Some interesting insights from a conversation with a veteran Republican strategist.

1) Hillary Clinton is running a Republican campaign. Not that she’s running for the GOP nomination, obviously, but she’s running more or less the themes and styles of Bob Dole: She’s locked up all of the party establishment, touting all the endorsements, building up a campaign warchest, running on inevitability, on foreign policy, on experience. “That stuff works in a general election, but not the Democratic Primary,” the strategist notes. ”Experience? Democrats have never cared about experience. They sent Bill Clinton up against an incumbent president.”

As Byron noted way back in 2003, Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina ranked terrorism and homeland security at the bottom of their list of concerns, out of a dozen topics. This was back in the run-up to the 2004 election; we’re one cycle further from the events of 9/11. The Democratic electorate isn’t worried about whether their candidate will be tough enough on terrorism, or how they are as a commander-in-chief.

2) McCain is now leading both Hillary and Obama in Rasmussen’s head-to-heads.