A couple of hours at an insidious Washington-insider cocktail party last night confirmed the Beltway CW: that Barack Obama blew a vital opening earlier this year to become the Democratic primary frontrunner, and that his campaign may well have peaked already. That's probably unfair--Hillary Clinton is smashing him in national polls and now leading handily in New Hampshire and South Carolina, but Obama is still effectively tied with Clinton (and John Edwards) in Iowa, a state on which he may wind up banking his candidacy. Still, I think it's reasonable to say that Obama probably needs to change the dynamic of the race somehow. He'll try to do so tomorrow in Clinton*, Iowa, when he delivers what his campaign bills as a "major policy address on turning the page in Iraq." The speech will draw a renewed contrast between Obama's 2003 opposition to the war in 2003 and Hillary Clinton's vote for the Senate Iraq resolution. I see three basic questions here. The first is whether Obama can say anything new about Clinton's Iraq vote that will move voters away from her; annoyance with Clinton over Iraq may already be built into Obama's base of support. The second (and related) question is whether--as Hillary's supporters argue--Democratic primary voters are no longer interested in debating who supported the war and who didn't. The question has been argued at vast length, the angry steam blown off over the course of many months, and Hillary has deftly maneuvered herself into a solidly anti-war position that basically amounts to Obama's. But it's possible that Obama will spin the Iraq question into a broader proxy for about Hillary's policy judgment and her vaunted "experience." He's done some of that already. The third question then is whether he can make that point more forcefully--more negatively, I suppose--without seeming to violate his talk of a "politics of hope." Clinton advisors believe Obama's rhetoric has boxed him in and limited his ability to go on the offensive. But maybe it's still possible to thread the needle, to twist the knife with a measure of intellectual honesty, and basic class, that doesn't backfire on him. This new phase of the campaign could be critical to Obama. I'm flying out to Iowa tonight and will be attending the speech, as well as several other Obama events, so I'll have more thoughts and reporting on this in the next few days. *Update: I somehow missed at first the irony of Obama visiting Clinton to contrast himself with Clinton. Which reminds me of a joke I heard another campaign reporter make the last time I was in this somewhat dreary town, way back in 2000: "I've got Clinton fatigue." Obama's aides should encourage similar puns tomorrow. --Michael Crowley