This has been a glorious fortnight for Hillary Clinton. On September 17th she unveiled her health-care plan—inevitably dubbed Hillarycare 2.0—to widespread applause. On September 23rd she appeared on no fewer than five Sunday talk shows. Three days later she delivered yet another polished performance in a Democratic debate in New Hampshire reports the Economist.

 

The aim of this blitzkrieg is to capture the most valuable prize in politics: inevitability. Mrs Clinton has led the Democratic field for months. Barack Obama outshone her when it came to charisma and fund-raising. John Edwards beat her in producing policy proposals. Yet Mrs Clinton’s lead has only solidified.

 

Can she now kick it up a gear? Can she transform the primary race into a coronation? George Bush already thinks that she will win the Democratic nomination. The Republican candidates, particularly Rudy Giuliani, are positioning themselves as “Hillary-slayers”. And Mrs Clinton’s Democratic rivals are paying her the ultimate compliment of concentrating their fire on her rather than on each other.

 

This has inevitably generated an anti-Hillary backlash in the punditocracy. Political journalists hate a runaway winner. The path from here to the Democratic nomination, they argue, is strewn with landmines and Hillary-traps. Perhaps; but it is striking how thin the anti-coronation arguments turn out to be.

 

The first argument is that nothing is inevitable in politics, particularly in a world in which the internet can turn a minor gaffe into a mighty cacophony. More than two-thirds of the Democrats who voted in the 2004 Iowa caucuses did not make up their minds until a month before they voted. Four in ten Iowa voters and five in ten New Hampshire voters decided only in the last week. John Kerry was lagging in third place until a week before the Iowa caucuses.

 

The second argument is that Mrs Clinton is locked in a tight three-way fight in Iowa. Mr Edwards, in particular, has an impressive organisation and a loyal following in the state. The compressed primary season could turn Iowa into a powerful slingshot: Mr Obama or, more probably, Mr Edwards could shoot straight from a victory there to the head of the pack.

 

Read it here: Hillary