Barack Obama will on Tuesday step up his challenge to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party’s presidential frontrunner, by staging 18 simultaneous rallies across the US to mark the fifth anniversary of his opposition to the Iraq war reports the Financial Times.
Mr. Obama’s renewed emphasis on Iraq, which will kick off a four-day “judgment and experience” tour of the state of Iowa, is designed to highlight Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to apologies for her 2002 vote in favor of the war. It is also intended to counter Mrs. Clinton’s contention that Mr. Obama lacks the experience necessary to govern the US.
Mr. Obama’s four-day Iowa tour comes on the heels of new polling data that show him moving into a narrow lead for the first time over Mrs. Clinton among voters who are likely to participate in the Iowa caucus in January – the first and most important exercise in selecting the eventual nominee. However, Mrs. Clinton still leads Mr. Obama among registered Democrats in the state.
Although the senator from Illinois continues to trail Mrs. Clinton significantly in national polls, the Obama campaign argues that they are irrelevant. At this stage in the 2004 Democratic presidential race, John Kerry, the eventual nominee, was running fifth in the national polls.
“The national opinion poll numbers really don’t matter – what matters is what is happening in Iowa and to some extent in New Hampshire [which holds the first primary],” says Bill Galston a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who has worked on many Democratic presidential campaigns.
According to an amalgam of political betting odds compiled by Slate, the online news journal, the probability of Mr. Obama winning the nomination have improved from 19 per cent to 29 per cent over the last month. Mrs. Clinton’s probability is 45 per cent. The amalgam includes odds from the Iowa Electronic Market, traditionally a better predictor of the eventual outcome than national polling numbers.
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