I forgot to post event details in advance of Hillary Clinton's visit to north-central and northwest Iowa this weekend. According to the Des Moines Register, she didn't sound like a candidate planning to skip the caucuses:

“I'm going to spend so much time in Iowa, I'm going to be able to caucus for myself,” she said.

The comment sparked chuckles from audiences in Mason City, Charles City and Algona. But it was as close as she came to acknowledging the dust-up last week over campaign strategy.

Clinton is in a bind. She is unlikely to win Iowa and may come in third or worse, if Richardson were to make a move and Obama continues to gain strength.

But announcing that she is going to skip Iowa makes her look weak and reinforces the idea that she would not run well in the swing states. What state carried by Bush in 2004 would she win, if she is afraid to compete among Iowa Democrats?

So the best strategy for her would be to publicly make a play for Iowa while quietly trying to reduce Iowa's influence. And the obvious way to do that was suggested by her deputy campaign manager, Mike Henry, in the memo that advocated skipping Iowa. As summarized by TPM Cafe's Sunday election roundup, the salient fact is that

before Iowa and New Hampshire even vote, potentially millions of absentee ballots will already have been sent out in the larger states voting on February 5. “Iowans will not be the first to vote … We must fund an expensive paid communications and a vote by mail/early vote program in these mega-states,” Henry wrote.

This is in my mind the biggest current problem for Edwards and Obama as they try to derail the Hillary inevitability train. They have to hope that she drops in the national polls well before the end of the year. Otherwise she could rack up a big lead in early voting in places like Florida, Calilfornia, and New York, helping her compensate for potentially poor performances in Iowa and New Hampshire.