Democrats battle over health care, as a new poll shows Clinton competitive in Alabama

The hostage situation in Clinton's Rochester, NH office appears to have been resolved as the police reportedly now has the hostage-taker in custody. No one appears to have gotten injured. This incident has also led to the disruption of the DNC meeting in Virginia at which presidential candidates were scheduled to speak.

• Health care battle

The Democratic race this week centered on substantive discussion rather than process issues -- for once. Following up her strategy at the Las Vegas debate where she had unexpectedly attacked Obama on health care, Clinton had been relentlessly criticisizing Obama this week for his health care plan which, she says, does not cover everyone, whereas hers (and Edwards's, since Clinton and Edwards have very similar health care plans) does.

Today, the Clinton campaign demanded that Obama pull out an ad it has been running in New Hampshire, claiming that the ad is misleading in claiming his health care plan will "cover everyone." In response, the Obama campaign has been pointing out that the Clinton campaign is getting desperate, and they criticized in turn the "mandates" proposed by the Clinton/Edwards plans.

But it appears Obama is under intense heat at the moment for being too cautious, and the Clinton campaign is widely using Paul Krugman's latest NYT column that demolishes Obama on the health care issue. The first two paragraphs set the tone:

From the beginning, advocates of universal health care were troubled by the incompleteness of Barack Obama’s plan, which unlike those of his Democratic rivals wouldn’t cover everyone. But they were willing to cut Mr. Obama slack on the issue, assuming that in the end he would do the right thing.
Now, however, Mr. Obama is claiming that his plan’s weakness is actually a strength. What’s more, he’s doing the same thing in the health care debate he did when claiming that Social Security faces a “crisis” — attacking his rivals by echoing right-wing talking points.

Clinton's camp seems to have sensed this is the moment to push an advantage on an issue that they have been playing since Las Vegas and gain an advantage both substantively (on an issue that Democratic voters follow closely) and on process (knock down Obama's reputation as a hopeful idealist and show him to be to willing to compromise). These are definitely not the cliches of the two candidates -- but there is plenty of evidence after all that Obama is as much of a triangulator as Clinton (for example on Iran).

• More New Hampshire polls

Fox News is the third institute today to release a New Hampshire poll, after the ARG and Rasmussen surveys out this morning:

• On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton gets 30%, followed by Obama at 23% and Edwards at 17%. Richardson runs strong, at 12%.
• Among Republicans, it's Romney at 29%, McCain at 21%, Giuliani at 19% and Huckabee only obtains 7%. Fred Thompson manages to rise to... 4%!

Fox News agrees with the trendline most other polls have seen in the Democratic race: Clinton is sliding. A quick look at the Pollster.com listings tells us this is the first time since July she has not had a double-digits lead (in an ARG poll that had Obama and Clinton tied!). The decrease of Clinton's lead basically means that she will not be able to use New Hampshire as a firewall: An Iowa loss would immediately put her in major danger of losing New Hampshire as well. This was not the case a few weeks ago. On the Republican side, Fox News does not pick up the Huckabee surge -- and gives very good news to McCain who needs to win here (even a strong second-place finish would work under special circumstances if the field is very muddied and confused).

• Clinton competitive in... Alabama

And the trend continues in a new SUSA poll of Alabama: More and more states that were not in play in past cycles appear very competitive. And as has already been noted over and over again, Hillary Clinton runs much stronger than Obama in very red or Southern states (the same is not true in other regions of the country):

• Only McCain manages a convincing lead against Hillary, 52% to 42%. Giuliani only leads her 50% to 45%, while Huckabee is a point ahead (47-46) and Clinton ties Romney at 47%.
• Obama lags behind. He is crushed by Giuliani (55% to 38%), McCain (56% to 35%), Romney (51% to 41%), and Huckabee (48% to 41%).

This is truly a remarkable phenomenon. It appears that Clinton is so polarizing that she automatically federates all Democratic votes in these Southern states, even those that typically do not vote for Democrats anymore in federal races. This is not to say that the Democratic nominee will have much of a chance of carrying the state, but these are still remarkably strange results. Remember: Bush won Alabama 63% to 37%.