Bernie Sanders’ Projected Lead In New Hampshire And Iowa Creating A Chink In Clinton’s Armor

Bernie Sanders’ projected lead in the latest Fox News polls is clearly bringing about a chink in Hillary Clinton’s armor.

From the very beginning, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has repeatedly underlined its desire not to take anything for granted in the race for Democratic nomination, but that has so often not been the case. Over the course of the first few months after announcing her presidential candidature, Clinton and her campaign — not very much unlike the American media — continued to rally without as much as acknowledging Bernie Sanders as a credible challenger for the nomination. But now, it appears, the tables have been turned.

As the Inquisitr reported recently, Sanders is ahead of Clinton by a 50-37 percent margin among New Hampshire Democratic primary voters in the recent polls, substantially extending his lead from mid-November, when the Vermont senator was projected to lead Hillary Clinton by merely one percent. The poll also threw some light on the makeup of Sanders’ support pool, with the senator harboring a great support from people under the age of 45. Moreover, women supporters have often been considered to prefer Sanders over Clinton, an approximation which gathered some evidence as the poll showed that women were seven percent more likely to vote for Bernie Sanders than they were to vote for Clinton.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll also shows Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton by four percent in New Hampshire, while in Iowa, Clinton holds a slight edge over Sanders.

All of this, of course, might lead to a strengthening of self-belief within the Sanders’ campaign, which has more or less been able to rival the Clinton campaign in almost every department (including campaign funding), but even more remarkably, Bernie Sanders’ projected lead in New Hampshire and Iowa is now undoubtedly creating unease for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or making them “nervous” by their own admission.

According to documents accessed by ABC News, Clinton’s campaign has lately begun to show signs of “nervousness” at Sanders’ increasing popularity, and the most obvious symptom of that growing anxiety was when Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, sent a fundraising email to supporters with the subject line “nervous.”

“There’s a situation developing in Iowa and New Hampshire that could change the course of this election,” Mook wrote to Hillary’s supporters. This is the first time, perhaps, that Hillary Clinton’s camp has explicitly admitted that Sanders’ projected lead in New Hampshire and Iowa, where the first voting begins in a matter of weeks, needs to be taken seriously for its own good.

As the report mentions, a couple of days later, Mook again sent a mail to Clinton’s supporters discussing the “(seriously!) tight” polls in New Hampshire. Not that it might be the biggest cause of concern for Clinton, but Bernie Sanders is certainly shaping up into a force Hillary Clinton cannot ignore.

Not surprisingly then, in light of the recent poll results, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has shown more signs of aggression.

For instance, even before Bernie Sanders had delivered a rare policy address outlining his plans for Wall Street reforms on Tuesday, the Clinton campaign pro-actively went after Sanders a day before. On Wednesday, Clinton raised questions about Sanders’ elect-ability. A day later, Hillary Clinton engaged in a back-and-forth with him on their paid leave plans. The pattern continued in pretty much the same vein, until it finally culminated in Clinton affirming an earlier accusation that Sanders had got it wrong on gun control.

“You know, maybe it’s time for Sen. Sanders to stand up and say I got this one wrong,” she said on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

It is pretty clear that while Hillary Clinton had her sights set on debunking Donald Trump earlier — almost certain that her position as the Democratic front-runner was untenable — recent developments in New Hampshire and Iowa suggest it might be time for the Clinton camp to first deal with the one problem they might have within the party — Bernie Sanders.

[Updated]

[Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images]