Iowa: Gateway to the White House

Where did Hillary's inevitable coronation become a donnybrook? Her stately campaign-march to Denver an anything-goes Mad Max fender-bender? Her unquestioned entitlement an increasingly impossible slog through Obama lands?.....

It's Iowa.... Iowa.... as in "Where did the tables turn?" where Roger Simon of Politico autopsies Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

As Simon dissects the remains of Hillary's once unassailable nomination, he names the main cause of the demise of her White House hopes, "Iowa is where Clinton needed to strangle the Barack Obama campaign in its crib."

Instead, she crossed the finish line in Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus a panting third after Obama and John Edwards, handicapped by her yesteryear campaign strategy of ignoring young voters "who simply don't vote".... but did vote in droves for Obama. And, with no idea going forward of what to do against the then-credible and well-funded Obama phenomena.

And, because the Obama campaign focus on Iowa wasn't a dismissive "gateway to New Hampshire," organizational-effort like Clinton's, who tried to ride to victory on her Billary-powered showboat.

As Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod said this week.... "Iowa was our gateway to the nomination."