Playing Catch-Up May Be Harder: Short Calendar Means Candidates With Momentum Could Keep Rolling

WP,pg1: Playing Catch-Up May Be Harder This Time
Short Primary Calendar Means Candidates With Momentum Could Just Keep Rolling
By Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 5, 2008; Page A01

MANCHESTER, N.H., Jan. 4 -- When George W. Bush stumbled here in his quest for the presidency in 2000, he had 18 days to recover before the next major primary. But the erstwhile front-runners humbled in Iowa this week emerged with just five days to get back on their feet, slow down their rivals and salvage their campaigns.

For all the discussion about how early this year's presidential primary season started, the more profound change in the political calendar is how compressed it has become. Starting with the Iowa caucuses, 31 states will vote over 33 days for the nominee of one or both parties, compared with just nine states that voted in the equivalent period eight years ago.

The furious pace of contests this year will be so intense that it could make momentum king and increase the challenge exponentially for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Mitt Romney as they try to shrug off defeats in Iowa and regroup for New Hampshire's primary on Tuesday. That proves a bitter irony for both camps, which had built their strategies around the assumption that they would exploit the compressed schedule to roll over other candidates before anyone had a chance to catch up....

As the campaigns rolled into New Hampshire early Friday morning, they had only hours to absorb the Iowa caucus results, decide whether (or how) to retool their strategies and set last-minute television advertising. The campaign window is so abbreviated that it was already too late to commission new mailings and to count on getting them into voters' hands before they go to the polls.

The campaigns will have to rely on the organizations they long ago built here and in other early-primary states to carry them through despite an early loss -- or even losses -- and enable them to compete when more than 20 states vote Feb. 5....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010404126_pf.html

hrc goes for the jugular tonight and succeeds. I do not look for the debate tonight to be pretty....

and before I come back in here after the debate I do not wish to see obama folks saying it's a media conspiracy against obama and pro hrc....Let what takes place in the debate what we discuss here later......