Obama shrugs off the slurs to nail Hillary

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is now fighting for its life after a shattering defeat last night in Iowa at the hands of the black senator from Illinois, Barrack Obama. Also on life support is the candidacy of the Mormon Mitt Romney, trounced in Iowa's Republican caucuses by Mike Huckabee, the folksy and decidedly Christian former governor of Arkansas.

Confounding all expert predictions, the turnout on the Democratic side doubled from 2004 and Obama can fairly claim he was the reason. His vague calls for change held huge allure for Democrats and independents in every age group, except among women over 65 who stayed true to Mrs Clinton.

Obama won in the cities and in rural counties. Among young people Hillary won 11 per cent of college voters. Obama won 60 per cent. Young people simply didn't care for Hillary. In their cohort, Hillary's 'likeability'

scored a desolate 17 per cent.

The parlour wisdom in the press has been that the war in Iraq is no longer an issue. It turned out that the three main issues on voters' minds were, in descending order, the war, the economy and health care. Obama led in all three.

For the party establishments - Democratic and Republican - it was a bad night, as their favoured candidates went down to severe defeat.

The Clintons' calculation had been that Obama would never be able to match their fund-raising. Wrong. Obama raised huge sums from small-sum contributors, who can continue their support. A lot of Hillary's big financial backers have already reached their legal limits.

Mrs Clinton had the big feminist organisations in her corner and a good chunk of organised labour. They didn't deliver, any more than the Democratic machine supervised by campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe and super-pollster Mark Penn. They thought they could sink Obama with