Hillary in trouble?

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann:

THE amazing victories by Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in Iowa last night are truly historic. They demonstrate the impact and viability of a message of change in both parties.

On the Democratic side, Obama - by winning in a totally white state - shows that racism is gone as a factor in American politics. On the Republican side, Huckabee's win shows how a truly compassionate conservative can win by harvesting voters who want the message of concern for the poor and for values to prevail.

But what of Hillary Clinton? She's down but not out. In the first really contested election of her own political career, she lost dismally - outclassed, outdrawn and outpolled by Obama.

Her campaign professionals (including Bill) decided to stress experience, precisely the wrong message in a Democratic primary. Prematurely appealing to the center and abandoning the left, she fell between two chairs - not sufficiently centrist to win independents or liberal enough to attract Democrats.

On the GOP side, Huckabee brought a new phenomenon into politics. A New Testament Christian politician, he takes the Biblical message to the center-left, clothing the naked and feeding the hungry. His refusal to indulge in negative advertising sent a message to Iowa voters showing his strength under fire.

The Obama win last night probably presages another in New Hampshire and follow-up victories in Nevada and South Carolina. (Clinton will carry Michigan: She's alone on the ballot).

So Hillary's argument that her record of defeating the "Republican attack machine" means she should be the candidate will backfire. Sold as a winner, she's exposed as a loser. The Iowa overhang will dog her for all the early primaries.

Particularly important for Obama is the poor finish of John Edwards, who has campaigned in Iowa for six year. Despite that almost-exclusive focus on continuing and expanding his 2004 base, he has once again finished second. Now Obama can count on being the nearly unanimous choice of the anti-Hillary voters. No longer will the vote be divided.

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I agree with Morris on Edwards. Hillary is also not out, despite the failure of her inevitability campaign, because she has enough money to keep on fighting and keep exposing Obama's weaknesses. Obama's argument for change is really weak when analyzed in its specifics. Someday he will face an opponent who will do that and he will be in trouble. Right now he is engaged with opponents who are making counter claims for change instead of focusing on what Obama is saying he wants to change and how he intends to do it.

Morris puts Huckabee in the Christian left camp and I think that too is right. His weakness will be exposed when his opponents start focusing on the specifics of the change he wants also. Conservative voters do not want a change to liberalism.