CNN is currently showing Hillary Clinton ahead of Barack Obama at 40 to 36 with 13 percent of precincts reporting. It is pretty early and this could be one of those urabn districts-rural districts thing, where different types o districts report at different rates. Or maybe younger voters still getting off work versus older voters available to vote all day long. Senator Obama’s lead in Iowa didn’t really start to lengthen until later in the evening. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it swing before the night’s end.

It would be hard to figure out what happened so quickly were Senator Clinton to win. Maybe with yesterday’s little tear Senator Clinton pulled off the same thing that happened with Rick Lazio in New York. The big mean man coming on too strong provoked an outpouring of paternalistic sympathy for the hurt little lady. That would be ironic after all the left-blogosphere angst yesterday over the media reaction if it rebounded to her advantage. I half wouldn’t put it past her to have staged the whole thing. Some people have commented on how she has mastered female dog-whistle politics.

Apparently she was answering a reporter’s question all normal then suddenly veered off track and got somber and serious. That’s when the mist happened. It’s not like Hillary Clinton to get off message, to deviate to any place that she doesn’t want to go. I can just imagine her having hatched the plan with her campaign strategist. “Remember what happened to Rick Lazio in 2000 when he got all physically aggressive, and you seemed vulnerable and it turned the electorate? How could we achieve the same effect with Obama?” And then waiting for the right question. Half way through a normal response it occurring to her, “Oh, this is the one to go with!”

Fortune reports (Easton, Nina, “Who Business is Betting on,” vol. 156, no. 1, 9 July 2007, pp. 45-52):

One of Hillary Clinton’s most important courtships began early last year, around a formal dinner table at Georgetown’s Four Seasons Hotel. Her targets were Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and his wife, Christy. Mack was already active politically — but on behalf of Clinton’s political opponents. A Bush “Ranger,” he had raised at least $200,000 for the President’s reelection bid and was one of the most prominent business names on GOP donor lists. At one time his name had circulated as a potential Bush Treasury Secretary.

…

The conversation that night ranged widely, but always returned to one subject: health-care reform. …

Hillary Clinton was on familiar territory — and managed to charm the couple not only with her “intelligence and educated responses,” as Christy Mack recalls, but also with her one-on-one charisma. “You have these preconceived ideas about people you see in the public eye,” says Christy. “But we were extremely impressed with her ability to connect with every single person. She was an amazing listener, with tremendous warmth.”

The relationship could have ended there — a New York Senator engaging her local constituents. But early this year Clinton upped the ante with a phone call to the Morgan Stanley CEO, asking him to support her presidential bid. When he demurred, she asked for a meeting. Once again — this time over coffee — John and Christy Mack found themselves enticed. When Mack returned to his office, he told Nides he was ready to commit. “John, you can wait, you don’t have to commit yet,” Nides responded. “No,” Mack replied, “early support is better support.” Days later Mack picked up the phone and sealed the deal. Clinton, Nides recalls, “put the time in.”

On the one hand, this bodes well in that some have pointed out that Senator Clinton has nowhere to go but up and when people are exposed to Hillary Clinton in person instead of Hilary Clinton the myth, they are pleasantly surprised. On the other hand, one would really like to know what Senator Clinton could say (or maybe even promise?) to a Bush Ranger — in 2004 nonetheless — about healthcare that would cause him to back her for the presidency.

Cusping on a new Gilded Age, it would perhaps be best to have a candidate that business loathed. But I guess that’s what cusping on a new Gilded Age means: the money men vote first, then the rest of us chose from the slate they have prescreened.