Rupert Cornwell: Why America is warming to Hillary Clinton

Call them what you like: candidates' debates, town hall meetings, round-tables or cattle-calls. No matter who organises them - be it YouTube, the labour unions, a black university or a leading women's group - such gatherings of the 2008 Democratic presidential pack have recently had one common denominator. Each of them has provided its "Hillary moment".

The latest came on Tuesday evening in Chicago, at what was termed a forum convened by the AFL-CIO union confederation at the Soldier Field arena, where the local Bears football team normally do battle. This time the political combat on stage was pretty brutal too, with the candidates trading fierce barbs about Iraq and Afghanistan, the evils of Washington lobbyists, and their rivals' credentials as friend of the working Joe. But once again, Ms Clinton stole the show.

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She was describing how she was best fitted to handle the Republican attack machine that will be unleashed once the parties have selected their nominees. For 15 years she has been under fire from this quarter, "and I've come out stronger. So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on," she said with a broad smile, "I'm your girl".

Not only was this surely the first time in US history that a contender for the White House had used that particular term as a selling point - remember how Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Republican governor, used to denounce his Democratic opponents as "girlie-men"? It was also a master stroke.

The "G-word" was informal and matey, identifying Hillary as a friend of the 17,000 assembled union members and their families. It neatly upstaged the competing claims of her millionaire male rivals on the podium of how many picket lines they had stood on. And it threw down a not-so-subtle sexist gauntlet. Male candidates love to depict themselves as one of the guys. What's wrong with being one of the girls - especially when this girl looks more like a winner every day?

The first vote that counts is still four months off, but Hillary is on a roll. Barack Obama may raise more money, and in Iowa and New Hampshire, the small states that kick off proceedings, he and John Edwards are running her very close. But nationally, poll after poll gives Hillary a commanding lead. This week a USA Today survey puts her 22 points ahead of Obama, with 48 per cent to 26 per cent, with Edwards a distant third on 12 per cent. Ominously for her rivals, the gap isgrowing.

Not long ago, the conventional wisdom was that while Hillary might win the nomination, so many Americans viscerally disliked her that she could never be elected. Now those "negatives", as pollsters call them, once held to be insuperable, are declining. In hypothetical match-ups she defeats all Republican comers, including the front-runner Rudolph Giuliani. In part, this merely underlines the country's Bush-fatigue, and how strongly the overall political tide is running for the Democrats. But it's also a sign that people are becoming accustomed to the notion of Madam President. If any one thing has come out of the endless debates, it is that Hillary looks the part.

Now I'm no great Hillary fan. Everything she says sounds deliberately cautious, programmed and calculated. Unlike her husband, she hasn't mastered the art of faking authenticity. Again and again you wish there was a spontaneous show of emotion, even an unmanly tear wiped from the eye. She can be maddeningly hard to pin down on the issues.

Take healthcare, which tops the domestic campaign agenda. Edwards, and to a lesser extent Obama, have come up with credible plans to provide coverage to all Americans, including the 45 million who currently have none. Hillary leaves the impression she has a plan, but has come with nothing. Charitably, you can ascribe her reticence to the battering she took as First Lady when she devised a grotesquely overcomplicated scheme that never even made it to a vote in Congress. But it adds to the impression that she is content to peddle generalities, and keep her powder dry for later.

And complain as you may, the tactics are working. Whatever your opinion of her, you cannot but admire the professional skills of team Hillary. This spring saw a couple of books about her by top-tier journalists, neither of them very flattering. The damage could have been considerable. But the effect, blunted by skilfully timed leaks, was minimal. The campaign has judiciously used her husband, both her greatest asset and potential Achilles heel. It has quietly used his prodigious political talents, but without allowing Hillary to be overshadowed.

Above all, she dominates the debates. Alone of the candidates, she seems to have already started waging the general election campaign. She has taken flak from the left by expounding some centrist realities - for instance that lobbyists are a fact of life, and actually represent real people. She has also conspicuously refused to join Edwards in admitting that her 2002 Senate vote authorising the Iraq war was a mistake.

Search the debate transcripts, and alone of the candidates she has not left a single hostage to fortune. Instead she floats above the fray. She may be short on detailed proposals. But like her husband, whether the topic is the Middle East, the nuances of trade policy or the intricacies of healthcare, she knows her stuff. And as a former First Lady, hardened by years of fighting the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that sought to destroy her and her husband, "your girl" has the experience.

And that, surely, is Hillary's supreme selling point. Americans are now bitterly learning the consequences of entrusting the White House to an ignorant and untested president. It is surely no coincidence that her lead in the polls has risen at a moment when Obama is tying himself in knots on foreign policy; first declaring that, if elected, he would unconditionally hold talks with Iran, Cuba and other American foes, then saying he was ready to bomb terrorist bases in Pakistan without Islamabad's permission - to avoid any impression he was a soft touch.

Yes, these are still early days, but they are no longer that early. The 2008 campaign has been running full tilt for months now, and Iowa conceivably will hold its caucuses before Christmas. True, at this stage of the cycle four years ago, Howard Dean was miles ahead in the Democrat race - and look what happened to him. But it's hard to imagine the intensely disciplined Hillary having a Dean-like meltdown, indulging her version of Dean's Iowa caucus night scream that convinced voters the former Vermont governor should not be let near the White House. Right now Clinton's the girl, and it's her nomination to lose.

r.cornwell@independent.co.uk