Slimy Dick notices that Hillary is tanking

Dick Morris rehashes Mrs. Bill Clinton's dramatic fall in the polls and then asks a question:

Question No. 1 is: How low will she go?

Hillary's strength is the demographic basis of her candidacy. Because single, white women cast at least a quarter of the Democratic primary vote - and Clinton is also very popular among Latinos - it's hard to see how she can drop much below 30 percent in the Democratic field. Even if Obama passes her, he's unlikely to surge way ahead.

The race may turn into a contest reminiscent of the 1980 primaries between Sen. Ted Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter, in which each candidate was beset by negatives and seemed to fall, only to rebound when people focused on his rival. Carter would win a primary, and then voters would remember the hostages and run to Kennedy in the next week's balloting. Then, after Kennedy won one, they'd recall Chappaquiddick and migrate back to Carter.

So the 2007 skirmishing may go - though in the polling, in the long runup to the actual primary voting. Voters, turned off by her manner and style, may recoil at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency and switch to Obama. Then - fearful of electing an inexperienced ingénue during a war - they may flock back to Clinton. And the cycle may repeat itself, in poll after poll.

The wild card is ex-Sen. John Edwards. If Obama and Clinton both vote to fund the war in Iraq, accepting the mealy mouthed compromise House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are likely to negotiate with President Bush, Edwards - who will demand a timetable for withdrawal in any such bill - will have the Democrats' left wing to himself.

If Edwards gets the left - forcing Obama to share the anti-Clinton vote - the Illinois senator could drop to third.

With Hillary no longer the inevitable nominee, though, it's anybody's guess how the process will unfold.

I don't believe that Obama's inexperience will be as big a roadblock in the Democratic primaries as Morris seems to believe.

Democrat voters are going to look at the fact that it doesn't look as though Mrs. Bill Clinton can get elected and turn to the next name on the list. The Breck Girl is already a proven loser and Obama has great novelty value. The press loves him and if the left can't get a woman they'll insist on an African-American.