups that are only now beginning to make their presence known in the early contest states of Iowa and New Hampshire. These groups can be more targeted, more negative and can coordinate their activities in ways that candidate campaigns cannot.

At the same time, the contenders themselves are operating on parallel tracks. Republican candidates in particular are stuffing mailboxes with negative messages about their rivals while airing cheery holiday greetings on television.

Mitt Romney has been especially prolific with negative mail. One piece portrays Fred Thompson as having a "do nothing record" on immigration and characterizes his other rivals - John McCain, Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani - as too lenient toward illegal immigrants.

In one brochure mailed in Iowa, Thompson criticizes the economic policies of Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor with this: "Mike Huckabee talks like a Republican but taxes like a Democrat." Clinton and Barack Obama have exchanged mail over their health care plans.

The mixed messages have their purposes. Negative television can damage both the source and the target. But negative mailings can be aimed at supporters and at voters with a specific gripe.

"Broadcast messages are seen by a broader audience," said Stephen D. Ansolabehere, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on political advertising. "Your attack direct mail is going to be sent to the people you want it to be sent to. It's not going to go to areas you don't want to alienate."

Besides negative ads and mailings, campaigns and their supporters can spread more scurrilous attacks through the Internet, using blogs, e-mails and Web gossip sites such as the Drudge Report.

Outside groups often have been more likely to go on the air with negative advertising. But for the most part, they too have been targeted with their attacks, if they attack at all.

The Club for Growth, which advocates fiscal conservatism, appears to be an exception for now, running television ads against Huckabee. A conservative political action committee called RightMarch.com has spent about $330,000 in mailings and phone calls against Clinton.

The group helping Huckabee, Common Sense Issues, is conducting automated interactive phone calls in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida that provide a positive message about Huckabee or information that is critical of his opponents. It also is organizing caucus-goers for Huckabee, a significant leg up for a cash-strapped candidate who has only recently seen his campaign catch fire.

EMILY's List has spent $486,000 to identify about 20,000 Clinton-leaning women in Iowa who voted in 2006 but did not participate in the presidential caucus in 2004. Maren Hesla, who heads the group's independent expenditures, said her staff is using automated and personal phone calls, direct mail, Google ads and the Web to educate women about the caucus process.

EMILY's List is coordinating with the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, two unions that have endorsed Clinton and are paying for ads on radio and television supporting Clinton.

AFSCME also just spent $34,000 on a direct mail piece in Iowa dismissing Obama's health plan as "another Band-Aid solution." The mail piece quotes Edwards, not Clinton, criticizing Obama's plan. The Edwards camp complained the brochure was misleading.

Altogether, the three pro-Clinton groups have spent more than $2 million to help her in the past month.

"We all talk regularly," Hesla said. "The biggest issue was making sure that we are hitting different audiences."

Edwards is getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising help from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and from Service Employees International Union locals who have endorsed his campaign. The Carpenters created Working for Working Americans, which is running $482,250 in ads in Iowa through the Jan. 3 caucus. The SEIU locals banded together in the Alliance for a New America, which is running $590,000 in radio ads.

Obama, in a fundraising pitch Thursday, complained about the ads, calls and mailings from the outside groups. "Some of it is negative and even deceptive, and a lot of it is paid for by huge, unregulated contributions from special interests," he wrote.

The organizations supporting Huckabee, Clinton and Edwards are prime examples of the different types of groups that are seeking to influence elections.

- AFSCME, AFT and EMILY's List, the groups supporting Clinton, are using their political action committees, which are financed with regulated and limited contributions and can directly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate.

- The Carpenters and the SEIU locals backing Edwards have set up nonprofit groups called "527" organizations that can raise unlimited amounts of money but can only express support for Edwards through "issue ads." They cannot urge anyone to vote for Edwards, but they can encourage them to call Edwards in support of a particular issue. In 2004, they would not have ben able to air ads within 30 days of an election, but the Supreme Court struck down that prohibition.

- Common Sense Issues, the group backing Huckabee, is organized as a 501(c)4 organization that can receive unlimited contributions from individual donors and advocate for or against a candidate provided that more than half of its activity is nonpolitical. It is one of the newest breeds of politically active groups.

None can coordinate with the candidates, though several have strong ties to the candidates they support.

Former President Clinton in October sent a four-page fundraising letter on behalf of the EMILY's List Women Vote project that is financing the pro-Clinton effort in Iowa.

Former Edwards' advisers Nick Baldick and Jeff Link have been advising the labor-backed groups that are helping him with issue ads.

And the president of Common Sense Issues is Harold "Zeke" Swift, a Huckabee backer from Cincinnati. The group's executive director, Patrick Davis, said he also discussed the state of the presidential race with Republican strategist Ed Rollins last month, weeks before Rollins became Huckabee's national campaign chairman.

Huckabee has publicly urged Common Sense Issues to halt its calls. And Edwards in Portsmouth, N.H., on Wednesday, complained that he could not tell the groups supporting him to stop.

"The way the law exists today is you have no control," Edwards said. "You're not allowed by law to have contact or to coordinate with 527s. So can you discourage it? Yes, and I do."

By Jim Kuhnhenn, Associated Press, December 21, 2007

DES MOINES -- Claiming she has caught a wave of momentum over the last five days, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed hard on the notion of her experience -- and the argument that her main rival, Sen. Barack Obama, is lacking therein -- on Thursday as she rounded out her second-to-last swing through Iowa before Christmas.

Clinton has shifted gears several times in recent weeks. She questioned Obama's character at the beginning of December, then pitched a "bring a buddy to caucus" organizing message, then switched over to an effort to humanize her on the campaign trail. Now, with just a week and a half left, she is latched onto her original theme: That she has the experience to bring about change, and a record of doing so.

To that end, her campaign is not letting up on Obama. Clinton advisers held a conference call with members of Congress who are supporting Clinton to address the number of times Obama voted "present," rather than yes or no, during his time in the Illinois legislature. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York described it as evidence of a "lack of leadership" from Obama; Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio accused Obama of "avoiding taking stands on tough issues."

And Clinton herself, campaigning in Iowa, suggested that on foreign policy a vote for Obama would be no better than a vote for George W. Bush, cautioning that a foreign policy crisis in the future would require someone like her at the helm.

"It's tempting anytime things seem quieter for a minute on the international front to think that we don't need a president who is up to speed on foreign affairs and military matters," Clinton said. "Well, that's the kind of logic that got us George Bush in the first place," she said. The Obama campaign responded with a statement: "While Sen. Clinton takes a break from her 'likeability tour' to go back on the attack, Sen. Obama, the only major candidate who opposed both the Iraq war and the rush to war in Iran, will continue to demonstrate why he has the judgment to turn the page on the Bush-Cheney foreign policy."

By Anne E. Kornblut, The Washington Post, December 20, 2007

Headstrong, engaging, but frustratingly difficult to direct - those were the qualities that had the nuns in "The Sound of Music" at wit's end trying to figure out how to deal with a novice by famously asking "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?"

Those are the same qualities that have members of Hillary Clinton's campaign struggling to figure out how to deal with someone who's no novice at all, the candidate's husband, who just happens to be a former President. In many ways, Bill is her strongest asset, but his presence on the campaign trail also casts a shadow on her candidacy. How, and whether, Senator Clinton's team can resolve that dilemma may have a lot to do with her chances.

During the past few weeks, Bill Clinton has been seen and heard a lot more, as Mrs. Clinton's campaign tries to right itself from a series of difficulties and the increasingly common perception that she has squandered a huge lead in the race for the Democratic nomination for President. Bill has turned out far bigger crowds than Hillary was drawing on her own - maybe not Oprah Winfrey size audiences, but still strong showings for the parts of Iowa and New Hampshire that have become pivotal battlegrounds for a candidate who, just a few short weeks ago, was trying to appear so certain a pick as to be above the real rough and tumble.

Bill has certainly succeeded in getting attention. He made headlines by complaining that the news media were too hard on Hillary, holding her to a higher standard than other candidates. He caused ripples with his observation that Obama would be a risky choice and made waves by saying that he'd sit in on Cabinet meetings in a new Clinton administration only if Hillary wanted him to - and intervene in decisions only if he thought she wasn't doing things right. And he raised eyebrows with his suggestion that Hillary's first presidential priority would be to send him and his good friend, former President George H.W. Bush, on a goodwill tour around the world to repair America's tattered reputation and send the message that we're "open for business" again.

As he has throughout his life, Bill is going with what works for him. His first concern remains his own image and his own legacy. He parses words carefully, at times microscopically - which is how the word "Clintonian" came into our lexicon - but just as often Bill doesn't seem willing or able to control himself, whether the control is over what he says or what he does. There's always a sense of thrill-seeking, of enjoying flirting with danger, and of being on the star of a high wire act performing without a net.

The assertion that Hillary's "number one priority" would be sending the 41st and 42d Presidents around the world to fix the damage done by the 43d President can't have been something that he thought about before saying. Not only does it defy reality to think that this would be Hillary's main concern; it also defies belief that President George W. Bush's father would let himself be used in such an obvious and open slap at his son's foreign policy. The news stories garnered the predictable reaction from President Bush 41: he's proud of his son, proud of his son's foreign policy, and proud of what his son has done as President. It was, in effect, as thorough a slap-down as the gentlemanly Texan can deliver.

Bill's comments remind people of his reckless side. He does a lot that gratifies his need for attention from audiences and from the press - neither are things Hillary wants voters to remember.

Bill's most telling unscripted comment may have been his response to Barbara Walters' question about the thinking behind Hillary's run for the White House. He started by reflecting on the (unfortunately, in his view) foreclosed possibility of a third term for himself. The message was clear: that would have been the best choice, but if he couldn't have that, then having his wife as President was a good second choice. Like Vladimir Putin having his hand-picked successor as President and himself as Premier.

But would this really be Bill's third term? Hillary isn't Bill. She may have some of the same issues respecting honesty and candor, but she doesn't have his charm, to be sure. That's why on the eve of the Iowa caucuses her campaign has launched another effort to show her warm and fuzzy side, the "Hillary I Know" tour of friends and relatives, the planned tear-shedding, the appearances designed to make her look like the cookie baker she so adamantly denied being when Bill first ran for President.

More to the point, it's not just their personalities that differ. Hillary carefully has kept her distance from some of her husband's most sensible policies. She expressly rejects the open-trade stance that helped fuel economic growth during Bill's presidency and calls for a reconsideration of NAFTA, for instance, one of the signal accomplishments of his time in office. All evidence points to a Clinton who is more rigidly committed to government intervention in the economy, more willing to impose additional costs on business, and more confident that limiting competition spurs economic success.

The Bill problem for Hillary is that, while she needs him to counter her stiff and abrasive image, to reduce her high negatives and appeal to a broader constituency, he outshines and diminishes her by comparison. Whether it's personal charisma or public fascination with watching a life lived on the edge, Hillary always comes in second. The problem for voters who aren't tired of the Clinton drama and prepared to reject either version - for those who aren't ready yet to close the book on Bill and Hillary and all the baggage they bring with them - is that they can't be sure which of this 2-for-1 combination they're really buying. Or at what price.

By Ronald A. Cass, Real Clear Politics, December 21, 2007

For Clinton, the challenge has become more clear in recent days as both she and former President Bill Clinton, who wasn't a player in Iowa in 1992, have acknowledged that they don't have the kind of built-in organizational infrastructure they enjoy in New Hampshire.

The campaign is pushing hard to put that organization in place, as most of Clinton's national staff has reportedly packed their parkas and headed to Iowa. The campaign is also pushing hard to squeeze momentum out of The Des Moines Register's endorsement of Clinton.

Obama's challenge, like so many also-rans in the past, is to actually get young voters to show up and participate in the terrifically confusing process that is the Iowa Democratic caucuses. The senator's campaign insists that it has also built a traditional organization in the state, and it has Iowa campaign veterans in place who lend credence to that assertion.

Former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) cannot be overlooked. As President Clinton noted, Edwards has essentially been living in Iowa since the 2004 election ended. He jumped into the ranks of legitimacy with a surprise second-place showing that year, and he continues to enjoy a warm following. Even his aides and family have acknowledged that Iowa is crucial to his chances. Edwards doesn't enjoy the Fort Knox-like bank accounts of Clinton and Obama, so he needs a win in Iowa to survive.

The second-tier candidates and the nature of the process are probably the biggest question marks in the state. If Sens. Joseph Biden (Del.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.) or New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson fail to reach viability in a significant number of precincts, where will their supporters go? It's not unreasonable to think Biden's and Dodd's supporters' second choices are Dodd and Biden, two candidates mocked in some quarters for being hard to tell apart.

Dodd enjoys the weighty backing and organizational support of the International Association of Fire Fighters, which propelled Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) to an Iowa win in 2004, and both Biden and Richardson have amassed noteworthy endorsements.

Supporters of these candidates might end up deciding the winner in Iowa when forced to pick their second choices under the caucus system.

"The second choice of supporters of the second-tier candidates can be a matter of political life and death for those candidates," Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University, said.

New Hampshire, Jan. 8 - In 2004, New Hampshire wasn't a factor for Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), who dropped out of the race after a poor showing in Iowa. Edwards could face the same fate, although his campaign insisted Wednesday he is running a national campaign. Clinton and Obama, by contrast, have much more money and a lot of support in New Hampshire that ensures they will be dueling there just as they have in Iowa.

The Clintons enjoy a lot of holdover good will in the state where Bill Clinton earned the "Comeback Kid" moniker in 1992, but Obama is polling strongly with the crucial independent bloc.

Obama also has the support of the state's two congressional members, but the recent comments about Obama's past drug use by Clinton's former state campaign chairman Billy Shaheen, who was ousted over the remarks, may have had an impact, if Tuesday's polls showing Obama's momentum slowing are to be believed. New Hampshire voters take electability seriously, so an Obama or Clinton win in Iowa could ease whatever doubts Granite State voters have about the winning candidate.

For the rest of the field, getting to New Hampshire after Iowa would be a victory in and of itself. Iowa might well start thinning out the herd right off the bat.

Michigan, Jan. 15 and Nevada, Jan. 19 - Since Michigan was stripped of all its delegates by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and almost all of the candidates have withdrawn from the ballot, the results will largely be meaningless on the Democratic side.

What remains to be seen is just how important Nevada's first early caucuses will be. The sense right now is that if one candidate were to sweep the first two states, then that candidate would enjoy late but important bandwagon support from Nevada's state unions. The relatively untested Nevada caucus-goers would likely be in the mood to vote for a winner. If the first two states are split, then Nevada becomes a free-for-all. Clinton enjoys celebrity status and strong poll numbers in the state, but Edwards has pushed hard for labor support there. If Edwards beats expectations in Iowa, at least enough to compete in New Hampshire, then he could be a player in the desert.

South Carolina, Jan. 26 - In their first Southern test, Obama and Clinton will continue to fight hard for black voters, who will likely comprise the make-or-break bloc for either candidate in the state. If Edwards has made it this far and still has money and some sense of viability, he might be able to make a late push in the state where he was born.

That makes House Democratic Whip James Clyburn (S.C.) the most popular guy in the state. Clyburn's office repeated this week that he does not expect to endorse any of the candidates, but that sure doesn't mean they won't work for his - and his constituents' - support.

Florida, Jan. 29 - At this stage of the game, if any of the top three have swept the early states, they will project a healthy sense of momentum and inevitability. Since the DNC has barred them from campaigning in Florida, they'll need it.

Despite the committee's penalties on the Sunshine State, Democratic voters will still turn out and make their preference know. Given its importance in the general election, Florida's results will still be watched and noted.

Super Duper Tuesday, Feb. 5 - Obama and Clinton have d­elegate-rich Illinois and New York as home-court advantages, while the California jackpot is on the table. The biggest winner on Feb. 5 is likely to effectively end the process. A party desperate to win back the White House would look none too kindly on a candidate who stretched his or her campaign further if it appeared to be for ego's sake.

By Sam Youngman, The Hill, December 20, 2007

BOSTON -- And so we gather to praise the old feminazi hunter himself. Rush Limbaugh has single-handedly brushed aside the blinding snow on the windshield and let us have another clear view of the double standard running down this campaign highway.

This week, our man Rush offered a lengthy monologue about an unflattering photo of Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire cold. He ended by asking the question: "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?"

EEEEK! Hillary has wrinkles! Somebody call the exorcist!

Remember last summer when the nation was treated to a bit of fashionbabble about Hillary's cleavage? This alerted us to the startling news that the senator had breasts. Two of them. News at 11. Now we are being treated to a psychodrama titled "The Candidate Has Crow's Feet."

Let me stipulate that the photo was not one she'd put on Match.com. These days, candidates are like celebrities stalked by the sort of paparazzi who can find cellulite on Jennifer Love Hewitt. Anyone who wants to run for the presidency should first imagine herself trying on bathing suits in a fluorescent-lit dressing room while six of her worst enemies point their cell phone cameras.

Hillary made mocking note of this when she mounted the stage at an Iowa auction barn. "I've been to cattle barns before," she joked, but "I've never felt like I was the one being bid on. I know you're going to inspect me. You can look inside my mouth if you want."

The now-infamous photo ended up on the Drudge Report with a caption reading: "The Toll of a Campaign." Rush then picked up the old bat, I mean, baton, and ran off (at the mouth) with it.

The svelte and charming 56-year-old talkmeister framed his words about the 60-year-old Clinton who is getting older before our eyes on a daily basis as a cultural comment. He bemoaned the reality of a country "addicted to physical perfection." He cited the laments of aging actresses. He oozed special sympathy to women, since older men look "more authoritative, accomplished, distinguished."

Do you believe that this was a pro-woman rant? Then you also believe that Limbaugh's routine about Hillary Clinton's "testicle lockbox" is a paean to female leadership qualities.

What a long way we have come already in this campaign. Ten months ago, opponents were asking whether America was ready for a woman president. Now they're asking whether America is ready for a woman getting older before our eyes on a daily basis as president.

Meanwhile, it's become retro, maybe even feminazi, to notice the teensiest whiff of sexism. Hillary was accused of playing the gender card for merely mentioning that presidential politics was an "all-boys club." If you complain about the heat, you'll end up back in the kitchen.

So when Limbaugh talks about the older woman as a kind of Doriana Gray -- a figure of such terrifying crone-ishness that we don't even want her portrait in the Oval Office -- we are required to acknowledge the talk of John Edwards' hair and Barack Obama's swimsuit. Not to mention the grimacing Giuliani and the robotic Romney.

Well, we do notice what both genders are wearing. But we have not yet passed the Equal Right to Be Scrutinized Amendment. Haggard still comes from old hag, which comes from witch, which rhymes with you know what. If Romney tears up, he's sensitive; if Hillary cries, she's toast.

In phase one of this campaign, Hillary was the experienced candidate. No gender need apply. In the last tense stretch to the first primaries, the headlines tell us she's being humanized, which is a political synonym for "feminized." When Hillary campaigns with her family, the media sometimes react as if she found Dorothy Rodham at Rent-a-Mom.

So it bears repeating, alas, that women still have to negotiate the Scylla and Charybdis of political life. If you're seen as an authority figure, you aren't seen as womanly; if you're seen as womanly, you aren't seen as an authority figure. By the time you tack through that narrow channel, you have -- ohmigod -- wrinkles!

In the 1990s, Hillary tried on more looks than Madonna. Now that she's arrived at a comfort zone, she's still studied for signs of cleavage, cackle and crow's feet. Since there's no whining allowed, she has to tough it out. At which point she's accused of being too tough.

What a business this is. Come to think of it, maybe I'd prefer that bathing suit photo op. Only Rush, ol' buddy, you go first.

By Ellen Goodman, Real Clear Politics, December 21, 2007

A FOX News poll released Thursday shows Hillary Clinton continues to have a significant lead over Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic Party's nomination, despite being seen as the main candidate practicing dirty politics. Democrats explicitly say Clinton has the right experience and is a strong leader, and twice as many say Clinton rather than Obama can bring about needed change.

The national telephone poll was conducted for FOX News by Opinion Dynamics Corp. among 900 registered voters from Dec. 18 to 19. The poll has a 3-point error margin.

Clinton receives the backing of 49 percent of Democrats, up from 44 percent last month, and Obama is at 20 percent today, down from 23 percent. John Edwards comes in third at 10 percent. All other Democratic contenders receive the support of 3 percent or less, and 12 percent are undecided.

To put Clinton's current 29-point edge in perspective, looking back at the past six months her lead over Obama has been as wide as 32 points (early October) and as narrow as just 13 points (in August).

"I like Hillary. I like her a lot," said nursing student Shay Mack, walking past the library at the historically black school. "She has the experience. She's been in the White House before; she's in the Senate now. And I like Bill."

Her friend and classmate Nadirah Jones is leaning the other way. Her mom and 13-year-old sister have been plastering Obama posters back home in Eutawville. "He's a people person. And it would give a lot of kids somebody to look up to. But whether it's Clinton or Obama, I'm happy," she said.

Black voters make up half the electorate in South Carolina's Jan. 29 Democratic primary. Winning in a state that's so much more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire would show viability and broad appeal heading into the coast-to-coast "Super-Duper" Tuesday primaries Feb. 5.

But the racial dynamics are complex. Some black voters fret openly about the wisdom of electing a black president, worrying that persistent racism would cause problems. Others thrill at the prospect of breaking the color barrier. Many remain loyal to the Clintons - many black women, for instance, view the match-up as a no-lose proposition.

But Hillary Rodham Clinton has struggled to tamp down the excitement growing on the Obama side.

So the camps are pushing hard in South Carolina, dispatching rock star surrogates. Oprah Winfrey drew 29,000 screaming fans and voters to an Obama rally in Columbia, where she argued that he represents a dream whose time has come.

Bill Clinton has made regular stops in South Carolina all year, arguing that only his wife has the experience to be president and reminding voters, sometimes by his mere presence, that many black Democrats fondly consider him to have been the nation's first black president. He spoke at an NAACP convention earlier in the year, at a black sorority in Charleston on the eve of Oprah's visit, and in Orangeburg on Monday.

Mr. Obama has eaten into the Clinton lead. The latest surveys show a dead heat, with black voters steadily migrating toward him. In a new CBS News/New York Times poll, Mr. Obama leads 35 percent to 34 percent but 52-27 among blacks. A new Rasmussen survey shows half of black voters support Mr. Obama and just 28 percent Mrs. Clinton. A month earlier they were running even.

"The candidate who can get the lion's share of the black vote and do reasonably well with whites will win," said Clemson University political scientist Bruce Ransom, an expert on the African-American electorate. "At one point she was so far ahead, generally and among black voters, that strategically she may have felt she didn't feel she needed to put quite as much attention into South Carolina, or that President Clinton could provide whatever link or connection she needed."

For many black voters, the issue of electability looms large. Would Mr. Obama run into a buzz saw of bias, latent or overt, next November? Older voters seem to harbor the most anxiety, even as younger black voters seem to readily set aside consideration of race.

"Those who have seen the worst of America would probably have a more abiding concern," said the Rev. Joseph Darby, senior pastor at the state's largest black congregation, the Morris Brown African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.

He agreed that Mrs. Clinton benefits from sentimentality for her husband's work with the black community over the years. But he said, "I don't think that Hillary can consider her connection to the former president to be an automatic vote. I don't think that Obama can take the black vote for granted either. ...

"He's walking a tightrope. He doesn't want to be so black that he gives any white voters in South Carolina the shakes, and that's very tricky because it's very seldom that white voters will vote for a black candidate," Mr. Darby said.

Back at South Carolina State, senior Robert Woods figures both Democratic front-runners have burdens they'll need to shake off.

"Are other countries ready to accept a woman president, a woman in power? Is the world ready for a black president?" said Mr. Woods, 23, who is studying to teach high school biology. "A white lady or an African-American male - either way, you're taking a major chance."

He's walking across campus with Emil Douglas, a 19-year-old marketing major and friend from back home in Bennettsville, in the state's northeast corner. Both plan to vote for Mrs. Clinton.

"I don't dislike Obama," Mr. Douglas said. "But right now I just think Hillary is the stronger candidate. We need something new, whether it's a female president or a black, an African-American president. One of the two. We just need change."

Among black voters, Mrs. Clinton is an easier sell to women. For them, the Obama-Clinton match-up is a no-lose proposition.

"It's one of the things you fall asleep thinking about," said Whitney McCrea, president of the campus Young Democrats chapter. "God. We could have a woman president or a black president next year."

The fact that many younger black voters shrug off the history-making potential of the Obama candidacy doesn't much surprise the student council president, Jeremy Rogers. The 21-year-old psychology major initially leaned toward Delaware Sen. Joe Biden but is still making up his mind.

Civil rights issues remain important - he cites the Jena 6 controversy as a recent example - but life is easier for this generation, he said, so it's more natural to make a colorblind assessment of the candidates.

"We haven't seen as much as the older generation," he said, adding that plenty of older relatives are pulling hard for Mr. Obama. "Some of their prayers are being answered. I think they see what we don't. They've been waiting for this for a long time."

Just off campus, the Obama campaign toils away from a small storefront. Regional field director Elizabeth Wilkins, 24 - whose pedigree includes a Pulitzer Prize-winning father, Roger Wilkins, and a great-uncle, Roy Wilkins, who ran the NAACP during the 1960s and 1970s - said she comes across voters who worry that no matter how her man does in the primary, he wouldn't be able to sway a broader electorate in November.

"It comes up," Ms. Wilkins conceded. "This campaign is about putting an end to the politics of fear in whatever form it takes, including the fear that a black man can't be elected president."

By Todd J. Gillman, The Dallas Morning News, December 21, 2007

Hillary Clinton is finishing up a 99-county blitz through Iowa before the state's first-in-the- nation caucuses by trying to convince voters that she -- and not rival Barack Obama -- is the candidate who most represents change.

It's a harder job than the first woman candidate with a chance at a presidential nomination might have expected. Over the last five days, the New York senator, her family and friends have crisscrossed snow-crusted farmland by helicopter and road to deliver the message ahead of the Jan. 3 vote.

"Everyone's talking about change,'' Clinton, 60, told an Independence, Iowa, audience of hundreds on Dec. 19, in a rural exhibition hall where shiny vintage cars were on display. "Some believe you bring it about by hoping for it. I believe you bring it about by working really, really hard every single day. That's what I've done for 35 years.''

While Clinton remains the national frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, she trails Obama, the Illinois senator who is the first black candidate with a chance at a nomination, in several Iowa polls. The aggregate of six surveys conducted over the last week showed Obama leading her by 28 percent to 27 percent with Edwards at 23 percent, according to Real Clear Politics, a Chicago-based Web site.

Many Iowa voters have responded to Obama's message that he is a fresh face who can unite a polarized electorate and move the country away from what he calls the "same old'' politics.

A Fresh Direction

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Dec. 19 showed that Iowa Democrats favor new ideas and a fresh direction over strength and experience by a margin of 56 percent to 33 percent. Half the voters who said change is their priority supported Obama, 46; 23 percent chose former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, 54, who has built his campaign around a message of economic populism. Clinton had only 15 percent.

Among the voters who said they are more concerned about experience, by contrast, Clinton had 49 percent, to 15 percent for Edwards and 8 percent for Obama.

Even as Clinton sought to present herself as an agent of change this week, she also delivered the message that she is a forged-by-fire first lady and senator. With a smile on her face to soften her image, she frequently invoked the past, particularly the accomplishments of former President Bill Clinton's administration. In Independence, she even joked, "There she goes, talking about the '90s'' while praising her husband's economic policies.

Balancing Act

The balancing act is deliberate, said Howard Wolfson, a senior campaign adviser. "We don't see change and experience as opposing things,'' he said. "We are going to have to make the case aggressively and clearly that she's the one with the experience to make that change.''

It may be a hard case to make, said Dennis Goldford, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines, since the claim of experience could be her undoing among those who want a clean break from the past.

Clinton "is sort of back to the future,'' Goldford said. She may talk about "change away from the Bush years but does that mean going back to the '90s?''

Ruth Grau, 75, a retired schoolteacher who attended a forum in a restored 1903 opera house in Elkader, said Clinton's pitch had left her with "mixed feelings'' for precisely that reason.

"I think her husband was probably one of brightest people who was ever president,'' Grau said. "But there are people who feel that a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton repeat isn't a great thing.''

Confounding Pollsters

Still, Iowa caucus-goers have often confounded pollsters with their late decision-making and last-minute support for second-choice candidates. In 2004, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, running as the antiwar candidate, was the strong favorite for most of the campaign, only to lose to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Wolfson said that tradition allows candidates to make their "closing arguments until the very end.''

Several voters who attended Clinton events this week said they liked her new tone. Ed Poynor, 61, a retired schoolteacher from Manchester in eastern Iowa, said he arrived at one of her whistle stops on Dec. 18 as an Edwards backer, and left the event as a Clinton supporter.

"She convinced me that she's committed and always has been, and that she'll do radical things,'' he said. "That's what I want.''

By Indira Lakshmanan, Bloomberg, December 21, 2007

"My daughters are pushing hard, 'Vote your conscience,' " says Stephanie Montgomery, 58. "But I want us to go into the general election with a Democratic candidate I am certain can win." She worries about the "hatred" she sees among some voters toward Hillary Rodham Clinton and wonders, "Does Barack Obama have enough acumen to run the White House?"

As the Jan. 8 primary draws closer, more political questions seem to be getting raised than answered. The results from New Hampshire likely will propel some candidacies and end others. But the contests in both parties are tightening, making predictions perilous, and more than 40% of those surveyed in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll this week say they may change their minds.

For some independents, that uncertainty extends to whether they'll vote in the Democratic contest or the Republican one. Gail and Bill Tousignant drove through a snowstorm to attend a town hall at Pelham High School with Arizona Sen. John McCain. But she's also considering a vote for Clinton. "I just like her issues, and I think to have a woman in the White House would be different," she says.

The two primaries are dominated by very different issues. Republicans and independents who are "leaning" toward the GOP rank illegal immigration as their No. 1 issue. Among Democrats, just 3% call it the most important issue.

For Democrats, Iraq is the top concern, followed by health care.

"I'm a health care voter," Sandra Burt, 65, declares before a roundtable with Illinois Sen. Obama starts at a Concord restaurant serendipitously called The Common Man. Laid off six months ago, she is struggling to pay for medicine that costs $2,900 a month for an auto-immune disorder.

During the roundtable, tears stream down Burt's cheeks as she describes her family's efforts to cope. "My husband has sold his truck, and he's cashed in his life insurance," she says. She asks Obama how high her prescription co-payments would be under his plan.

Obama demurs on the specific query, repeating instead his general commitment to address health care coverage as president.

Voters in both parties say by an identical 65%-30% that they are more interested in choosing a candidate who agrees with them on almost all issues than one with the best chance of beating the other side in November. For New Hampshire Democrats, that's a shift from four years ago, when they were evenly divided between agreeing with a candidate on issues and choosing the candidate mostly likely to defeat President Bush - a sentiment that boosted the campaign of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

Even more important to voters this time: A candidate's leadership skills and vision. By 3-2, Republicans call leadership more important than a candidate's stance on issues. Democrats by 2-1 agree.

That seems to be boosting McCain, whose support is rising.

Michael Sawicki, 50, an engineer from Pelham, voted for McCain in 2000 but had been leaning toward former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani this time.

"I didn't think he (McCain) was coming on very strong; I thought Giuliani was a little more pro-active," he says. Now McCain's unyielding stance on the Iraq war has Sawicki reconsidering. "He's stood by his guns," he says.

As voting nears, Clinton's lead has eroded. Her support was wide but also shallow and "squishy," says Kathleen O'Donnell, 44, chairman of Keene County Democrats, who attended the Edwards town hall but isn't supporting any candidate.

"People believe she'd step in knowing how everything is and how everything works," O'Donnell says. But the Clinton campaign's attacks on Obama in recent days have "made people who are receptive to her wince," she says.

Suzanne Krautmann, 59, an elementary school teacher from Keene, is at the Edwards rally, too, but not because she's undecided.

"I'm decided on (Dennis) Kucinich," she says. "But I'm very curious about Edwards - and I want to hear Bonnie Raitt."

By Susan Page, USA Today, December 20, 2007

Not so long ago, the conventional wisdom of Washington proclaimed that Hillary Rodham Clinton could not be stopped from winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Today, the same wise men and women hint that she has forfeited the prize.

In that environment, her opponents are not held accountable by the same standard that is applied to Clinton. For many months, both Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards have been tossing out attack lines that they hoped would bring down her formidable numbers. Obama has not hesitated to use harsh language to question her character, her sincerity, her fitness to serve and her capacity to govern if elected. He has reserved his toughest rhetoric for the Democratic front-runner, while suggesting that he will find common ground with the Republicans. That may explain why Obama has won endorsements from a panoply of Republican operatives and spokespersons, including former White House political boss Karl Rove and David Brooks, the neo-conservative voice on the New York Times Op-Ed page.

Yet it is also true that the events of recent days have exposed weaknesses in the Clinton campaign. There may be no sense of panic in her headquarters - and there is almost certainly no nefarious strategy of demonizing Obama, her leading rival - but the clumsiness of her surrogates and staffers has made her campaign look panicky and scheming at once. At the very least, their blunders have provided ample ammunition for cheap shots.

It is hard to imagine that the Clinton campaign conspired with Bill Shaheen to introduce the subject of Obama's youthful drug use, or urged Bob Kerrey to blather on about the Sen.'s middle name and Muslim heritage. It is much more likely that both men were simply opening their mouths without thinking too hard about the consequences, which is to say, simply being themselves. Expecting Clinton to control every blurted stupidity of her supporters is unfair.

But digging up an Obama kindergarten essay about his presidential aspirations was plain dumb, even if he started the silly exchange over who is more ambitious. That may have been the work of an overzealous junior researcher. Sending senior strategist Mark Penn to defend her on CNBC's "Hardball," however, was a bad decision made at the highest level. A controversial figure because of his unsavory public relations clientele, Penn proved to be neither prepossessing nor nimble. He only worsened the damage done by Shaheen's remarks when he uttered the word "cocaine," and then allowed himself to be drawn into a shrill debate over what he had just said.

The tin-eared Penn may not fully understand the potential consequences of that exchange - which has been televised again and again - but the Clintons surely should. To the black Americans who have long been their most loyal supporters, that cocaine reference carries an unmistakable tinge of racial politics, which must be avoided in this contest for both moral and strategic reasons.

All these ugly, petty controversies have distracted Clinton from pointing up her differences with Obama in approaching Social Security and national health insurance, which offered a clean, clear way to deter his challenge. Instead, she is apologizing and explaining.

Surprisingly, the disputes that have lately monopolized so much news coverage and commentary have not dented her national appeal significantly. Although Clinton faces difficulties in Iowa and New Hampshire, the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll shows that she has started to recover the commanding lead that began to diminish in late November, after her poor debate performance.

Conducted over the weekend of Dec. 14-16, the Gallup survey shows Clinton gaining six points and moving up from 39 percent two weeks earlier to 45 percent among registered Democratic voters. Obama moved up as well by three points in that poll from 24 percent to 27 percent, leaving him still 18 points behind the front-runner. Support for Edwards and the rest of the Democratic field remained essentially the same.

Consistent with those numbers are other polls indicating that Clinton's troubles in Iowa and New Hampshire have not surfaced so far in the big states, whose primaries will determine the ultimate winner.

She has been slowed, but not stopped - and she should not be underestimated.

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney's lead has narrowed to single digits over John McCain, who hopes to repeat the victory here that ignited his presidential campaign in 2000.

The survey's fundamental finding is uncertainty: More than four of 10 voters in each party say they may change their minds before the Jan. 8 primary. That fluidity could magnify the impact of late-breaking news, last-minute gaffes and the Iowa caucuses that will open the presidential season five days earlier.

"People are just taking a hard look at this point," says Jim Hardy, sheriff of Hillsborough County and a McCain supporter who is greeting voters at a campaign town hall with the Arizona senator at Pelham High School on Wednesday night.

At a rally in Keene for Democrat John Edwards, Linda Rockwell and her husband, Robin, say they are "leaning" toward Edwards but also considering Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. Independents can vote in either party's primary. "I don't really decide until a couple of days before," she says.

In the poll, Clinton and Obama are tied at 32%-32%, with Edwards at 18%. No other candidate breaks into double digits.

Counting only those who say their vote is certain, Clinton narrowly leads Obama, 20%-18%. Edwards is backed by 10%.

In the Republican race, Romney leads McCain, 34%-27%. Including only those whose votes are set, Romney's lead narrows to 19%-15%, within the survey's margin of error of +/— 5 points. Effectively tied for third place are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, at 11%, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, each at 9%.

Just last month, most Granite State surveys showed Clinton and Romney with double-digit leads. Now, Clinton's "firewall" against a possible setback in Iowa has weakened. Of eight statewide polls taken by other news organizations during the past two weeks, Clinton has led in six, Obama in two, according to RealClearPolitics.com.

In the GOP, a lead for Romney that averaged 16 percentage points at the beginning of December has been cut to 7 points.

The USA TODAY poll, taken Monday through Wednesday, finds voters assessing the contenders as having distinctive strengths:

- Republicans view Romney as someone who shares their values, has new ideas to solve the country's problems and has the best chance of winning in November. McCain ranks first as someone who is in touch with average Americans, stands up for what he believes and can get things done in Washington.

- Democrats view Clinton as the candidate who knows how to get things done and is most likely to win the general election. But the New York senator ranks third, behind Illinois Sen. Obama and former North Carolina senator Edwards, as someone who offers new ideas and is "in touch with the average American."

Obama is seen as most likely to share voters' values and be willing to stand up for what he believes.

By Susan Page, USA Today, December 20, 2007

GRUNDY CENTER, Iowa (AP) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Iowans Thursday against voting for a candidate who doesn't have foreign policy experience, suggesting her leading rivals would be no better than President Bush in that regard.

"It is tempting any time things seem quieter for a minute on the international front to think that we don't need a president who is up to speed on foreign affairs and military matters," Clinton said.

"Well, that's the kind of logic that got us George Bush in the first place," she said to laughter from her friendly audience at a high school auditorium. "Experience in foreign affairs is critical for ending the war in Iraq, averting war in Iran, negotiating a Middle East peace and dealing with North Korea."

Clinton's advisers described her speech two weeks before the Iowa caucuses as a closing argument against top rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards, as well as Republican candidates with little international experience. Obama has served three years in the Senate, while Edwards served one six-year term, yet both are running head-to-head with Clinton in Iowa, arguing that the country needs a new direction.

The Obama and Edwards campaigns responded by criticizing Clinton's vote to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organizations as a move toward another war. Clinton has said she was not voting for war, but stepped-up diplomacy.

"Truth be told, apparently Senator Clinton hasn't learned anything from her experience because, unlike John Edwards, she just supported George Bush and his rush to war with Iran," said Edwards spokesman Chris Kofinis.

Said Obama spokesman Bill Burton: "While Senator Clinton takes a break from her likeability tour to go back on the attack, Senator Obama, the only major candidate who opposed both the Iraq war and the rush to war in Iran, will continue to demonstrate why he has the judgment to turn the page on the Bush-Cheney foreign policy." Burton also pointed out that Clinton's advisers criticized the Illinois senator for calling her "Bush-Cheney lite" over the summer. At the time, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said "one Democrat comparing another Democrat to George Bush — that's the worst kind of tactical political maneuvering."

Clinton was accompanied by military and diplomatic leaders from her husband's administration, and they spent 30 minutes lauding her experience around the world.

"It is one thing to say that we need leadership, it's another to have the experience," said former Army and Veterans Affairs Secretary Togo D. West.

Clinton never mentioned her rivals by name, but she was apparently referring to Obama when she said she plans diplomatic efforts with Iran to avoid war. "I don't mean that the president sits down with these leaders - that's not smart," she said. Obama had said that he would be willing to negotiate with leaders of Iran and other unfriendly nations in the first year of his presidency.

Later in a question-and-answer session, retiree Max Higgason of Eldora, Iowa, said he was leaning toward Edwards because he liked his focus decrying "Two Americas" for the rich and poor. Clinton responded that she had been working on poverty from her time at the Children's Defense Fund after graduating law school to her recent effort in the Senate to increase the minimum wage.

"I'm not just giving speeches on this, I've been working on it for 35 years," she said. "I think it's really important that you look at what we have actually done, not what we say or what we tell you we hope to do, because the best way to determine who can actually deliver change for America is by looking at who has already done it."

Higgason said afterward that Clinton's argument was persuasive and he would probably caucus for her, even though he backed Edwards in 2004.

"I think possibly she has more experience in the international than what Edwards has," Higgason said. "I think Edwards' heart is in the right place. But I feel like a lot of them, she probably would be able to take off quicker from the start."

By Nedra Pickler, Associated Press, December 20, 2007

Just back from Iowa, and I've got a theory about why Hillary Clinton has been having a difficult time.

It's because she is the issue.

No politician wants to be the issue, and have the debate swirl around them and their foibles. And Hillary is working overtime to make Barack Obama the issue with the whole change-requires-experience argument. But I don't see the pundits, bloggers, radio people and cable hosts sitting around debating Obama's qualifications. They're chattering about Hillary, as they have for 15 years. Even talking about her looks, thanks to Drudge.

Clinton's team, as I reported yesterday, believes the press is holding their woman to a much higher standard than Obama, and some journalists agree.

For most of the year, as HRC's election was depicted as pretty much a done deal, a number of conservative commentators seemed to be making their peace with the prospect. Hillary was more hawkish than her Democratic rivals, more experienced, and had run a surprisingly good campaign, they said. She was, in short, a grownup.

But now that she's hit a rough patch, some of the old anti-Hillary vehemence is surfacing. Take these two reports in National Review, starting with Jonah Goldberg:

"The most enjoyable aspect of watching the HMS Hillary take on water is the prospect that Bill -- and his cult of personality -- will go down with the ship, too. Bill Clinton has been stumping for his wife on the Iowa hustings, framing the election as a referendum on his tenure as president. Last month in Muscatine (during the same speech in which he falsely claimed to have opposed the Iraq war from the beginning), he told the assembled Democrats that HMS Hillary could transport America 'back to the future.' . . .

"Hillary's entire campaign has been grounded in her experience in the Clinton administration of the 1990s, even though that experience mostly involves designing a failed health-care plan and unsuccessfully hectoring her husband to move to the left. Still, as New York Times editorial writer Adam Cohen noted in a column last week, it was her decision to make the choice between her and Barack Obama a 'referendum on a decade.' So if Hillary Clinton loses the race for the nomination -- heck, even if she just loses the Iowa caucuses -- I hope to see this headline somewhere, perhaps in the New York Post: 'America to Clinton(s): We're Just Not That Into You.' "

Noemie Emery draws a parallel to another failed candidate:

"What is one to make of Hillary Clinton, now that her front-running campaign seems to be foundering? Pretty much what one made of Al Gore when his campaign faltered. 2008 has barely begun, but already it seems quite a lot like 2000. There is a sense of deja-vu-all-over-again as Bill Clinton's over-ambitious First Lady replays his vice president's fate.

"The former VP and the former first lady have remarkable similarities. Both Gore and Hillary wanted to be president for a most of their lives, and with an uncommon ferocity. Each one's rise through the ranks came about via family members -- his father; her husband. Both rose to fame on the wings of Bill Clinton, who is proving to be a mixed blessing for both. Each began a campaign in a position of almost impregnable power, which each one subsequently (and quickly) undermined by errors of judgment and character.

"In short, what we see here are two campaigns that began with a huge amount of familial and institutional support for candidates who rose exclusively through the power of their respective situations, and who, in the end, are inept politicians and thus in over their heads in a high-stakes campaign."

Not sure what she means by Hillary's character problem, since the piece is more about her being a bad politician.

Rush Limbaugh's ruminations on the Drudge photo of Hillary's wrinkles prompt Maureen Dowd to say Limbaugh is right about our living in a looks-obsessed society. She adds:

"Hillary doesn't have to worry about her face. She has to worry about her mask. Back in the '92 race, Clinton pollsters devised strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal. Fifteen years later, her campaign is devising strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal.

"The public still has no idea of what part of her is stage-managed and focus-grouped, and what part is legit. It's pretty pathetic, at this stage of her career, that she has to wage a major offensive, by helicopter and Web testimonials, to make herself appear warm-blooded."

The Bill Factor is making a comeback as a campaign narrative, as demonstrated by this Daily News piece:

"Hillary Clinton's husband may be a political genius, but he's also a Bill in a china shop . . .

"Hillary Clinton might not be amused at the brouhaha her husband caused by saying that as president, she would immediately enlist the first President Bush to repair the overseas mess his son is leaving.

"The New York senator has also said she'd reach out to past presidents to help fix America's image. But Bubba's more pointed suggestion that Poppy would help clean up his son's mess provoked a smackdown from the older Bush's camp.

" 'That will not happen. There is no way he would do anything that would even indirectly suggest he has problems with his son's foreign policy,' a longtime friend of George H.W. Bush told the Daily News."

As if Hillary didn't have enough to worry about, the New York Post has this:

"Owe, brother! "Hillary Rodham Clinton's youngest sibling is a deadbeat dad who owes tens of thousands of dollars in child support to his politically connected ex, The Post has learned. "In a disclosure that could prove embarrassing for his sister, Anthony Rodham has stiffed his former wife, Nicole Boxer, out of $75,000 in child support, as well as $55,000 in alimony, a source close to the case said." That's Barbara Boxer's daughter.

By Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, December 20, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Just two weeks until the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic presidential candidates appear to be in a dead heat in the Hawkeye State, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll.

With the poll's sampling error at plus or minus 4 percentage points, it's a virtual tie for the top spot in Iowa, the first state to vote in the race for the White House.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is at 7 percent, with the remaining Democratic candidates all in the lower single digits.

On the Republican side, 33 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers support former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as the nominee. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney comes in second place at 25 percent, followed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani with 11 percent. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee are tied at 9 percent, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at 6 percent, with the rest of the Republican field in the lower single digits.

The margin of error for Republican caucus voters is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

There are only 14 days left until Iowans head out to caucus, but the survey suggests that many voters have yet to make up their minds. One in three likely Democratic caucus-goers say they're still trying to decide whom to support. That number's even higher among likely Republican caucus-goers, with 40 percent still undecided on their choice for the nominee.

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland warned that "all these figures should be treated with extra caution, because it is extraordinarily difficult for polls to accurately assess who will attend the caucuses, and Iowans are notorious for making their minds up late in the game."

The survey indicates that Iraq is still the top issue for Democrats, with one in three likely Democratic caucus-goers saying the war is the most important issue in their choice for president. Health care follows at 27 percent with the economy 1 point back.

"Clinton is seen as the candidate who is best able to handle the economy, Iraq, and health care -- the top three issues of concern to Democratic caucus-goers -- with her biggest advantage on health care," Holland said.

The economy appears to be the most pressing issue for Republicans, with one in four likely Republican caucus-goers saying the economy is the most important issue in their choice. That's followed by illegal immigration at 20 percent, abortion at 18 percent, terrorism at 17 percent and the Iraq War at 12 percent.

It appears Iowa Republicans think Romney would do the best job among the GOP White House hopefuls in handling the economy, with 34 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers choosing Romney, 11 points ahead of Huckabee. "Although Huckabee is the favorite candidate of likely GOP caucus-goers, they admit that other candidates would do a better job on nearly every issue tested. For some, such as terrorism, immigration and Iraq, he finishes in third place," Holland said.

"What's driving the Huckaboom? Abortion. It's the only issue tested on which Huckabee ranks first, indicating that even though he is not a single-issue candidate, he may have single-issue appeal."

It appears the Huckabee vote is the born-again vote, with the poll suggesting his support among Iowans who say they are born-again or evangelical Christians is nearly 30 points higher than among nonevangelicals. Huckabee served as a Baptist pastor before entering politics. Romney has a 10 point edge among nonevangelical voters.

"There is also a surprising gender gap among likely GOP caucus-goers," says Holland. The poll indicates women prefer Huckabee over Romney by a 40 percent to 18 percent margin. Among men, it's Romney 30 percent and Huckabee 28 percent.

On the Democratic side, Clinton is the favorite of women, older voters, liberals and those making less than $50,000 a year. Obama has an edge among moderates and younger voters; Edwards does best in union households and among married voters.

The poll surveyed 543 Iowa residents who say they are likely to vote in the Democratic caucuses, and 359 who say they are likely to vote in the Republican caucuses. Interviews were conducted by telephone December 14 to 18.

By Paul Steinhauser, CNN, December 20, 2007

Democratic presidential hopefuls are tip-toeing around an inconvenient economic fact: Iowa and New Hampshire, the states hosting the 2008 campaign's first contests, benefit from free-trade policies that many residents nonetheless blame for lost jobs.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are seeking to avoid alienating workers from agriculture and other export- intensive industries while appealing to those from U.S.-focused businesses that have fallen behind, especially union members.

"You have winners and losers from trade,'' New York Senator Clinton said at a Dec. 13 debate in Iowa. People "are gaining because we're exporting,'' she said, while others have lost jobs.

In Iowa, which holds its caucuses Jan. 3, manufacturing jobs have risen 2.3 percent since 1994 as they've dropped 17 percent nationwide, U.S. Labor Department statistics show. Workers at exporting companies earn 15 percent more than those at non-exporters, the Iowa Department of Economic Development says. Iowa's jobless rate is 3.9 percent, compared with a national average of 4.7 percent.

In New Hampshire, "free trade has always been very popular,'' said Ray Buckley, the state Democratic chairman. While the state, whose primary is Jan. 8, has seen manufacturing employment decline 18 percent since 1994, it has rebounded in the technology and defense industries. Its jobless rate is the country's 10th-lowest, at 3.2 percent.

More Diversified

"We're more diversified now,'' said Ross Gittell, a business professor at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

New Hampshire exports rose 23 percent to $703 million from 2004 to 2006, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says. Almost a fifth of the state's manufacturing jobs depended on exports in 2005, the latest year for which data are available.

A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll in September showed 42 percent of Iowa Democratic voters would back an anti-free-trade candidate, compared with 33 percent who wouldn't. In New Hampshire, the result was flipped: 30 percent voiced opposition to trade accords, while 43 percent favored them.

Republicans split evenly on trade in Iowa, while expressing solid support in New Hampshire. It's a less pressing issue for them, though, because they owe little allegiance to organized labor, said William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, an exporters' group.

By contrast, Reinsch said, unions are a "significant organizing force and financial force'' in the Democratic Party, creating geographic and ideological divisions that are trickier for candidates and party officials to navigate.

'A Real Class Divide'

"I only have 9,000 Democrats here,'' said Paul Robitaille, the party chairman of Coos County in northern New Hampshire, where the 300-worker Wausau Paper Corp. mill will close this month. "They have a lot more Democrats down south, where the economy is just fine,'' and who "aren't that interested'' in Coos County's concerns, said Robitaille, an Edwards backer. "It's a real class divide.''

Much of the trade debate in the campaign has focused on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was negotiated under Republican presidents but enacted in 1994 during the presidency of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's husband.

"On net, Iowa looks like it's been in better shape since Nafta was implemented than the rest of the nation,'' said David Swenson, an economics professor at Iowa State University in Ames. "Singling out Nafta as the big bugaboo for what's happening to American manufacturing is just naive.''

'Overlooked'

He would have a hard time convincing Mike St. Clair. "They overlooked a lot of things when they put Nafta into effect,'' said St. Clair, 61, a former employee of appliance-maker Maytag.

When Whirlpool Corp. purchased Maytag last year, the appliance maker announced the closure of its Newton headquarters, eliminating 1,000 jobs and the town's largest employer. Pro-trade Democrats say it's misguided to focus on the loss of a single factory. "While we lost the Maytag plant, we got four or five or six plants that are building wind turbines because we've really embraced renewable energy,'' said former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who has endorsed Clinton.

Still, the candidates take care to avoid offending voters who are suspicious of trade accords. Clinton, 60, has said she would subject Nafta to a review process to "reform and improve it,'' while Obama, 46, an Illinois senator, has advocated contacting leaders in Canada and Mexico to "renegotiate'' the accord to include labor and environmental protection.

Edwards, 54, has been harsher on Nafta, saying it has cost the U.S. "over a million jobs'' and distracted Congress from passing universal health care in the 1990s. St. Clair said he'll back Edwards in the Jan. 3 caucuses because "he seems like he's in our corner.''

By Hans Nichols and Juliana Goldman, Bloomberg, December 20, 2007

Most neutral observers would agree that Hillary Clinton's response to Barack Obama's rise has been bungled. Over the past few weeks, we have seen her campaign attempt again and again to attack him, only to make itself look foolish. I think the worst moment came last weekend when President Clinton was dispatched to the Charlie Rose Show to trash the junior senator from Illinois. That task was simply beneath a former president. And who did not notice the irony of Clinton arguing for experience over freshness? If any Democrat has parroted Republican talking points this cycle - it was Bill Clinton mimicking Bush-Quayle '92.

Why was the Clinton campaign unprepared for this?

Unfortunately, we cannot answer this question directly. The only people who know are the higher-ups of the Clinton organization - and they are not going to admit that they were unprepared, let alone explain why. But I have a plausible theory worth sharing.

The way to approach the question is first to ask why we should have expected an Obama surge. It stands to reason that the Clinton campaign failed to account for at least one of the factors that make up our answer. These are the three reasons that I argued for over the summer and fall:

(1) Obama raised $70 million in nine months from half a million people. This demonstrates two points:

(a) He caters to a real demand in the Democratic electorate - intense enough to open wallets.

(b) His money can facilitate a more sophisticated campaign strategy. Obama can do more than win Iowa and hope that he magically catches fire. Instead, he can win Iowa and fight Clinton dollar-for-dollar, state-for-state.

(2) Obama is the most authentic change candidate among the top three Democrats. Hillary Clinton is not this candidate. Her principal qualification for the job is her role as her husband's advisor - so she was always going to run on the record of the 1990s. John Edwards has positioned himself as a change candidate, but he does not convey the authenticity that Obama does.

(3) Obama is organized in Iowa. He recognized that organization was critically important for an Iowa victory - and that an Iowa victory was necessary for his broader strategy. And so, he is organized and ready for the January 3 caucus.

Through the summer and the fall, journalists underestimated the importance of these because they used the opinion polls to create a horse race out of whole cloth. In reality - the opinions expressed to pollsters were not stable enough to support the idea that there was an actual race going on.

Voter opinions were based on little information and even less interest in the campaign. Obama's activities were never going to register with these uninformed and uninterested voters in the summer; they were always meant to yield dividends in the winter. So, Obama was seen to be a weaker candidate than he really was. Accordingly, Clinton was seen to be stronger than she really was. She was always the frontrunner (she still is), but the overuse of opinion polls made her appear "unstoppable" and "inevitable" to the press.

Like the press, the Clinton campaign clearly underestimated Obama - it over-looked the money, the message, or the organizing. Perhaps the Clinton campaign did this for the same reason as the press. Perhaps it relied so heavily on the opinion polls that it could not see that Obama was preparing to launch a viable campaign later on.

I think this explanation has some credibility to it. I'm thinking in particular of Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist and pollster. His comments over the course of the campaign have struck me as utilizing the same erroneous assumptions that informed the press' summer horse race narrative. Consider this snippet from the Ben Smith's blog. The date of this entry is October 18. 2007:

"Republicans are not prepared for the loss of a substantial group of Republican women voters ... even in the South," he said. "I think you're going to see as much as 24% of Republican women defect and make a major difference nationwide in terms of, I think, the emotional element of potentially having the first woman nominee. And that that actually will be a major unexpected factor here that will throw the Republicans for a loop."

This is a ridiculously overconfident assertion.

First, research has shown that partisanship is a stable and powerful feature of a person's psychology. It has also shown that voters who are conflicted between their partisanship and their evaluations of the candidates often resolve the conflict by simply abstaining, rather than voting for the other party. The idea that one in four Republican women will defy these regularities is possible, but far from likely.

Second, I just cannot see how this figure can be quantified some twelve-and-a-half months prior to the election. That's just insane to me. Everything we know about the levels of voter information, voter attention, the effect of the media dialogue on transitory political opinions, the influence of question wording and ordering - leads me to suspect that Penn is committing some serious inferential fallacy. It is not that he is necessarily wrong. It is that his assertion is dramatically underdetermined. The numbers are not giving him the hard answers he thinks they are.

This is the kind of comment I expect from non-expert journalists who look at the polls and read the numbers in a naive way. "Republican women say that they would consider voting for Clinton; ergo, they would consider voting for Clinton." Not quite. The fact of the matter is that you can't come to this conclusion so easily. Underlying all of those seemingly straightforward numbers is a complex, intricate aggregation of individual voter psychologies. This makes inferential analysis extremely difficult.

I would contrast Penn's silly assertion with the considered work of political scientists who specialize in political psychology. The best work in this subfield is the most difficult stuff I have ever read. The theories are complicated, the methods are complex, and the conclusions are always narrow and tentative because voter psychology is incredibly difficult to delineate. It is not made any easier by the fact that our best point of contact with voters is the opinion survey - which, when you think about it, is quite distant from their interior mental states.

You can find the same flippancy in Penn's strategy memos - which have come out periodically over the course of the campaign. All of them follow the same basic script as this one from July: Clinton's poll position is insurmountable; there is no need to have an election because a sample of the voting population has reported statistically significant results that Clinton will win.

In January he argued, "If Hillary leads in Ohio at this point in the race -- the key state that gave the last election to the Republicans -- then this confirms that Hillary can win and is today winning. She is the strongest Democrat in what was the most difficult state." Look at his words carefully: polling results some twenty-two months before the election "confirm" that Hillary can win and "is" winning. In February he said basically the same thing in response to the latest polling data, "As other candidates are getting more and more attention, Hillary is getting more and more support...This poll confirms that Hillary not only can win but actually is today winning."

In August, he wrote that voters had "come to see the race differently," and accordingly "concluded" that Clinton "has what it takes to be President and what it takes to take on the Republicans." It is untenable to argue that voter perceptions were changing in August, or that voters had concluded anything before Labor Day.

In October, he said that Clinton's support among women is "deep" - and that "94% of young women" will be more likely to turn out to vote for the first female nominee. Much like his comment about Republican women - there is no way to quantify how "young women" will respond to Clinton some thirteen months before Election Day. Nor, for that matter, can depth of support be easily interpreted from simple yes-or-no questions asked months before the first votes are cast.

In November, he wrote that the "leadership card" is the reason "why people are voting for Hillary Clinton." His consistent use of the present tense to describe the act of voting represents the same fallacy that polling respondents are no different than voters.

Now, there is a lot of spin going on with these memos. In particular, Penn has an incentive to play to the prior beliefs of the audience - i.e. journalists who cannot distinguish between a February poll and a December poll. However, spin alone cannot explain Penn's voluminous study of the polls. I counted upwards of 6,000 words offered in analysis of polling data since the start of the campaign - no campaign's senior adviser spends so much effort dissecting the polls simply for the purpose of spinning the press. That would be a misallocation of resources.

Spin alone also does not explain why Penn would consistently take the tone he has adopted. If he agreed that the polls could turn on a dime, he would never argue that they would not. Anybody with a lick of sense knows not to tell a falsifiable lie if it can be avoided. Generally, the fact that the Clinton campaign facilitated the idea of inevitability is an indication that it believed that it was inevitable. You don't go pushing that storyline if you believe it is not necessarily true. Otherwise, you set expectations far too high - and you run the risk of getting burned when things do not go your way.

This is actually Clinton's biggest problem right now. When the voting starts, expectations matter. Most of the electorate's information on the campaign will come from the media - whose emphasis is on the horse race. Who's up and who's down. If Clinton loses several of the first contests, she will receive more negative coverage than, say, Giuliani because her campaign once convinced the press that she couldn't lose.

So, I think that the Mark Penn and the Clinton campaign might have made the same basic mistake the press made. They over-interpreted the polls. They wrongly assumed that the opinions expressed in them were more informed, sophisticated, and stable than they actually were. I think that this, in turn, caused them to overlook Obama's real strengths.

The big question: what will this cost them? Possibly nothing. I think this race remains fundamentally unchanged. Winning Iowa is a necessary condition for Obama. It is a sufficient condition for Clinton. Clinton could win Iowa - and her numbers that have slipped in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and nationwide will rebound. The race will be over. In that case, her campaign will probably be in better shape for having learned a good lesson at no cost. But it might cost them something. There is such a small margin that separates Clinton, Obama, and Edwards in Iowa that her campaign's maladroit response to Obama could cost her victory. In that case - the race continues to New Hampshire, South Carolina, and then Super Tuesday. And she could lose the nomination.

By Jay Cost, Real Clear Politics, December 20, 2007

Those in the press always prefer presidential races to be close contests, and this year they've seemingly lucked out again. The latest story line has Hillary Clinton on the defensive, as a surging Barack Obama mounts a successful challenge against the New York senator, who was widely presumed to have the nomination wrapped up before the process even started.

Yes, it is true that Obama is doing well in the early states (though, as of this writing, he doesn't have a clear lead in any of them). But according to the detailed nationwide polls, Clinton is still thoroughly trouncing Obama. So much so, in fact, that one unmistakable thing is now clear: if Obama does overtake Clinton to win the nomination, it will rank among the biggest upsets in modern political history -- on par with George McGovern's toppling of front-runner Edmund Muskie in 1972.

A New York Times/CBS nationwide December poll has Clinton ahead of Obama 44 to 27 percent. A similar ABC/Washington Post poll has her leading at 52 to 23 percent. Those numbers can be eroded, certainly, but overturning them won't be easy, by a long shot, no matter what happens in the early primaries.

And the "internals" (pinpointed polling data) reflected in the surveys bolster evidence of Clinton's lead even more. Who do Democratic voters think is the strongest leader? The Post poll has Clinton leading Obama 61 to 19 percent.

Which leader is the most trustworthy (a trait that is supposedly Clinton's Achilles' heel)? The Post poll has her ahead of Obama here, as well -- 35 to 27 percent.

Who is the most electable? Clinton crushes Obama on that one again, 59 to 16 percent.

Is Obama experienced enough to be president? The Times poll finds that a 52-to-41-percent majority, even of Democrats, thinks Obama needs more time to grow.

So despite what you read about the candidates' reversals of fortune, the truth according to current polls is pretty clear: nationally, most Democrats are quite happy with Clinton.

Early-state erosion

Of course, it's a different story in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where the race now appears to be a dead heat. One could argue that when voters pay attention -- as they have in states where voting is imminent -- Clinton's lead collapses. Perhaps. But one problem with that argument is that the rest of the nation will never follow the race as closely as have the voters in those first three states. After January, the campaign will become a whirlwind, and even if he wins some early states, Obama will still have to do an awful lot to reverse his weak national poll numbers.