Clinton's Collapse of Inevitability

I noted in my election night post that Hillary Clinton's third-place showing in Iowa has really put the lie to the inevitability thesis we've seen all 2007. Clinton campaigned as the inevitable Democratic nominee, the media played it up, and her rivals fought it.

But as Fred Barnes notes at the Weekly Standard, the Iowa results have nuked Hillary's odds-on aura:

SO MUCH FOR THE inevitability of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee. The biggest story in the world today is the defeat of Clinton and the entire Clinton political machine, led by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in the Iowa caucuses. Iowa has the first contest in the 2008 presidential race, but it's not always a critically important event. This year it was.

The second biggest story is the Iowa victory of Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois who has just finished his third year in office. He is an African-American with remarkable appeal across racial and cultural lines. Obama is now not only the favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, he's the candidate in either party with the best chance of becoming the next president.

Mike Huckabee's defeat of Mitt Romney here in the Republican caucuses was extraordinary. But beating a former one-term Massachusetts governor is hardly as historically significant as Obama's triumph over Clinton. Until recently Huckabee, a Baptist preacher and the ex-governor of Arkansas, wasn't taken seriously by the media and political communities, including by me. But in Iowa he proved to have impressive campaign skills that may allow him to reach beyond the conservative Christian base responsible for his victory here. To win the Republican nomination, he'll need to.

Barnes follows up this analysis with his projections for the upcoming primaries.

See more analysis at Memeorandum, as well as this piece over at The Politico:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) heads out of Iowa as the biggest news story in the world and a force that strategists for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) are uncertain how to stop.

With the New Hampshire primary just four days away, Clinton and her team now must convince voters that choosing Obama would be risky for the party and the country — but they must do it in a way that doesn’t make her look small or desperate.

“Everyone underestimated this conflagration,” said a former Clinton administration official.

“If people think he’s electable, they’ll vote with their hearts and not their minds.”

For Obama, a key challenge is to absorb the new scrutiny that comes as people wrap their heads around a new idea — President Obama — and as Clinton supporters do their best to raise doubts about him.

Clinton’s camp had felt she had a better chance of winning New Hampshire than Iowa, and her press in the Granite State has generally been good.

But with the vicious media coverage she now seems likely to face, she could well go 0 for 2 heading into the South Carolina primary, where a strong black vote provides an inviting environment for Obama.

I'm not jumping on the pessimism bandwagon. If anyone can come back from a third-place Iowa showing, it's Hillary Clinton. The challenge is steep though, and the whole country's on the edge of its seat until Tuesday.

The other big winner coming out of Iowa is John McCain, and New Hampshire's looking even better for him with Romney's collapse in Iowa.