THE first vote is still more than a year away, but the campaign to replace President George W Bush in the White House is already throwing up surprises. Unfortunately for Senator Hillary Clinton, long the front-runner in the Democratic drive to retake the presidency, most of them are coming at her expense. A brace of Christmas opinion polls has left Clinton with a political hangover after a year that had appeared to cement her status as the Democrats’ best-organised, best-financed and best-connected contender for her party’s presidential nomination. Despite winning re-election to the US Senate by a handsome margin in...