Best of Luck Next Time, Barry

Correction, THIS is the beginning of the end.

A few points:

Senator Barack Obama says he will start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, declaring that she had not been candid in describing her views on critical issues, as he tries to address mounting alarm among supporters that his lack of assertiveness has allowed her to dominate the presidential race.

...

... one of the things that I firmly believe is that we've got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we're going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election."

If it's true that Obama feels that voters don't already know of differences between his views and those of HRC's, doesn't that suggest that he's the one who has not been candid? Otherwise, why the need to differentiate all of the sudden?

His senior aides said they were now spending much of their days fielding calls from concerned donors and other supporters asking why Mr. Obama was not challenging Mrs. Clinton more forcefully and warning that he could cede the role of the main anti-Clinton candidate to former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who is running an aggressive campaign in Iowa. Typically, one aide said, the supporter asks some version of the same question: "What happened to the Obama we saw at the 2004 Democratic convention?"

I don't have anything against Sen. Obama, though he's clearly not my choice this go-round. But the shame of his campaign will likely be that it demonstrates more clearly than any other before it, the pitfalls of campaigning on the heels of your one big claim to fame. There's bound to be some good reading material on the downfall - hopefully no more than temporary and minor - of what should have been a rising star with a sustained trajectory.

But a among the troubling signs here are that his donors are still harping on that one speech as the pinnacle of their ideal for Obama. Also, the notion that speechwriters will fix a stalled campaign ... what do I even need to say? Lastly, there's the indication here that Obama's staffers are blabbing. Not a good sign.

At the same time, aides said there was disagreement in the campaign about whether he should now begin investing all his time in Iowa, where polls show him to be running neck-and-neck with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards, hoping that a victory there would give him a lift in New Hampshire, where polls show him trailing.

Like I said ... not a good sign.

Morale at his Chicago headquarters, aides said, has been dragged down by the perception that Mrs. Clinton is lapping Mr. Obama.

Really. Not. A. Good. Sign.

In a 53-minute interview over a breakfast of boiled eggs (he ate only the egg whites), aboard a chartered jet that brought him here from Chicago, Mr. Obama said Mrs. Clinton ...

Obama aside for a moment: tell me Adam Nagourney did not just lend his name to an article discussing Obama's egg-eating quirks!!!

Mr. Obama said he was not concerned by a repeated spate of national polls showing lopsided support for Mrs. Clinton. "The national press for the last three months has written glowingly about her and not so much about me, so it's not surprising," he said. He described himself as an "underdog" running against a campaign that has "a 20-year head start when it comes to managing the spin of the national politics."

Red flag time. On the surface, it's comical to suggest that the mainstream media has been kinder and gentler to Hillary Clinton. It's beyond comical to throw in the word "glowingly." The real point to be made here is that Team Hillary has an immense head start on the learning curve to dealing with a critical media. The NYT coverage is a telling case in point. Patrick Healy still does a bit of reporting on the campaign, but it seems he's gotten a bit more spread out. But more importantly, his more critical points have moved away from the inane. Unfortunately, the inane part seems to have shifted to Maureen Dowd's column. But everyone knows the deal with columnists. Obama, if he's really all he's cooked up to be, would kill for a press outfit like Hillary's. He'd also move away from the media focus and focus a bit more on doing what he needs the campaign to be doing. Smart campaigns do that. Failing ones spend their waning days carping about the press they're getting.

Mr. Obama rejected the suggestion that he had been constrained in taking on Mrs. Clinton more forcefully because of his promise, at the start of the campaign, to avoid the bitter partisanship of past campaigns. Mr. Obama, who aides suggested might be spending too much time reading blogs and newspaper clippings about the campaign, dismissively noted how the Clinton campaign regularly raised that line against him.

Boy, them aides sure do love talking to the press, don't they? I cannot even begin to enumerate the number of red flags that get raised in a paragraph this devastating. For now, I simply have to read that as the obituary of the Obama campaign.

Now, one final cavaet worth noting here. And feel free to level your charge of me covering my bet here. But one positive reality for Obama is that he's still got a huge stash of jack to spend. That money's gotta land somewhere. And between the super-early start of the primaries, the emphasis on picking up an early win, and Obama's slide down the polls, I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama drop some of that cash quick and hard ... somewhere. The Iowa strategy alluded to in the article makes some sense. Obama's competitive there and an outright win is very realistic for him as I type. I'm doubtful that even that scenario lands him the nomination, though. That's how bad it gets. Either you risk it all early on and gamble for some mojo ... or you pace yourself and end up spending wisely for the Super-Duper Tuesday primary in February. Guess which approach Clinton's on pace for?