Hillary Victim of Her Own "Triangulation"?

On the morning of Iowa's Caucus (beginning at 7:00pm this evening), there's a fascinating column by Bob Novak on just how much Hillary was banking (literally) on being the shoe-in Democratic Presidential nominee. In short, Novak reports that Hillary's campaign was more interested in "triangulating" her message for the general election than she was in winning over the liberal base of the party in order to win the nomination. That strategy, the same strategy that gave Bill Clinton the White House in 1992, seemed smart early on when John Edwards was the only one polling ahead of Hillary in Iowa. The theory was (and still is) that Edwards, even if he won in Iowa, couldn't finance and win a national primary campaign. But enter Barack Obama, who does have the means to stay in the race until the convention:

[Mark] Penn's strategy from the start was predicated on the inevitability of Clinton's nomination so that the real concern was to position her to run against the Republicans by making clear she was no more a hard leftist than her husband had been. Iowa, with its passionately liberal caucus-goers not suited for triangulation, always was a problem for Clinton. Early polls there gave the lead to John Edwards, running on a class-warfare, populist platform.

But Edwards, an unlikely threat beyond Iowa, didn't worry the Clinton camp. His lead was considered a holdover from his strong second-place showing there in 2004. Clinton's concern soon became the unexpected rise of Obama. While one major national pollster now is saying that he believes Clinton will finish third in Iowa, her supporters don't consider that really bad news, so long as it's Edwards, not Obama, who finishes first. In order to win in Iowa, Clinton stresses "experience" (suggesting that support for Obama requires "a leap of faith"). With many more Democrats desiring "change," voters preferring "experience" may constitute only 30 percent in Iowa (though that may be enough to win).

The threat of Obama winning Iowa makes it white-knuckle time for Clinton. With Obama ahead in some New Hampshire polls, a double loss for Clinton in the first two tests of 2008 raises the specter of Howard Dean's total collapse four years ago after losing in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Rumors have it that Hillary already transfered a lot of campaign assets to New Hampshire to shore up her operation there, so I believe that she's taking the Obama threat there seriously. But, in bad news for Hillary (and John McCain, for that matter), recent polls have shown that the famous New Hampshire independent voters are planning to vote in overwhelming numbers in the Democratic, not GOP, primary. That's good for the change candidate - Barack Obama. (Not good for John McCain, because it was the independent vote that took him to an overwhelming victory over George Bush in New Hampshire in 2000.)