If Barack Obama thought his message of "new politics" would carry him to victory without some retooling following his loss in New Hampshire, his popular-vote defeat in yesterday's Nevada caucuses might have convinced him otherwise.
After the New Hampshire primary, Obama and his supporters chose to look at the bright side: They had won the Iowa caucuses by a decisive margin and had come within three points of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.
Clinton's victory seemed partly the result of a last-minute flurry of sympathy; the excitement remained with the time-for-a-change Obama legions.
But there had been signs even then that his stump speech - a stirring call to change, with direct allusions to the historic nature of his candidacy - had struck some voters as a little presumptuous. And Clinton was seizing every opportunity to portray his message as shallow.
He needed to prove her wrong, and to validate the very real promise of his candidacy. But in Nevada, where the organizational advantage, including the backing of the powerful Culinary Workers Union, seemed to be with him, he failed to deliver. He lost the popular vote by six points, even though he drew on his greater support in rural areas to secure one more delegate than Clinton.
Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, pointed to two worrisome signs for Obama in yesterday's Nevada result: The loss of a state with a large Hispanic population, suggesting that he does not connect as well as Clinton with that growing voting bloc, and a problem attracting the support of working-class voters.
"Despite all the talk of her having had eight campaign slogans, Clinton managed to connect with working-class Democrats," Scala said. "Obama did not, with all the appeals to hope and change. That's part of Obama's problem; he appeals to [upper-class] voters who have the luxury of thinking about reforming the nation's politics. For working-class voters, it's more about healthcare."
Still, the Clinton victory in Nevada was relatively modest - 51 percent to 45 percent - in a state with a new and quirky caucus system that made get-out-the-vote efforts difficult.
And Obama will have a good chance to regain his footing in the Democrats' South Carolina primary this Saturday, before half the nation votes in primary elections on Feb. 5.
But with Clinton having won two straight victories against difficult odds, the momentum may be shifting in her direction.
Her "experience" in the White House may be a dubious credential, as Obama has contended, but the superior experience of the Clinton campaign team seemed to assert itself in the week and a half after the New Hampshire primary.
During that time, Clinton beat Obama to the punch in proposing an economic stimulus package, a shrewd move that buttressed her assertion to be the candidate of substance. And she zeroed in on economic concerns just as the recent stock-market plunge highlighted the need for economic action.
Obama unveiled his stimulus package a few days later, but garnered less attention for being second out of the gate.
Moreover, her surrogates continued to goad his surrogates into low-grade tit-for-tat exchanges - about his plan to increase Social Security taxes and his praise for Ronald Reagan, among other issues - knowing that the less-established candidate traditionally has much more to lose by engaging in negative campaigning.
Obama mostly refrained from attacks - as the candidate of change, he must always live up to his promise of a hopeful, less-divisive style of politics; Clinton, by contrast, has cast herself as a fighter with no special qualms about negative campaigning.
Now, as the attention shifts to South Carolina - where Obama is perceived as having an advantage because of his strong support among the state's large black population - he would do well to add more bread-and-butter issues to his message of changing politics, according to Scala and some other analysts.
By promising "new politics," Obama has staked a claim on the passions of Democratic voters hungry for the strongest possible repudiation of the Bush presidency.
But there are signs that his cry for change may be sounding hollow or, worse, like a typical political slogan.
Radio stations in New England are broadcasting a ski-area ad in which a mock political candidate with a voice like Obama's declares Killington to be "the ski resort of change."
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery; but for Obama, the immediate challenge is to make himself not only the candidate of change, but of substance.
