Barack Obama drew a crowd officially estimated at 24,000 last night on Hillary Clinton’s home turf in Manhattan. In this week’s dead-tree TIME, I look at what he is–and isn’t–doing to close the gap with a frontrunner who is looking increasingly inevitable.*
*Commenter Boring Commenter makes a good syntax point: Inevitability is not something to which there are degrees. (The need for careful writing is why God invented editors–and commenters.) It’s the appearance of inevitability that is growing, so I should have phrased it “who increasingly is looking inevitable.” And, as my story notes, this is an appearance that can vaporize if Clinton makes a significant stumble, or fails to beat expectations in Iowa.