For a preview of coming attractions, simply turn on the Fox News Channel or any right-wing radio talker, where the falsehoods of the 2010 midterm campaign are being field-tested today.

You can watch Dick Morris blather about the “death panels” that will terminate your mother and father while illegal immigrants are provided lavish care, and about how you will be put in jail for failing to purchase health insurance. You can hear Karl Rove complain that we will “beggar ourselves” by adding more than $1.4 trillion to the federal debt. You can listen to Frank Luntz claim that voters disdain reform because of “the cost to the deficit.”

These gentlemen have little expertise in health or economics, but much experience in distracting, misinforming and sometimes frightening the public. Aside from talking on television, that is their job. How little do they know—and how much do they simply fabricate?

It is safe to assume that Mr. Morris knows very well there are no death panels in any of the health reform bills; that those bills expressly forbid coverage of illegal immigrants; and that none of them includes any provision to incarcerate citizens who lack insurance coverage. It is also reasonable to assume, based solely on the fiscal record of the Bush administration in which he served, that Mr. Rove never worries about budget deficits, government waste or gross corruption unless Democrats are in charge.

As for Mr. Luntz, he specializes in political prophecies that are self-fulfilling. When he says voters are infuriated by the cost of health care reform, for instance, that merely indicates he is trying to make them feel that way. He will succeed—all three will succeed—only by drawing attention away from actual facts and figures.

So perhaps voters ought to listen instead to the Congressional Budget Office, which by contrast has earned a reputation for candor, accuracy and nonpartisan truthfulness. After painstaking analysis, the CBO estimated that the House health care reform bill, known as the Affordable Health Care for America Act, would reduce the federal deficit by about $109 billion during the first 10 years after it takes effect. To repeat: The bill passed by the House Democrats on the evening of Saturday, Nov. 7, “would yield a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2010-2019 period.”

The CBO experts also costed out the Senate Finance Committee bill and found that it would cut federal deficits by more than $80 billion during that first decade.

Those reassuring conclusions derive from other basic facts about reform that tend to be ignored or concealed. Reform will reduce wasteful spending by hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and will depend for financing on excise taxes imposed on the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. 

Much of the misinformation about the costs of reform comes from the belief—fostered by conservatives—that the government-run health plan known as the “public option” would impose a huge burden on the federal budget. So says Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut who has threatened to filibuster the bill.

Section 322 of the Affordable Health Care for America Act says clearly and concisely that people insured under the public option will pay premium rates “at a level sufficient to fully finance the costs of health benefits provided by the public health insurance option; and administrative costs related to operating the public health insurance option.” In short, the public option will involve no new federal expenditure.

Any bill that reaches the president’s desk will leave much to be desired, especially with respect to cost containment, preventive care and new systems of compensation to encourage improved results. But it should be judged according to real merits and defects—not the delusions and distortions that now dominate the debate.

jconason@observer.com

The prosaic won. And the doctrinaire ideological construct that her candidacy represents is likely to sweep the remaining contests and land her in the White House.” – Dick Morris, Febrary 6, 2008

“Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. Having surrendered the lead to Obama, she is not likely ever to regain it. It is a fantasy that the Ohio and Texas primaries will be a "firewall" to contain the flames of enthusiasm for Obama and reverse her defeats of February. Just as with Giuliani's supposed Florida firewall, Hillary's will crumble as Obama's momentum carries him forward to the nomination.” – Dick Morris, February 13, 2008

Oh, that the Clinton world were so simple. We should know by now that it never is, never was and never will be.

Helping Hillary Clinton now means helping her reach the next phase of her career. Being an effective legislator for New York, winning the respect of her Senate colleagues, proving herself—this was precisely the plan from the beginning.

You might ask, “What’s so diabolical about being an effective legislator, or winning the respect of one’s colleagues, or proving oneself?”

Well, if you’ve forgotten who and what Hillary Clinton is—and making us forget was also part of the plan—then the answer is: nothing. But for those of us who have stayed vigilant, who in 2000 foresaw her designs on the White House, we haven’t lost sight of the fact that the past five years in the Senate have been a mere stepping stone, a tool toward attaining the Presidency. Once she is in residence in the White House, she will continue to undermine American supremacy and independence, a process that her husband jump-started, partly under her influence.

Though setting politics and values aside for business considerations doesn’t present a moral dilemma to the opportunistic business mind (the Republican-leaning Corning company in upstate New York has also been won over by the job Hillary has done for them), Mr. Murdoch is playing into Hillary’s hands.

Yes, corporations will get two more years of Hillary’s nice side, but then we’ll all pay the price if their actions ultimately help achieve a Hillary Presidency. Besides, there are few Hillary fund-raisers who haven’t later found themselves stabbed in the back.

An early intimation that the wool would creep over conservative eyes happened soon after her 2000 Senate victory, during orientation, when Democrats and Republicans alike welcomed the new junior Senator, with Henry Hyde asking for a hug. After her first year of service in the Senate, Hillary got good grades, with several of her colleagues calling her an excellent pupil. The lawmakers easily forgot that “the most ruthless politician I’ve ever seen,” as Dick Morris has called her, plays by the rules so that she can eventually break them.

Meanwhile, she’s glad to reciprocate her colleagues’ kissy-faces and collegial attitudes, but the good will shown her serves no purpose other than to be exploited toward her ends. In her eyes, a fellow human being is either useful or useless, and she doesn’t walk away thinking kind thoughts after warm encounters with either.

One attribute that her husband was famous for was the immediate change of facial expression—his face would literally drop—after the cameras were off, morphing from genial to humorless. It’s one attribute that the couple seems to have in common.

No one knows the real Hillary. Her smile never quite reaches her eyes, and she guards herself carefully. The compulsive lying, meanwhile, has continued unabated, a recent example being selling the media on the idea that Hillary and Bill Clinton were acting independently when Hillary spoke out against the Bush administration on the ports deal while her husband was helping make it happen. As usual, the Clintons tried to have it both ways.

It would be more useful to note that, in contrast, Hillary had nothing to say when her husband, speaking in Qatar, called for the conviction of cartoonists for practicing what we call freedom of the press.

A sign that the apocalypse was upon us surfaced when NewsMax—an outfit basically founded on exposing the Clintons at every turn—lauded Hillary’s “stand” against the Dubai ports deal when she parroted countless others who decried our unprotected borders.

We need to remember that Hillary Clinton is someone who must be defeated because of who she is and not respected for who she pretends to be. In the foreword of Tom Kuiper’s new book, I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words, Dick Morris writes, “No politician could possibly amass quotes like this and expect to run for office. Nobody would dare.”

But shamelessness is precisely what the Clintons specialize in, and if Americans—media moguls and Senators included—are dopey enough to eat up the endless Clinton deceptions, then Hillary Clinton is the President we deserve.

Oh, that the Clinton world were so simple. We should know by now that it never is, never was and never will be.

Helping Hillary Clinton now means helping her reach the next phase of her career. Being an effective legislator for New York, winning the respect of her Senate colleagues, proving herself—this was precisely the plan from the beginning.

You might ask, “What’s so diabolical about being an effective legislator, or winning the respect of one’s colleagues, or proving oneself?”

Well, if you’ve forgotten who and what Hillary Clinton is—and making us forget was also part of the plan—then the answer is: nothing. But for those of us who have stayed vigilant, who in 2000 foresaw her designs on the White House, we haven’t lost sight of the fact that the past five years in the Senate have been a mere stepping stone, a tool toward attaining the Presidency. Once she is in residence in the White House, she will continue to undermine American supremacy and independence, a process that her husband jump-started, partly under her influence.

Though setting politics and values aside for business considerations doesn’t present a moral dilemma to the opportunistic business mind (the Republican-leaning Corning company in upstate New York has also been won over by the job Hillary has done for them), Mr. Murdoch is playing into Hillary’s hands.

Yes, corporations will get two more years of Hillary’s nice side, but then we’ll all pay the price if their actions ultimately help achieve a Hillary Presidency. Besides, there are few Hillary fund-raisers who haven’t later found themselves stabbed in the back.

An early intimation that the wool would creep over conservative eyes happened soon after her 2000 Senate victory, during orientation, when Democrats and Republicans alike welcomed the new junior Senator, with Henry Hyde asking for a hug. After her first year of service in the Senate, Hillary got good grades, with several of her colleagues calling her an excellent pupil. The lawmakers easily forgot that “the most ruthless politician I’ve ever seen,” as Dick Morris has called her, plays by the rules so that she can eventually break them.

Meanwhile, she’s glad to reciprocate her colleagues’ kissy-faces and collegial attitudes, but the good will shown her serves no purpose other than to be exploited toward her ends. In her eyes, a fellow human being is either useful or useless, and she doesn’t walk away thinking kind thoughts after warm encounters with either.

One attribute that her husband was famous for was the immediate change of facial expression—his face would literally drop—after the cameras were off, morphing from genial to humorless. It’s one attribute that the couple seems to have in common.

No one knows the real Hillary. Her smile never quite reaches her eyes, and she guards herself carefully. The compulsive lying, meanwhile, has continued unabated, a recent example being selling the media on the idea that Hillary and Bill Clinton were acting independently when Hillary spoke out against the Bush administration on the ports deal while her husband was helping make it happen. As usual, the Clintons tried to have it both ways.

It would be more useful to note that, in contrast, Hillary had nothing to say when her husband, speaking in Qatar, called for the conviction of cartoonists for practicing what we call freedom of the press.

A sign that the apocalypse was upon us surfaced when NewsMax—an outfit basically founded on exposing the Clintons at every turn—lauded Hillary’s “stand” against the Dubai ports deal when she parroted countless others who decried our unprotected borders.

We need to remember that Hillary Clinton is someone who must be defeated because of who she is and not respected for who she pretends to be. In the foreword of Tom Kuiper’s new book, I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words, Dick Morris writes, “No politician could possibly amass quotes like this and expect to run for office. Nobody would dare.”

But shamelessness is precisely what the Clintons specialize in, and if Americans—media moguls and Senators included—are dopey enough to eat up the endless Clinton deceptions, then Hillary Clinton is the President we deserve.

It was from an editor at a division of Crown Publishing. He wanted a book about Hillary Clinton from Mr. Limbacher, an Oyster Bay printer who moonlights as a writer for the fiercely right-wing Web site NewsMax.

“Crown came to me—it wasn’t my idea to write a book,” Mr. Limbacher said.

The following spring, Hillary’s Scheme appeared under Random House–owned Crown Publishing’s new conservative imprint, Crown Forum. Addressed to conservatives, the book’s central argument was: Be very afraid. Its sourcing was drawn from a rich field of existing anti-Hillary literature, stretching back to the early 1990’s, and whose Boswell is Clinton apostate Dick Morris. Like the growing stack of biographies and polemics on Mrs. Clinton, the book’s driving force was the fact that attacks on New York’s junior Senator sell—regardless of reviews.

“There’s an endless fascination with Hillary,” said Jed Donahue, Mr. Limbacher’s editor at Crown Forum. Mr. Donahue was lured to New York’s corporate publishing world from the conservative Regnery Publishing. “She is someone who people on the right take very seriously.”

Mrs. Clinton is the subject of about 30 volumes already. About a dozen more will be written, researched or set in type between now and the fall of 2007—when the 2008 Presidential race will be in full swing. This year’s crop is slender and unabashedly conservative: Crown Forum has two more, John Podhoretz’s Can She Be Stopped: Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless … (due out in May), and conservative media critic Brent Bozell’s Whitewash (out this fall) on the media’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton.

A book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe, The Shadow Party: How Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and the Sixties Left Took Over the Democratic Party, is set for release in August by the Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson. And Dick Morris—fresh off Regan Books’ release of Condi vs. Hillary (Mr. Morris likes Condi; Mr. Podhoretz’s Hillary-killer is Rudy Giuliani)—has contributed his name and a short introduction to “I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan”: Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words, which World Ahead Publishing, a California company, will publish next month.

The quote book, like many of the more recent volumes, builds on the growing body of Hillary lit: Many of its quotes are questionably sourced lines from, among others, Ed Klein’s widely criticized The Truth About Hillary. For relatively solid grounding, this universe has critical but reality-based tomes like Dick Morris’ earlier book, Behind the Oval Office; Gail Sheehy’s psychobiography, Hillary’s Choice; and Peggy Noonan’s best-selling essay, The Case Against Hillary. At the other end are the questionably researched attacks, like David Brock’s The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, since disowned by its author but still frequently footnoted, and Mr. Klein’s, with its prurient speculation about Mrs. Clinton’s sexuality.

It’s a universe in which Vince Foster’s death remains an open question, and Mrs. Clinton’s true, liberal core is taken for granted. It has its own stars, like Mr. Limbacher (whose NewsMax is its newspaper of record), and even its own Joe Klein.

Across the cover of “I’ve Always Been a Yankees Fan” is the following blurb: “A great collection—this could be Hillary’s Unfit for Command. — Joe Klein.”

Joe Klein?

“Joe Klein is the FrontPage Magazine contributor and author of Global Deception,” says World Ahead Publishing marketing director Judy Abarbanel.

Oh, that Joe Klein!

On the horizon is a second, thicker batch of Hillary books: New York Times investigative reporter Don Van Natta and his former colleague Jeff Gerth—chronicler of the Clintons’ Arkansas business dealings— have a biography due out from Little, Brown in the fall of 2007, for which they reportedly received a $1 million advance.

Washington biographer Sally Bedell Smith, author of the Kennedy chronicle Grace and Power, is writing a book about Bill and Hillary as President and First Lady— “a portrait of them in those years,” she told The Observer.

“The point of it is to deepen people’s understanding—and that’s important to me, and readers have responded to my books,” Ms. Bedell Smith said. “I think there is a market for it.”

Finally, there’s the mysterious Carl Bernstein biography of Mrs. Clinton, which the Watergate icon reportedly sold to Knopf in 1999 and which, according to the biography posted on his speaking agency’s Web site, was supposed to appear in 2003. It is still unreleased, and a spokesman for Knopf, Nicholas Latimer, tersely declined to offer a timetable for publication.

“The book has not been delivered,” he said. Mr. Bernstein didn’t respond to a message left with him at Vanity Fair, where he is a contributing editor.

Another nonpartisan volume is due out this fall from Washington Post political editor John Harris, author of a recent biography of Bill Clinton, and the chief of ABC News’ political operation, Mark Halperin. Published by Random House, its subject is American politics and the two dominant political families, the Bushes and the Clintons, according to a person familiar with the book.

Star Power

The power of Mrs. Clinton’s name at the moment—“She is the only star in American politics except for the President,” says Mr. Podhoretz—is such that publishers, when possible, jam her name into the subtitle of books only tangentially related to her. That’s apparently the case with Mr. Horowitz’s forthcoming dispatch from the culture wars, and it is also the case for a forthcoming volume by National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, scheduled to come out next March. Its title: Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton.

A press release from the publisher says that the book “reveals that the original fascists were really on the left” (though, come to think of it, they weren’t all that nice to the Communists); it does not, however, focus on Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Goldberg said.

“Hillary’s not a real big part of my book—part of it is a concession to my publisher, who wanted to make it clear that it’s not simply a historical book. She’s sort of there as an icon of contemporary liberalism,” Mr. Goldberg said. “I’m getting a lot grief for having her in the title. People think—understandably and reasonably—that it’s about selling books, and it’s this invidious slap at Hillary in order to sell books.”

While many Hillary writers, from Mr. Morris to Mr. Podhoretz, argue that their subject is underestimated and that conservatives should worry more (and buy more books), Mr. Goldberg takes the opposite line.

“Conservatives have convinced themselves, partly because of all that nonsense Dick Morris spews, that she is this superwoman with superpowers,” he said. (Mr. Morris didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Since Regnery broke through with anti-Clinton literature in the 1990’s, publishers almost can’t lose. Forgotten volumes like Barbara Olson’s Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton spent weeks on The New York Times best-seller list, where Mr. Klein’s The Truth About Hillary reached second place. And Mrs. Clinton’s autobiography, Living History, astonished skeptics by selling more than a million copies within a month of its release.

Still, there is one way to lose with Hillary: You can publish a book that praises her. HarperCollins editor Judith Regan, who didn’t respond to messages, learned this when she published Susan Estrich’s The Case for Hillary, which was widely reviewed but sold roughly a tenth as many books as Mr. Klein’s, according to a publishing-industry insider.

Since Hillary’s Choice, Ms. Sheehy’s 1999 book, and the subject’s election to the Senate in 2000, Mrs. Clinton’s office has cooperated with none of the biographers.

“There are only two official books about the Clintons: My Life by Bill Clinton, and Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Both remain the definitive works on their lives and work, and both make great gifts and are still available in paperback,” said Mr. Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, and Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, Philippe Reines, in a joint e-mailed statement.

For the writers and publishers who regard her as a muse, Mrs. Clinton is a virtual cottage industry—and one that shows no sign of a slowdown any time soon.

“My argument was originally that 2004 was her best shot,” recalled Mr. Limbacher. “Then we revised it for the paperback edition after that clearly wasn’t going to happen, saying that 2008 was still a possibility.”

— additional reporting by Nicole Brydson

And speaking of the ABC show, Dick Morris -- in this weirdly calm and lucid column -- predicts Hillary will win in 2008 because the election will be about broad, generic cultural issues -- "first woman president" -- not questions of character, personality, or relative brittleness.

He told Conservative Party leaders today that she "aids and abets our enemies."

The tag line of the ad is kind of amusing, then: "I won't play politics with our security."

The BBC recently ran an entertaining, skeptical interview with Morris, who finds himself a key player in the movement to lead Britain out of the European Union.

"I think the greatest threat to democracy in the world is not terrorism but bureaucratism," he said, justifying his zeal for a party whose other goals include "zero net immigration" to the U.K.

His new associates are rather strange bedfellows for an old acolyte of the Third Way, and an odd match for a veteran of a Ukrainian revolution aimed squarely at joining the E.U. Until recently, Ukip was a fringe assortment of eccentrics and occasional extremists regarded by Labour and the Tories as the better-educated auxiliary of the far-right British National Party. It rose to prominence when Robert Kilroy-Silk, a kind of Oxbridge Geraldo, became its star. But Kilroy-Silk fell out with the old guard, and recently denounced his old compatriots.

His departure left a weakened party and left Morris, in Kilroy-Silk's words, in the company of "bloody Right-wing fascist nutters."

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has a re-election campaign in front of her in 2006, but as far as many around her are concerned, the train has already departed for a destination two years farther out-the Presidency.

"She is going to focus on going for Senate and getting that out of the way, but the eye is always on the prize," a former aide to Mrs. Clinton told The Observer.

Mrs. Clinton currently is gearing up for her re-election with a campaign whose cost and intensity are taking on the scale of a national race. The first, slightly frantic fund-raising letters already have gone out, warning of coming Republican attacks. And a veteran national Democratic player, Ann Lewis, will start work at Mrs. Clinton's Washington, D.C., offices in January. Mrs. Clinton is on a path to finish her re-election campaign in November 2006 and-assuming she isn't the first New York Democrat in a century to lose a Senate seat-pivot swiftly toward the White House. A loyal circle of advisors led by her husband is urging her on, allies say, despite the doubts that some supporters will express privately.

And so the question isn't whether Mrs. Clinton is running for President. It's whether it's already too late to pull the brakes.

Most of the comments by Mrs. Clinton's current and former advisors were given on the condition of anonymity because using the words "President" and "2008" in public is something of a taboo in the Senator's circle. The subject has the same effect on Clintonistas that the words "Skull and Bones" have on members of that secret society, who are said to be required to get up and leave the room when their club is mentioned. But as with the secret society, refusing to talk about the Clinton campaign doesn't mean you don't know about it-it means you're a member.

Howard Wolfson, the former campaign aide who continues to serve as a spokesman for all things political in Mrs. Clinton's life, stayed true to form on the question.

"We're focused on 2006," he said, offering: "You can say, 'Wolfson would not discuss '08.'"

But another Clinton insider said the refusal to talk about the next step doesn't mean nobody's thinking about it.

"In very, very small circles, people are thinking about it and talking about it," he said. "But they're not using the term 'Presidency,' not using the term 'national office.' We talk about having a greater profile, a firmer stance on issues that Democrats are seen as weak on."

And Mrs. Clinton's ramped-up Senate campaign will have much of the intensity and cash of a national campaign. The Clintons' wide, tight network of political supporters and friends-from veteran brawlers like Harold Ickes to party media stars like James Carville and Paul Begala, to a younger, New York–based set of former campaign aides-remains in the wings.

Mrs. Clinton's top fund-raiser, Patti Solis Doyle, who is also said to be her closest confidante, has launched an intense fund-raising effort to build on the more than $5 million that Mrs. Clinton already has in the bank.

An e-mail message to potential donors earlier this month, first reported in The New York Sun, asked them to "fight back" against a "new flood" of attacks on Mrs. Clinton. The e-mail quoted unnamed groups as stating "Bill and Hillary Clinton are outlaws" who "must be held accountable for their crimes."

Mrs. Clinton's fund-raising committee, the Friends of Hillary, recently asked donors to "fight back" against what it called a "new flood" of shrill anti-Hillary rhetoric coming from conservative groups it says are raising their own funds to defeat her.

The mainstream of the conservative press, however, has been enjoying Mrs. Clinton's steady march toward 2008.

The Washington Times recently ran a story arguing that she is "more conservative than President Bush" on illegal immigration-a notion which made the gleeful rounds of Fox News punditry, despite its being based on comments drawn from a year-old radio interview.

And while there's no real evidence of a rightward shift on immigration, Clinton supporters say the centerpiece of her drive toward the Presidency is a careful self-definition in the Senate, where she has carved herself a place to the right of where some of her allies, and her critics, might have expected to find her. (Though anyone who paid much attention to the eight years her husband was President might have been less surprised.) She supported the invasion of Iraq from a perch on the Armed Services Committee, for example, and opposes gay marriage.

"If she decides to run" for President, said Harold Ickes, a longtime advisor to both Clintons, "she's doing totally the right things."

Mr. Ickes, who has spoken skeptically of Mrs. Clinton's shot at the Presidency, called her a "brilliant Senator."

"It's something that a lot of us had as an open question about Mrs. Clinton early on, but she really does understand how the institution works," he said.

But earlier this year, Mrs. Clinton heard people like James Carville-and, the rumor in Clinton circles had it, Bill himself-tell her that her first term in the Senate should also be her last. She would have a clearer shot at the Presidency, the theory went, and be free of a damaging re-election campaign.

One influential Democrat, former Recording Industry Association of America chief Hilary Rosen, told The Observer that she had approached Mrs. Clinton with that suggestion more than a year ago, to be met with "that charming, non-answer Hillary laugh."

"If she is our best hope for a woman to be President some day-and I believe she is-another run for the Senate from New York is not necessarily the best way to get there," Ms. Rosen said. "She's just going to have to keep talking about all of the issues of the left for the next two years, whereas if she weren't running, she would be able to dictate the agenda. I just think it's distracting."

Mrs. Clinton has chosen to ignore the advice. In the Senate, she will have an opportunity to defy stereotypes in the coming years. This term, with its looming battles royal over Social Security and other Bush-agenda items, offers her particularly potent opportunities on the policy front.

Mrs. Clinton has also moved, in an act of political jujitsu, to turn health-care reform-a political albatross since she led a task force on reform during her husband's Presidency-into an advantage. On that front, she's pushing for legislation to modernize the information-technology infrastructure of the health-care system.

Despite the impression that she has moved to the right, Mrs. Clinton has yet to make any major departures from the Democratic Party mainstream, and while she's picked eclectic subjects and shown a talent for working across party lines, she's hardly a conservative. Americans for Democratic Action, the liberal group, for example, gave Mrs. Clinton a 95 percent rating last year, chiding her only for her vote in favor of an appropriation for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Gun Owners of America recently bestowed on her its prized (well, in some circles) "F-minus" rating.

But while some of Mrs. Clinton's advisors view the coming Senate race as a threat and a source of pressure to embrace New York's liberal base, others see a campaign that will be conducted largely in upstate and western New York as practice for Ohio in 2008.

Heartland, N.Y.

"Upstate, that's all the Midwest. That's Cleveland and Detroit," said one Clinton backer. "The themes that will be tested, we'll see how they work also on a national level."

That may take some doing. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 23 percent of Americans say they dislike Mrs. Clinton "a lot." (A larger share say the same thing about President Bush.) But-as around many Presidential contenders-the confidence of her supporters provides a powerful source of momentum.

"I'm one of the few in the semi-inner circle who [doesn't] think she can win," Mr. Ickes told Time magazine not long after this year's election. He told The Observe r he thinks Mrs. Clinton hasn't yet made up her mind about 2008. "My sense is she hasn't made any decision to do it," he said.

But there's no harm in being prepared, particularly for a woman who has an industry devoted to destroying her. One of its leading spokesman, former Clinton advisor Dick Morris, was asked recently by Fox News' Allan Colmes, "Are you going to spend the next four years blasting Hillary Clinton, going after, attacking Hillary Clinton?"

"You bet I am," Mr. Morris replied.