Charm Offensive

Obama outraises Hillary, Bill rides to the rescue in Iowa. Quite an admission by Bill's friends. Sun Times:

Considered by friends to be as self-absorbed as he is brilliant, the former president checks his ego this week to fly to Iowa and take a surrogate's role in the presidential campaign of his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But will it work? Do the Dems want a Clinton rerun?

And does Obama's charm offensive have staying power? Does money really matter? Patrick Ruffini, Townhall, via RCP:

When it comes to raising money, enthusiasm now beats connections and even overall support every time. That’s something high-dollar focused Republican campaigns (and Hillary, who runs her campaigns like Bush) need to be thinking long and hard about. Romney and Hillary’s connections could only get them to roughly $20 million. Obama’s enthusiasm got him to $32 million. At some point,we have to begin asking whether this phenomenon of Internet candidates outraising the frontrunners is more the rule, rather than the exception. And whether or not that cheapens the impact of a win in the money primary.

I think this will wind up exposing how little money actually matters at the end of the day. Fact is, it never mattered as much as the“reformers” said it did, but we never really got to live in a universe where fundraising and poll position didn’t correlate. Now we do.

Primary loser Howard Dean and probable loser Barack Obama both cleaned up in the money game.

Check out the Dem polls.