As she tried, and failed, eight years ago, Hillary Clinton has been running a campaign based upon inevitability. There’s no need to pay any attention to the young/old guy running against her as there was no chance she would lose. Just look at her big lead in the polls. Except now that lead has dwindled away. This week Bernie Sanders has continued to improve in the polls, received the endorsement from MoveOn, and received favorable comments from Joe Biden, while Hillary Clinton’s campaign has become increasingly dirty. Or perhaps the fact that Sanders is talking about the issues while Clinton is slinging mud is why Sanders is surging in the polls.

The first sign of bad news for Clinton came over the weekend with the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll showing Clinton only slightly ahead in Iowa and Sanders holding a slight lead in New Hampshire. This led to headlines such as Bernie Sanders In Striking Distance.

As Iowa is a caucus and not a primary, I also wonder what would happen with Martin O’Malley’s supporters as, assuming this poll result holds, he would not have enough support to meet the fifteen percent threshold. His supporters would have to go to their second choice. If a majority of his supporters go to Sanders, this could be enough to give Sanders the victory.

Or maybe he won’t need to pick up O’Malley’s support. An American Research Group poll has Sanders leading Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent. Subsequently Public Policy Polling showed Clinton losing six percent of her support and Sanders gaining six percent, but still remaining behind Clinton. Better yet, Quinnipiac showed Sanders leading by five points in Iowa, compared to a Clinton lead of eleven points last month. As Philip Bump wrote, Hillary Clinton’s trend line in Iowa polling should scare her campaign. 

Sanders is also maintaining his lead in New Hampshire, with the strongest lead coming in a Monmouth University poll showing Sanders ahead by fourteen points, while other polls showed a closer race.

Previously I though that Clinton would maintain her lead in the national polls until the Iowa or New Hampshire votes and then Sanders would start moving up nationally if he won there. He might not even need to wait for this. The IBD/TIPP Poll has Clinton’s lead over Sanders nationally at 4 points, down from an eighteen point lead.

The IBD/TIPP Poll shows that regionally, Clinton saw her support drop most in the Northeast (where it fell to 36% from 50%) and the West (37% down from 49%). Sanders now holds the lead in both places. Clinton support also tumbled among suburban voters, dropping to 39% from last a month’s 50%. And she has lost backing among moderate Democrats, falling to 44% from 58%. Sanders picked up 10 points among moderates, to 37%.

Clinton still leads in other polls, but her the trend is not looking good for her. The New York Times/CBS News Poll shows Clinton’s lead having decreased from twenty points in early December to seven points now.

Polls before primaries have a poor track record of predicting the winner, and the final results could be quite different from what we are seeing today. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see both candidates moving up and down in the polls over the next few weeks.

What this does show is that the this is a race either candidate can win, and a Clinton victory is not inevitable. The growing number of polls which show Sanders doing better than Clinton in head to head match-ups against Republicans further undermines Clinton’s argument.

Sanders also picked up the endorsement of MoveOn.org, with the number one reason being, “Bernie’s lifelong commitment to standing up to corporate and 1% interests to fight for an economy where everyone has a fair shot.” Foreign policy was also a strong factor, or as MoveOn put it, “He’ll say no to permanent war.” Clinton’s claims of greater electability also did not fool the members of MoveOn, who backed Sanders with 78.6 percent of the vote. Another reason for the endorsement was, “Electability: This election will hinge on turnout, and Bernie is inspiring and mobilizing the communities it’ll take to win.”

Sanders previously received the endorsement of Democracy for America. The endorsements from these two groups show the strength of Sanders’ support among liberals and in the netroots. Opposition to the policies of George W. Bush previously energized such groups, and therefore it is hardly surprising that such groups would oppose Hillary Clinton, who share’s many of Bush’s views on foreign policy, restrictions on civil liberties, and excessive executive power. This might also be related to the generational divide in the party. While I do not have the age breakdown of these organizations, I suspect that their endorsement is also consistent with the New York Times/CBS News poll showing “primary voters under 45 favoring Mr. Sanders by a roughly 2-to-1 ratio.”

While it would be a surprise if Joe Biden made an endorsement, he has made his disdain for Hillary Clinton clear on several occasions, including when he announced his decision not to run. Biden took another opportunity to praise Sanders and question Clinton’s record earlier this week. From CNN:

Vice President Joe Biden offered effusive praise for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders Monday, lauding Hillary Clinton’s chief rival for doing a “heck of a job” on the campaign trail and praising Sanders for offering an authentic voice on income inequality.

And while Biden said Democrats had a slate of “great candidates” running for president, he suggested Clinton was a newcomer to issues like the growing gap between rich and poor.

Sanders might have also benefited from being in the Senate for Barack Obama’s final State of the Union Address. While flipping through the channels after the debate I saw extended interviews with him on  MSNBC and CNN, and it is possible he also received coverage elsewhere. Besides discussing his economic message, this gave him an opportunity to respond to a dishonest ad on gun control which Clinton released last night, along with dishonest attacks on health care from Chelsea.

The polls can still move quite a bit in each direction over the next few weeks. This does seriously hurt Clinton’s strategy of campaigning based upon inevitability. Instead her campaign has become increasingly desperate, including further distortions of Sanders’ views on guns and further attacks on Sanders’ health care plans from the right. I will discuss this in further detail in a follow-up post.

Update: Clinton Shows Desperation With Dishonest Attacks Against Sanders On Health Care & Guns

This is combined from previous posts at Liberal Values posted here and here.