OPINION: Look For Organized Effort to Gang Up on Clinton

Nov. 8, 2007 — -- Hillary Clinton is complaining about the boys piling on. Piling on? She ain't seen nothin' yet.

Right now, most of her opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination are each taking pot shots at her, trying to slow her campaign. She leads in all the national polls, though not by very much in polls of Iowa caucus-goers.

That means the boys have figured out they need to derail the lady here if they want to keep her from breaking out. And, she figures she can quickly roll up the nomination in Iowa if she stomps the boys here.

Which is why they're all pouring it on in Iowa.

She didn't weather their attacks too well in the last debate and has dropped a few points in the national polls. Thus emboldened, the boys will be noodling up other ways to dip her pigtails in the printer.

One way they can do it is by throwing in together. A majority of caucus-goers still aren't for her. If they all coalesce around one of the boys, she loses.

Here's how it will work: On caucus night, Democratic rules require a candidate to have support from at least 15 percent of the total number of caucus-goers in a precinct if that candidate wants to win any delegates. Candidates who don't have 15 percent are declared "not viable," and their supporters must move to another candidate - or form a group that does have at least 15 percent.

In 2004, a version of that happened when many Dennis Kucinich people rallied behind John Edwards in those precincts where Kucinich wasn't viable, which was most of them. It was enough to boost Edwards into a second-place Iowa finish.

We can look at the Register's Iowa Poll for an example of how this might work in 2008. In October, the poll found Clinton at 29 percent, John Edwards at 23 percent, Barack Obama at 22 percent, Bill Richardson at 8 percent, Joe Biden with 5 percent. Dennis Kucinich at 1 percent and Chris Dodd at 1 percent. There were 11 percent who weren't sure or who were uncommitted.

If the whole state of Iowa were one big caucus, that would mean Richardson, Biden, Kucinich, Dodd and the uncommitteds would be declared "not viable," and their supporters would have to realign with one of the three camps that was -