AT THE STARTING GATE - November 15, 2007
     

As the US presidential contest enters its last two months before the first votes are cast – and a year before the general election – the Democratic contest is unusual for its stability and predictability, while the Republican race is unusual for lacking these characteristics. On the Democratic side, the popular Pollster.com website, reporting on multiple polls, estimates Hillary Clinton's national support among Democratic primary voters at close to half, 44 percent, while her chief rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards command only 18 percent and 11 percent support nationally. Her lead is so wide and persisting that her supposed inevitability as nominee has itself become a theme of media discussion.

The most interesting thing about Hillary Clinton's prospects for the Democratic nomination is how far from inevitable they seemed a few months ago. For years she has led polls of Democratic primary voters whenever her name was included – four years ago she polled well ahead of anyone actually in the 2004 primary race. Much of this early support, however, might well have turned out to be mere nostalgia for her husband's presidency.

  
As the 2008 campaign got into gear, Hillary herself (she is habitually referred to by her first name, including by her own campaign) had never been tested in a national race. Years of attacks by Republicans made her a polarizing figure, about whom half the population had a negative impression. Combined with the burden of asking the electorate to vote for a woman president in wartime, this raised serious concerns about her prospects in the 2008 general election, even in a year that could otherwise be expected to favor Democrats. Shadowed by doubts, untested on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton's frontrunning candidacy might well have been a dirigible heading into a thunderstorm.

  
The most likely lightning bolt appeared to be Barack Obama, a first-term Illinois senator who made his national debut as a speaker of the 2004 Democratic convention – a spot often used to showcase rising stars. (Bill Clinton flubbed a similar debut in 1988, drawing cheers only when he reached "and in conclusion .…") Obama, an African-American, was an attractive fresh face, without baggage from the past. He had more immediate advantage of having spoken out, as a state legislator in 2002, against Congressional authorization of war against Iraq – a measure which Hillary and then-Senator John Edwards had both supported.
Obama's campaign won the surprised admiration of political observers when his fundraising in early 2007 exceeded Hillary's. He shot up in the national polls, while Hillary's support showed signs of softening; some polls showed them effectively tied in the nomination race. Lightning, however, did not quite strike the Hillary zeppelin. A turning point was her exchange with Obama during late-summer televised debates. Siezing on Obama's remarks about meeting hostile foreign leaders and attacking al-Qaeda within Pakistan, she used them to criticize him as lacking foreign policy experience.

  
The significance of these debate exchanges lay less in their substance than in Hillary's effectiveness as a debater, frequently dominating a stage crowded with her seven male rivals. Obama's rise in the polls stalled, while Hillary's performance reassured her supporters and brought in new ones previously doubtful of her. (Disclaimer: I am one of these.) Hillary rose by failing to fall.
  

The third candidate with substantial support is former senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards. His 2004 primary effort was well-regarded (he came in a surprise second in Iowa, after the even more surprising winner, John Kerry). This was not enough, however, to make him a presumptive favorite, so he staked out a position on the left side of the Democratic Party – building on the economic populist themes of his 2004 primary campaign, and implicitly critical of Hillary Clinton and her husband's centrist-leaning presidency. This has been enough to win him a base of support, but he has been unable to build on it, and his fundraising lags severely compared to his two leading rivals.
      

Both Edwards and Obama face a peculiar challenge, in fact, in running against an opponent whose unspoken campaign slogan might well be I'm Bill's Better Half. Criticism of the last Clinton presidency is well-received by left-leaning activists, notably in the blogosphere, for example, as shown especially by comments at popular sites such as Daily Kos. However, it is not calculated to win the hearts of most Democratic primary voters, among whom Bill Clinton is immensely popular.
         

Such uncertainty as remains in Hillary Clinton's apparent coronation march to the Democratic nomination lies in Iowa's caucuses, the first actual votes in the primary contest, now scheduled on the Democratic side for January 3. The contest remains much there closer than nationally or in other early-voting states, largely because Hillary's performance lags there, winning support from about 30 percent of likely caucusgoers, as compared to 40-50 percent of likely primarygoers elsewhere. Edwards on the contrary does better there; he has focused his campaign on Iowa, and its hard-hit economy makes it receptive to his economic message.
Even in Iowa, however, Hillary has opened up a modest but definite lead. A win there would effectively seal the nomination. A loss by Hillary would throw some uncertainty into the race, but unless it is humiliating she is still favored to win the following contests. Perhaps the best indicator of sentiment regarding nomination prospects comes from the Iowa Electronic Markets, a popular betting pool, where Hillary Clinton is currently rated as having nearly a three-in-four chance of winning the Democratic nomination, while Obama's prospects are rated as about one in seven.
          

In contrast the Republican nomination race is nearly wide open, with as many as five candidates having plausible routes to the nomination. The frontrunners are former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who leads in national polls, and Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who leads in Iowa and New Hampshire. Early frontrunner Senator John McCain's campaign nearly collapsed over the summer, but he has been showing new energy on the campaign trail.
         

Actor and former senator Fred Thompson entered the race late, amid high expections. Lackluster early performances have hurt him, but he may yet gain his footing. Dark horse Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas, is a Baptist minister with conservative positions and an appealing persona; he has shown surprising strength in Iowa. A victory there could propel him into contention, especially given the heightened role of momentum in next year's compressed primary schedule.
          

Such a wide open field is unusual in Republican presidential nomination contests. Unlike Democrats, Republicans have a tradition of "primogeniture" – deference to the accepted choice of the party establishment. This time, however, the GOP establishment failed to clearly form ranks behind any one candidate. Although McCain is a solidly conservative Republican, much of the party base never quite forgave his insurgent run against establishment anointee Bush in 2000, or a few high-profile acts of apostasy in the Senate.
          

In fact, the consevative Republican base has severe problems with all of the Republican candidates, Giuliani won admiration for his role on 9/11 and his tough, no-nonsense persona, but his views on "social issues" such as abortion – views he has refused to disavow – set him at odds with religious conservatives. Romney, favored by the party's business wing, has readily abandoned moderate social positions he held in Massachusetts, but his conversions seem no more sincere than his former positions, and he is a Mormon, a faith many conservative Christians regard as cultlike. Thompson, so far, has failed to live up to advance billing as the second coming of Ronald Reagan, while Huckabee is a little-known longshot.
       

Republican doubts about their candidates are exacerbated by growing uneasiness about something they once would have welcomed – the prospect of running against Hillary Clinton next fall. While Karl Rove described her as a flawed, beatable candidate (remarks siezed on by her primary rivals, to little effect), no less a GOP luminary than former House speaker Newt Gingrich has expressed doubt that any of the Republican candidates can beat her. The current betting on the Iowa Electronic Markets underlines Republican worries: The Democratic nominee is given a 60 percent chance of winning.
            

This is an unaccustomed place for Republicans. As a previous column noted, winning seven out of ten elections in the modern era has bred in both parties an expectation that, other things equal, Republicans have the edge in presidential elections. This time, Republicans as well as Democrats have to worry about their nominee's electability.
            

Rudy Giuliani is the chief beneficiary. His tough-guy persona fits what Republican voters want both in a nominee and a president, and so far they have been unexpectedly tolerant of his deviations from conservative social orthodoxy. Perhaps voters for whom the struggle against Islamist terrorism has theological overtones do not expect their crusading kings to be saints. Accordingly the Iowa betting modestly favors Giuliani with a 40 percent chance of winning the GOP nomination, as compared to 30 percent for Romney, with no one else given better than a 10 percent chance of winning.
           

Given such uncertainty, the Republican nomination race is more of a puzzle than its Democratic counterpart, where the only real question now is "can Hillary be stopped in Iowa?" On the GOP side, can Mitt Romney capitalize on good early showings in Iowa and New Hampshire to overcome Giuliani's national lead? How will either fare in socially conservative Southern states (for which South Carolina will be an early test)? What happens if the race is still undecided after the massive February 5 multi-state primaries?
           

In the endless American presidential race, actual events are finally ready to happen.

Late Update:
     

What has been happening in the past week is that Hillary Clinton has been taking a drubbing in the media for campaign missteps. So far it has not been reflected in polling (or in the Iowa Electronic Markets' betting line), and it will as likely as not prove to be a mere media cycle, and something of a campaign season ritual.
  

Rick Robinson

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Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.

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