The Obama bandwagon

We won't find out until tomorrow's New Hampshire primaries just how much Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's momentum from winning the Iowa caucuses will really affect the entire race, but polls released today are not looking good for his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. While I have seen many polls, all with Obama leading by various margins, perhaps this CBS Poll is the best indication of how the results in Iowa have directly affected New Hampshire voters' decisions. It has Obama leading Clinton by 7 percentage points, but here's the twist: the same voters in November gave Clinton a 20-point lead over Obama.

I guess with that last paragraph I am guilty of this as well, but it seems as though once voters cast Obama as the successful champion of change and Clinton as a generator of negativity, so did the press. Most of what I have read since Thursday casts Obama as an unstoppable force with the only message that is resonating with voters and Clinton as the desperate, dull establishment candidate playing catch up. I feel like Clinton can't catch a break, but all the negative press about her campaign clearly has some very real basis, as the anecdote about the Iowa caucuses in this story demonstrates.

And for more on the media's influence, consider yesterday's "Meet the Press." Last week, before the Iowa caucuses, Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee appeared on the show. And both won the caucuses, on their respective sides. Coincidence, yes. But I can't help but think it's a bad omen for Clinton when she, the front-runner in New Hampshire until today, is invited on the show with Republican New Hampshire front-runner John McCain and refuses the invitation two days before the primary, leaving McCain alone with Tim Russert for a half hour. And the other half of the program didn't bode well for her either, with two political strategists, one Democrat and one Republican, predicting that Obama and McCain will be battling it out in the general election, which, as I've pointed out before, will make for a very interesting race between two moderates popular with independents.

Clinton, who made headlines today with her show of emotion, is spending the day trying to quell Obama's momentum, saying she has been making changes for the past 35 years, not just talking about it for the past year. But as if to enforce the success of Obama's rhetoric, Republicans have jumped on his bandwagon, too, particularly with Mitt Romney portraying McCain as part of the Washington establishment. But McCain fired back in Saturday's New Hampshire debate with my favorite quip of the night that flips the rhetoric of change to reflect Romney's history of taking on politically convenient views:

"We disagree on a lot of different issues," said McCain. "But I agree with you that you are the candidate of change."