But putting the polls aside for the moment, Democrats have begun to publicly raise troubling questions about her candidacy, a sharp change in the party's reluctance to question her candidacy and her tactics.

In a cover story in the December issue of The American Prospect, a liberal Democratic opinion journal, executive editor Harold Meyerson acknowledges that she "has played 2007 very well," but notes ominously, "the year isn't over yet."

Her evasive, dodging answers to major issues like Social Security, driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and some of her Senate votes "could reinforce the perception that she's too smart by half, too calculating, too triangulating, too -- well, Clintonian," Meyerson said.

"If Obama or Edwards can make this charge stick over the next two months, we may yet have a race," he wrote.

Well, there is no doubt that the Democrats have a race on their hands now. A seasoned, well-grounded candidate might respond to such numbers by raising the importance of the issues that worry voters the most -- but not Clinton. She has chosen to go for Obama's jugular, hurling some of her fiercest attacks of the campaign.

She has begun mocking his experience, accusing him of raising "false hopes" among Democrats, and noting in one attack that he once wrote an essay in elementary school about how he wanted to be president.

"Now the fun begins," Clinton remarked to reporters as she telegraphed her intention to go after Obama with both guns blazing. Obama quietly put her down by saying that launching personal political attacks against one's opponent should not be considered fun. Score that round for Obama.

But what really shook the Clinton campaign to its foundations was the Iowa Poll's finding that she was losing her advantage with women voters. Obama led her among this strategic voting bloc, 31 percent to 26 percent.

It may be too early to say that Clinton is getting desperate. But her wild, scattershot, personally demeaning attacks are beginning to look that way. She is losing it.