Rich Lowry echoes Major Garrett in saying that it's likely one of the reasons Clinton is hitting Obama so hard in Iowa now is that "she can afford to have Edwards win there in a way she can't with Obama."

In turn, Mickey Kaus posits, as only Kaus can, that Clinton may not be worried about Edwards emerging as a real long term threat because of the hint of a scandal lurking way in the background. (It's either that or the fact he isn't going to do well in New Hampshire, and doesn't have anywhere near the money or infrastructure to sustain a campaign against Clinton into Feb 5).

But Kaus's post prompts a good question: Clinton has clearly decided to get muddy by going negative on Obama, and it's also pretty clear she needs to beat him in Iowa if she wants to slam the door on the possibility of Obama running the table in New Hampshire five days later and putting her in a real bind. And, according to Robert Novak's item a few weeks back, her campaign says it is sitting on some salacious dirt on Barack Obama.

So why try to engineer an Edwards victory in Iowa to hurt Obama's chances when her shadowy surrogates could just do it right now by dumping the dirt on Obama? Unless the dirt doesn't exist. Novak has stood by his reporting and stated unequivocally that his item did not come from Republicans trying to stir up mischief among the Dems - as the Clinton campaign charged.

So where does that leave the Clinton campaign and its "agents" who went whispering to Novak weeks ago? If they actually have dirt on Obama and dump it, or whether they lied about having dirt to begin with, it won't leave them on the high road, that's for sure.