One of the interesting phenomena of this primary campaign is the difference between the Republican and the Democratic contests. Now, we all know that the horse races are different. The Democratic contest is basically a two-, two-and-a-half-, way race between Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. Clinton also has a clear edge in the contest. The Republican contest has more viable candidates - and the frontrunner in that contest, Giuliani, has less of an edge than Clinton.

Another interesting difference is the policy positions on both sides. On the Democratic side, you have three candidates that are essentially identical on issue positions. Of course, there are differences between each. You could probably array them left to right as Edwards, Obama, and Clinton. However, the differences between them are slight enough that average voters probably cannot apprehend the differences between them. This was the subject of an October 30 piece in the Boston Globe:

In the nine months since launching his insurgent campaign for president, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has seized on a slew of issues in trying to set himself apart from Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. But with Clinton's dominance unabated, there is little evidence Obama has made headway on any of them.

Poll after poll shows Clinton not only leading the Democratic field, but also leading on issues on which Obama has sought to gain advantage. Likely voters say that they see Clinton as the best candidate to fix Iraq. They trust her over her rivals to solve the healthcare crisis. And they believe she would bring change to Washington.

Part of Obama's problem, analysts say, is that despite how hard his campaign is working to highlight its differences - he is vowing again this week to take her on more directly - he and Clinton are simply not far apart on major issues.

"It's Wal-Mart and Kmart - they're occupying the same space," said Benjamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Obama and Edwards have, I think, endeavored to create differences between Clinton and themselves in different ways. My impression is that Edwards is trying to emphasize the policy differences. He is working to create the impression that he is the authentic Democrat in the race - and his solutions to health care, Iraq, etc., are more in line with the Democratic electorate. This is a difficult path - but I think that Professor Ginsberg might be underestimating its viability. In the early states, where primary voters are paying more attention, they might be able to apprehend real differences - just as, on close inspection, one can see real differences between Wal-Mart and Kmart (if there was no perceivable difference between the two, the former would not have driven the latter to the brink of nonexistence). Edwards is obviously hoping that Iowa sees the differences, chooses his brand, and launches him on a national campaign.

Obama, on the other hand, seems to me to be pursuing a different strategy. This is from the Globe again:

Obama has also sought to differentiate himself in leadership style and message, casting himself as the candidate best equipped to change Washington. Last month's LA Times/Bloomberg poll of primary voters in early-voting states showed that Democrats believed Obama, more than Clinton, had "new ideas." But other recent surveys have shown that voters see Clinton as more "inspiring," more likely to bring "needed change," and best able to "reduce partisanship."

"Barack has had a difficult time both identifying distinctions between himself and Hillary and then making them clear," said Democratic strategist Steve McMahon, who worked on Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

Obama strategist David Axelrod insisted that the two candidates have significant differences on issues, and said that this election is as much about leadership.

"It's about an approach and a style to politics and governance," he said. "And one of the questions is, are you willing to face these things squarely? Are you willing to be straight up with the American people, or are you going to pass everything through a sort of political calculus? I think that does have traction."

Obama's strategy indicates that elections are not "one dimensional." That is, they are not simply a matter of voters identifying candidate ideological positions and choosing the candidate whose position is closest to their own. Obama's trajectory is one to create contrasts on style and personality.

What I think is really interesting in all of this is that Clinton is very clearly trying to minimize the contrasts between Obama, Edwards, and herself. This makes intuitive sense. Clinton seems to be the "default" candidate in the Democratic primary. That is, absent a vigorous campaign by her opponents to convince the voters otherwise, it appears as though they will select her. Accordingly, her goal is not so much to give them a reason to vote for her, but rather to make the reasons Edwards and Obama offer seem less compelling. In other words, she needs to minimize the contrasts. She is going to lose some "authentic liberals" to Edwards and some "change the tone voters" to Obama. But what she needs to do is make it so that a good portion of both types of voters think they can satisfy their preferences by voting for her.

Edwards poses a particular dilemma because he is running strong to her left - at least rhetorically. If she matches him word for word, she'll damage her general election viability. It seems to me that she has dealt with this by attacking "George Bush and the Republicans." This is a good strategy, I think. It does not move her to the left in terms of policy positions - but it is a good way to blur the distinctions between Edwards and herself. It signals that she is a solid Democrat, which is what those "authentic liberals" want in a candidate, without forcing her to stake out positions that she might later regret.

We saw this in the debate during the Iran discussion. She voted for Kyl-Lieberman, which was probably necessary for her to do in advance of the general election. However, the Democratic base did not like Kyl-Lieberman - which gave Edwards a line of attack. Clinton blunted this not by swearing off her vote, but by really laying it on George Bush and the "Republican sabre rattlers." The intended result of this is to make it so that the "authentic liberals" perceive few differences between Clinton and Edwards. The latter talks ideology, the former talks partisanship. The differences are blurred. The voters select Clinton.

I think blunting Obama's attack is a much trickier task. Policy positions are flexible, as we all know. And, if your opponent is outdoing you on ideology, just outdo him on partisanship. However, Obama's differentiation is one based on style - and it carries with it a subtle, yet potentially dangerous, undertone. Obama's argument is that the failure for the party to break through with the public on the substantive issues upon which good Democrats all agree has to do with the style of the leaders. Thus, so Obama's argument goes, we are more likely to achieve Democratic policy goals if we elect a leader with a different style.

Clinton seems to me to have responded to this attack by wrapping herself in the cloak of the nineties. As often as she slams Bush, she praises her husband's administration (always in the first person plural!). I think the intended effect of this is to draw upon the Democratic electorate's warm feelings about the Clinton administration. They see Bill Clinton's time in office as a success. By referencing her husband - Clinton is actually making an argument against Obama's position. She is implicitly saying that we don't need an entirely new direction. Instead, we need to get back to the way (she and) Bill ran the government.

What I really like about this whole strategy is how the two separate arguments - the one for Edwards and the one for Obama - are fit seemlessly into a neat package: "We need to get back to the way things were before Bush, who is just horrible."

Will this position prevail? I cannot say. First off, I'm not a Democrat. So, this conversation is not really "for me," if you know what I mean. I consider myself to be like a fly on the wall when I watch the Democrats converse about these matters - and I cannot presume to know what they will ultimately prefer. Second, there is no polling available that can help us gauge whether this position will play with the Democratic electorate. So, my plan is just to wait and see what they do.

I will say that her strategy for blunting Obama carries with it a potential inefficiency. Recall George W. Bush's campaign of 2000. One of the most remarkable things about that campaign is that Bush created the impression that he was a "change" candidate, despite the fact that his father was a former president - and obviously not a symbol of change. I think one of the ways Bush did that was by minimizing the role of his father in the campaign. This enabled him to market himself as "new" much more efficiently.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is not pursuing this strategy. Bill is quite prevalent in the campaign. As I said, I think the purpose of this is to take advantage of the Democratic electorate's warm feelings for his administration. But the flip side is that it might make Hillary Clinton a kind of status quo candidate in next year's general election. This, I think, could be quite costly - as the Democrats' greatest advantage right now is that the public identifies the generic Democratic brand with change.

Now - it might not work out this way. The key word here is "potential." Clinton might still be able to present herself as the change candidate. The Republican brand might be so tarnished that whoever either party nominates, the Democratic candidate will be seen as the change candidate regardless of the particulars. And, anyway, maybe the public wants a "change back to the old" rather than a "new change."

I am not sure whether or not this will flush out in a way that damages Clinton. I am more confident that the GOP will try this line of attack. My guess is that whoever is the GOP nominee will try to argue that he is the change candidate, and that Hillary Clinton represents the old politics that are no longer working. I think it is not coincidental that many Republicans took notice of Sarkozy's victory in France. My guess is that this is something they hope to replicate - and Clinton might give them an opportunity to do so.

We'll talk about the Republican field tomorrow.