A month ago the pollsters were showing it was all over bar the actual voting. Hillary Clinton was way, way ahead of all the others in the race for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination.

Nationwide she was the choice of nearly 50% of Americans with no other candidate above the 25% mark. She was more than 10 points clear of Barack Obama in Iowa where the first delegates to the nominating convention would be chosen on 4 January 2008 and even further ahead in the first primary election to be held in New Hampshire soon after. The election betting markets translated those leads into meaning Mrs Clinton had a better than 70% chance of being nominated.

Now the mood has changed and while Clinton still leads the nationwide polls by a clear, if slightly reduced, margin she is now trailing Senator Obama in Iowa and down to a three point lead in New Hampshire. At the Intrade prediction market there has been a dramatic fall in the assessed probability of victory.

 

The learned and serious political pundits like E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post put the start of the decline down to “a single mistake in an Oct. 30 debate over a New York state plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, even as she was coming under more aggressive attack from Obama and John Edwards.”

That may be so but the talk back host Rush Limbaugh has a far simpler explanation. On his nationally syndicated radio show this week he put it all down to the signs of aging – the wrinkles evident on Senator Clinton’s face and neck.

This was his reasoning:

Americans are addicted to physical perfection, thanks to Hollywood and thanks to television… There is this thing in this country that, as you age — and this is particularly, you know, women are hardest hit on this, and particularly in Hollywood — America loses interest in you, and we know this is true because we constantly hear from aging actresses, who lament that they can’t get decent roles anymore, other than in supporting roles that will not lead to any direct impact, yay or nay, in the box office.

While Hollywood box-office receipts may be stagnant, none of that changes the fact that this is a country obsessed with appearance. It’s a country obsessed with looks… So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?

Lest he be thought sexist about this matter Mr Limbaugh tossed in his view about the requirements of male candidates:

You go back and look at presidents that we elected prior to TV, and presidents we elected after TV, and you will notice a huge difference.

Do you think a bloated president could win? We had plenty of fat-guy presidents. Do you think one could get elected today? There’s not a prayer! There isn’t a prayer.

Remember when people said, “The way to tell if Gore’s really going to run is if he starts losing weight?”

It’s just what it is, folks. It’s just what it is.