First Sign of Obama Mud

"In sum, for Obama to get past Clinton he'll have to reveal himself as a less seasoned version of Dean or Feingold. As such, it's difficult to imagine him winning the general election in these times."

In the New Republic, Garance Franke-Ruta finds one other factor that could work against Obama, "the question of expectations. More than 160 members of the press registered to appear at the downtown Manchester event, trailing massive satellite trucks in their wake and turning more than 20 video cameras on the senator. Obama tried to downplay all the attention at a press conference before his formal remarks . . .

"Already, his staff has started thinking through the longer-term consequences of the unusually high level of public interest he has generated. 'This is a one-shot deal,' said Obama press secretary Tommy Vietor of the senator's rock-star reception on his first-ever visit to the Granite State. 'You get this once.' Should Obama run, 'pretty soon, it's 15 people in a living room.' The risk, of course, is that, by getting so much attention now, 15 people in a living room next year will look like an electorate that has cooled to him once it got a closer look.

"Indeed, the worry for Obama in New Hampshire is that, after Sunday's wildly enthusiastic rally, there is no place to go but down--both because the level of attention is unsustainable so early in the campaign cycle and because the nature of campaigning in the state requires a more grassroots-style approach. 'If he decides to come back, [he'll] have to do this in a much different way,' said his communications director Robert Gibbs--by holding 'more intimate gatherings with fewer press risers.' "

Are we seeing spontaneous combustion? Salon's Walter Shapiro quotes Obama adviser David Axelrod as saying: "I wasn't alive then, but this is the closest thing to a draft since Adlai Stevenson in 1952."

Shapiro's take: "There is a palpable uneasiness in New Hampshire and elsewhere with the notion of Hillary Clinton being prematurely anointed as the 2008 Democratic nominee. It is not accidental that Obama is the third candidate this year who has been ballyhooed as the challenger with enough heft to take on the Clinton dynasty. First came Warner, followed by Al Gore -- still a possible candidate, whose luster dims the longer he remains indecisive on the sidelines. Helping propel the Obama bandwagon is that the senator, like Gore, passionately opposed going to war in Iraq in 2002. Part of the rationale for the anti-Hillary star search is the feeling that the New York senator cannot win, barring a full-scale collapse of the Republican Party."

We are now being buried by an avalanche of polls showing that the war in Iraq is very, very unpopular.

LAT: "A majority of Americans favor setting a fixed timetable for bringing troops home from Iraq and just 12 percent would support a plan to increase troop strength, an option under serious consideration by the military, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found . . .

"A majority of 52 percent of the poll's respondents -- including nearly one in three Republicans -- said they preferred a 'fixed timetable' for withdrawal, while only 26 percent of those surveyed favored the president's option of keeping troops on the ground until the country is secure."

WashPost: "Most Americans now believe the United States is losing the war in Iraq and sizeable majorities support a bipartisan commission's recommendations to shift away from combat and focus more on diplomacy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."

Bush's overall approval rating: 36 percent.

Are the Dems getting serious about ethics reform?