Clinton: Inevitable no more?

What happened

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards stepped up his criticism of front-runner Hillary Clinton this week, saying that she did “what George Bush does” when her aides planted a question in the audience at a campaign event. Clinton, who has faced intensifying attacks from Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama, said it was Edwards who was acting like Bush by attacking a Democrat.

What the commentators said

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There goes Hillary’s inevitability, said Monica Crowley in HumanEvents.com. Her support is sinking in “the earliest voting states, Iowa and New Hampshire.” The Hillary train is suddenly going in reverse. “And that's made it safe for Senators Barack Obama and John Edwards to attack her. And THAT has had the effect of feeding into this downward cycle.”

And she was “so close” to locking up the nomination, too, said Mortimer Zuckerman in U.S. News & World Report. It’s supposed to be the unpredictable results of the long parade of primaries prevents the nomination process from becoming a coronation. But Hillary brought herself down with her lamentable performance in the recent Democratic debate, by fudging “replies on Social Security, the release of documents from her husband's administration, and most strikingly on issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.”

The question now is whether Edwards and Obama should keep firing broadsides at Clinton, said Jay Newton-Small in Time.com, or start targeting each other. They have both managed to boost their campaigns by “attacking Clinton as a polarizing or corrupt agent of the status quo,” but “the battle to be the viable alternative for anti-Hillary” is only beginning.