You can feel the Obama balloon losing air.

This was a bad week for him. He got flattened by the Hillary Machine.

The Obama campaign had built up a big Iraq speech on the fifth anniversary of his speaking out against the war. But the speech fizzled.

Two reasons:

• Team Hillary stole Obama’s thunder just before he took the lectern by releasing news that her campaign – for the first time – had raised more money than he had.

• Plus, the speech was so yesterday, Barack.

Clearly, what the candidates did or said about the war five years ago does not matter – even to strongly antiwar Democrats.

The voters want to know what the candidates propose to do now about the war. And Hillary’s opponents have not been able to show – to paraphrase George Wallace –that there’s a dime’s worth of difference between them.

Obama’s fade is good news for John Edwards. But the media focus is on Edwards’s money woes, too, so he faces a challenge breaking through.

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