Can Hillary be defeated in the primary?

[Mr. Morden]

Are people forgetting the primary schedule?

Iowa-> Nevada-> New Hampshire-> South Carolina.

Besides New Hampshire, where would she even have an easy time?

This is actually something that I've been wondering about.  What is Hillary's base?  You could argue that it's the party regulars, who would show up for a caucus, as in IA or NV, but would *not* be as much of a factor in NH's open primary which allows independents to vote....or you could argue that the party regulars in IA and NV will reject Hillary, because they're more liberal than the independents who get to vote in NH, and they won't support a candidate who voted for the war.

[Mr. Morden]

Absolutely, as long as anti-hillary forces rally around a candidate in time.  If Obama runs, he'll win the nomination.  If not Obama, Edwards will have to quickly push out all the other candidates, and claim the mantle for himself

Is it really necessary for the anti-Hillary forces to rally around one candidate in order for her to lose?  That's not what happened in 2004, when Howard Dean's candidacy collapsed.  In that case, he was being attacked from all sides by multiple challengers, and the combination of those attacks with his own foot-in-mooth disease ended up causing his candidacy to implode.  It was never really a 2-man race.  In fact, up until about two weeks before the IA caucus, *Gephardt* was seen as his principal rival in Iowa.