HALPERIN'S TAKE ON NEW HAMPSHIRE POLLS AND THE DEMOCRATIC RACE

Once again -- just as in the Philadelphia debate -- Hillary Clinton's campaign is giving her opponents new fodder on the main point on which she is vulnerable: the question of her ability to avoid double talk and controversy. The press continues to buzz around the story of her campaign's planting of questions with Iowa voters. As the frontrunner, Clinton must bear many burdens -- including being more scrutinized on everything compared to the other candidates (look at Obama's "Meet the Press" answers on a range of issues -- his squishy 2004 statement about the Iraq War and his vagueness on his Illinois senate records, for example); she is expected to win every state or face a huge backlash; and a large lead in a poll is framed as a disaster, if the large lead is smaller than the one she had before. Her slippage in New Hampshire is clearly troubling to her campaign aides (who refused to comment on what it means or why it has happened), but to a large extent these numbers are a distraction from the main event, which is Iowa. There, Clinton has a ceiling not much higher than 30% of the vote, and Obama and Edwards are pouring everything they have into beating her. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's will all pass by without any of us knowing which one of the three actually has an advantage in Iowa. But every bit of data that suggests a chink in Clinton's aura of inevitability produces a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If she seems weaker, she is weaker, by the rules of the politico-media complex.