Daily News Roundup, 1/7/08: The Times They Are A-Changin' (New Hampshire Edition)

New Hampshire is alive with politics today as it has been for many months, but there's a renewed sense of uncertainty in the air. Senator Hillary Clinton had been leading in the polls for as long as anyone could remember, and the question after Iowa was whether her lead would narrow after Obama's win. According to new polling data from New Hampshire, everything has changed.

An average of the latest polls from New Hampshire show that Obama did in fact get a bump from Iowa, in many cases causing him to leapfrog Clinton in the polls into leads outside the margin of error. It isn't a wholesale shift — for every Zogby giving Obama a ten point lead, there's another poll where Clinton and Obama are tied or Obama's lead is small. But there's little discordant data, no outlier poll giving Clinton a big lead. The momentum has shifted, and at least until New Hampshire's votes are counted, Obama looks like the frontrunner.

And the Clinton campaign is reportedly preparing for the long road after New Hampshire, with some reports calling it "trench warfare". From Thomas B. Edsall's column at the Huffington Post:

Like Mondale in 1984, Clinton is configuring her campaign to win in states where independents cannot vote. "Clinton got killed among independents and those few Republicans who crossed over," an Iowa operative noted about last Thursday's caucuses. After this Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, where independents can cast ballots in either the Democratic or Republican contest, "We are just going to go to the big Democratic states with closed primaries" says a member of the Clinton inner circle.

Of the upcoming nineteen February 5 primaries and caucuses, however, ten are "open" (meaning that independents can vote for a Democrat) and only nine are "closed" (meaning independents are barred).

It is also interesting to note these reports that Clinton has 'taken direct control over her strategy and message' in the aftermath of Iowa. If you pair that with John Edwards' recent reveal that he has every intention of staying in the race until next summer, the real picture of the next several months starts to shape up — the trench warfare analogy is appropriate, because everyone, ostensibly, has enough money to hang around and make their case for a good long while, depending on how they run their shops. What this means in the big picture sense of things is that the possible outcomes are staggering in number and variety.

On the Republican side, things look bad for Romney, who did not exactly perform well during his beatings in the debate Saturday night, but hey — he did better on Sunday night and then he won the Wyoming caucus, so it isn't all bad news, right?

Here's an interesting bit of state news: remember, if you will, that Rick Perry got behind the idea of mandatory vaccinations against HPV for school girls last year, and the vocal throngs of conservatives that appeared on the scene after the idea was proposed eventually lead to the idea being withdrawn. Following that heightened controversy and increased discussion over the matter, the number of parents seeking the vaccination for their daughters has increased dramatically. I can see how one follows the other but I wouldn't have guessed this would be the automatic result.

In speaker politics, the Star-Telegram ran a story over the weekend declaring that the speaker's race would begin this year — as one could argue it began in 2006 — in the primaries. As you might imagine, the picture is murky:

Figuring out whether the primary lineup favors Craddick's bid for a fourth term as speaker or whether it spells doom for the Midland lawmaker is sort of like taking an ink-blot test: The image you see depends on what you want to see.

I think the interesting thing that goes unsaid in much of this reporting is that the very uncertainty facing Tom Craddick implies major gains for Texas Democrats. That Craddick might be doomed at all spells major trouble for the rest of the members of the Texas Republican Party, which in most cases are less entrenched than Craddick has managed to become.

In our last bit of news today, more Craddick, although this time an editorial. Observe this piece that ran yesterday in Paris, Texas, which portends defeat for Craddick, one way or the other.