Clinton's good day in Iowa: She leads in a poll and gets an endorsement

With all the candidates assembled in Iowa for the the Johnson County barbecue, Hillary Clinton got two good news: a new poll and a new endorsement.

First up, the Des Moines Register released its first poll of the Iowa caucuses since May:

• Clinton leads with 29%, up from 21% in May.
• John Edwards at 23% (down from 29%) and Barack Obama at 22% (down from 23%) are basically tied for second place.
• The second-tier is Bill Richardson, as we are used to. But it does seem that Richardson's momentum has stalled: After a fast rise, he is now back down to 8% (from 10%). In fact, there could even be some movement on Biden's part: He is now at 5%, putting some distance with the rest of the pack.
  

53% of voters say they could still change their mind, but among the 33% who say they are now sure of their choice, Clinton gets a massive 48%. She also leads among the 55+ age group, which is the group most likely to come vote at the caucuses on a cold January night. In other words, the internal numbers are even better for Clinton. If she manages to post such a victory, even by a few percentages, it is unthinkable that Obama and Edwards would manage to make the nomination fight any more competitive. Iowa is the only obstacle to Clinton's nomination: She wins it, and she will sweep the rest of the early states in which she already has a more sizable lead. But the poll also shows how fragile her position is: Her lead is only 6%, and if Edwards or Obama overtake her here, it could throw the whole thing wide open.

The Register also has Republican numbers:

• Mitt Romney has a bigger lead than we've seen lately: He posts 29%.
• A distant second is Fred Thompson at 18%.
• Rudy Giuliani at 11% is fourth, behind Mike Huckabee at 12%. McCain is even further behind at 7%.

Interestingly, the internals show Romney's lead is weaker than Clinton's in some ways. Among the 25% of voters who say they have made up their mind, it is Huckabee who comes in first with 19%. Romney is tied with Thompson for second. And it is Giuliani who is the voters' top second choice.

Nevertheless, Romney has admirably held his own since May, where he also had 30%. He has kept up his lead since then in all Iowa polls, but the margin was dwindling dangerously in the past few weeks, so he will take comfort in a poll like this one. Winning Iowa could open the doors to the nomination to Romney, since it could allow him to carry the momentum to New Hampshire where he already leads. Rudy Giuliani has to find a way to survive January if that happens, and surviving means coming in second place. If he finishes behind Huckabee like in this poll, his survival strategy would take a major hit.

Also today, Hillary Clinton got the endorsement in Iowa of the 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern. Despite his landslide loss against Nixon, McGovern is a hero to many activists and liberals, so this endorsement could very well help Clinton (and how can Giuliani attack her for it, when he himself supported McGovern in 1972?!). McGovern first complimented the other candidates, calling Edwards "brilliant" and saying "I hope I live long enough to see a black president in the White House." But he then added:

But we have an old rule of currency in the United States: Ladies first. These two young men I just mentioned, they will be around a long time. My choice is Hillary Clinton. ... I think if we can elect her president, she will be a greater president than even her brilliant husband.

Update: The Des Moines Register's mighty David Yepsen argues in a new column that this poll is bad news for Clinton and Romney. By making them look like the favorites of Iowa, polls like this one will limit the momentum they can gain from an Iowa showing, he argues, or make a loss look much worse and precipitate their fall.

This is a deeply flawed argument: Clinton does not need momentum from Iowa, she leads everywhere. She just needs to not stumble, for that would open the floodgates. But whether she wins by one point or twenty-five, how will Obama and Edwards compete with her in later states? The same logic goes for Romney: He is leading in New Hampshire right now, so he does not need a Kerry-like 20 points upward movement. He simply needs to come out the winner to consolidate his NH lead. Inversely, the Romney campaign really couldn't care less about how bad it will look if Romney loses Iowa because the Romney campaign would have no way to go if it does not win the caucuses. They would then likely lose New Hampshire as well, and they are too low in the rest of the country to come out of nowhere.