KEY POINTS:
Call them what you like: candidates' debates, town hall meetings, round-tables or cattle-calls. No matter who organises them, such gatherings of the 2008 Democratic presidential pack have recently had one common denominator. Each of them has provided its "Hillary moment".
The latest came this week in Chicago, at the Soldier Field arena, where the local Bears football team normally does battle. This time the combat was political, with the candidates trading fierce barbs about Iraq and Afghanistan, the evils of Washington lobbyists, and their rivals' credentials. But once again, Hillary Clinton stole the show.
She was describing how she was best fitted to handle the Republican attack machine that would be unleashed once the parties have selected nominees.
For 15 years she'd been under fire from this quarter, "and I've come out stronger. So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on," she said, smiling, "I'm your girl."
This was surely the first time a contender for the White House had used that term as a selling point - remember how Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Republican governor, denounced his Democratic opponents as "girlie-men"? But it was also a master stroke.
The "G-word" was informal and matey, identifying Hillary as a friend of the 17,000 assembled union members and their families. It neatly upstaged the competing claims of her millionaire male rivals and it threw down a not-so-subtle sexist gauntlet.
Male candidates love to depict themselves as one of the guys. What's wrong with being one of the girls - especially when this girl looks more like a winner every day?
The first vote that counts is still four months off, but Clinton is on a roll. Barack Obama may raise more money, and in Iowa and New Hampshire he and John Edwards are running her very close. But nationally, poll after poll gives Clinton a commanding lead.
This week a USA Today survey puts her 22 points ahead of Obama, with Edwards a distant third. Ominously for her rivals, the gap is growing.
Not long ago, the conventional wisdom was that although Clinton might win the nomination, so many Americans disliked her that she could never be elected. Now those "negatives" once held to be insuperable, are declining. In hypothetical match-ups she defeats all Republican comers, including the front-runner Rudolph Giuliani.
In part, this merely underlines the country's Bush-fatigue, and how strongly the political tide is running for the Democrats. But it's also a sign people are becoming accustomed to the notion of Madam President. If one thing has come out of the debates, it is that Clinton looks the part.
Now I'm no great Clinton fan. Everything she says sounds deliberately cautious, programmed and calculated. Unlike her husband, she hasn't mastered the art of faking authenticity. Again and again you wish there was a spontaneous show of emotion.
And she can be maddeningly hard to pin down on the issues. Take healthcare. Edwards, and to a lesser extent Obama, have come up with credible plans to provide coverage to all Americans, including the 45 million who have none.
Clinton leaves the impression she has a plan, but has come with nothing, adding to the impression she is keeping her powder dry.
But the tactics are working. Whatever your opinion of her, you cannot but admire the professional skills of team Clinton. Her campaign has judiciously used her husband, both her greatest asset and potential Achilles heel. It has used his prodigious political talents, but without allowing her to be overshadowed.
Above all, she dominates the debates. Alone of the candidates, she seems to have launched into the general election campaign. She has taken flak from the left by expounding some centrist realities - for instance that lobbyists are a fact of life. She has also conspicuously refused to join Edwards in admitting her 2002 Senate vote authorising the Iraq war was a mistake.
Search the debate transcripts, and alone of the candidates she has not left a single hostage to fortune. Instead she floats above the fray. She may be short on detailed proposals. But like her husband, whether the topic is the Middle East, the nuances of trade policy or the intricacies of healthcare, she knows her stuff.
And as a former First Lady, hardened by years of fighting the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that sought to destroy her and her husband, "your girl" has the experience.
And that, surely, is Hillary's supreme selling point. Americans are now bitterly learning the consequences of entrusting the White House to an ignorant and untested president. It is surely no coincidence her rise in the polls is happening when Obama is tying himself in knots; first declaring that, if elected, he would hold talks with Iran, Cuba and other American foes, then saying he was ready to bomb terrorist bases in Pakistan without Islamabad's permission.
Right now Clinton's the girl, and it's her nomination to lose.
- Independent
