THE NOTE: Clinton Goes Nuclear on Obama

Dec. 13, 2007 -- Say this about the denizens of Camp Clinton: They don't use a machine gun when a fly swatter might do the job. They detonate a nuclear warhead.

How else to explain this blast (couched, of course, as something other people might say about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.)?

This from Billy Shaheen -- national and state Clinton campaign co-chair, husband of the former New Hampshire governor, and frequent campaign presence: "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?' " Shaheen tells The Washington Post's Alec MacGillis. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

Republican dirty tricks? Remind us again, which campaign has had to dismiss two volunteers in recent days for forwarding e-mails that say Obama is a Muslim? Who's trolling for dirt about Obama's Chicago years?

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign says Shaheen was freelancing (and he's sorry now) -- just like other low-level operatives like Charlie Rangel and Tom Vilsack were reading from their own playbooks, right? And we're to accept that Shaheen was off the reservation in a direction that fit ever-so neatly with the Clinton campaign's argument about electability?

Don't forget the timing: There's Thursday's 2 pm ET debate in Johnston, Iowa -- the last time the Democrats will gather in one place before the Jan. 3 caucuses. And Shaheen's comments came just "hours after the release of a CNN/WMUR poll showing Obama in a statistical tie with Clinton for the first time among New Hampshire Democratic voters," ABC's Jake Tapper writes.

Says Obama campaign manager David Plouffe: "Now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls." (Good line.)

This does put the issue of Obama's past drug use -- the stuff he owned up to in his memoir -- before voters in the run-up to Iowa. But does Hillary Clinton really want a debate with Barack Obama about their pasts? (Ready to break out the "didn't inhale" clip?) And would she want that debate to turn on what Republicans are likely to say about them?

Let's not call it panic -- but coming in to the final Democratic debate before the caucuses, may we suggest that there may be a tough of concern, of worry, of (heaven forbid) doubt over at the Clinton campaign?

The not-so-secret weapon keeps making the wrong kind of news.

Public polls show Iowa to be a dead heat, and the New Hampshire firewall is crumbling.

Clinton operatives are dropping loads of oppo-research on Obama's head nearly daily -- sometimes elegantly, sometimes less so.

Now they're trying to sell change -- but what if Obama and former senator John Edwards, D-N.C., have already cornered that market?

All the campaign angst seems to have shifted to Clinton as the momentum has flowed to Obama. "Clinton campaign insiders are increasingly questioning the cautious, poll-driven approach taken by Mark Penn, Hillary Rodham Clinton's top political aide," Newsday's Glenn Thrush reports. "Bill Clinton -- along with former White House hands -- have counseled her to adopt a far more aggressive approach with Obama." Said one "top Clinton ally": "Mark wanted to run her, basically, for re-election, and we are seeing what happened."

The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut has the nifty detail of a Clinton Iowa summit in October -- held in Chicago, of all places.

"It was not until October that senior officials at Clinton headquarters realized there was something of a disconnect between the candidate and the sentiments of participants in Iowa's quirky system, two campaign insiders said. And it was Clinton who sounded the alarm bell," Kornblut writes.

James Carville (who always seems close enough to the orbit to know, if not quite to be moving the pieces himself): "The level of worry is, they feel like they're in a damned close race," Carville tells Kornblut. "I don't really think there's going to be any kind of, quote, shake-up or anything like that. . . . But will there be some moving around? Sure."

And the audacity of spin: "Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, said she never expected to glide to victory in Iowa; if anything, she was simply pleased that 'at some point this became a competitive race.' " (Try reading that sentence without laughing -- we dare you.)

Columnist Robert Novak sees the new Clinton tack backfiring. "The attack strategy has not affected Obama, and Clinton's aura of inevitability is fading. Not only has she fallen behind in Iowa, but polls show that primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina." Sentence worth pondering: "Howard Dean was in a much stronger position in post-Iowa primaries in 2004 than Clinton is today when his third-place finish in Iowa was followed by his national collapse."

John DiStaso of the New Hampshire Union Leader weighs in: "New Hampshire is no longer her firewall. It's a battleground, a free for all, and -- dare we say? -- a potential last stand for the former Granite State Democratic frontrunner."

(Which makes one wonder if the timing of this story is coincidental. "Though the focus of the 2008 presidential campaign is on Iowa and New Hampshire, the states with the earliest contests, Clinton suggested that California's influence might be larger than was commonly believed," Peter Nicholas writes in the Los Angeles Times.