Is Hillary finished?

Those are the words that popped up when I went to check my Yahoo e-mail acccount. It's a question I've seen asked or implied on cable news stations this morning as the voting goes on in New Hampshire with Hillary Clinton down in the polls, trailing Barack Obama.

It seems to me that the more the media asks questions like this, the bigger a role the media has in her potential downfall. They essentially create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But they do it without making the prophecy, but by being the instrument for planting the seeds of doubt in the minds of the voters.

I don't think she is necessarily finished. She has a large organization, a lot of support with the party bigwigs. I believe she also has a lot of superdelegates who are already committed to her for the convention.

This race actually is shaping up similarly to the 1984 contest between Hart and Mondale. Hart grabbed the early attention by having success in the early primaries. But Mondale had the organization and was able to bounce back. Mondale also used the classic line, "Where's the beef?" to point out the lack of substance in Hart's campaign.

But when Mondale won the nomination, he gave the country the only message from his campaign that really stuck with the voters. That message was "I will raise taxes." That's not the way to win an election, Walt.

CORRECTION: On my earlier blog, I referred to Donna Rice and the Monkey Business scandal. Although Hart is believed to have been seeing Rice during the 84 campaign, the scandal did not erupt until he was the front-runner in the '88 campaign. That was the one where he dropped out, then dropped in again a few months later and then lost. Ed Bond regrets the error.