Ahead of 2016, the U.S. "phantom first primary" is in full swing For more than a half-century New Hampshire has held the first primary contest in America's presidential election process. Such luminaries as Nelson Rockefeller, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton travelled into the far reaches of the state's mountains in the hunt for votes, and the stately Robert Taft is remembered here for a famous 1952 Life magazine photo of him in an overcoat, narrow necktie, dark suit and gray fedora visiting voters - and clutching a rooster, uncomfortably. But even in those years there was a phantom first primary - a subterranean pre-election struggle that existed just below the visibility of the voters but nonetheless watched carefully by politicos and pundits. For decades the metaphorical first primary was the grab for important activists, those with the ability and (now we really date ourselves) the Rolodexes who could mobilize large numbers of campaign workers and voters. The classic winner of this imaginary "first primary": Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, whose stealth construction of a formidable campaign operation here in 1984 allowed him to upset former vice-president Walter Mondale, who eventually recovered to win the Democratic nomination but lose the general election. Later, the metaphorical first primary was the grab for money, the long-acknowledged "mother's milk of politics" - the phrase belongs to Jesse Unruh, who from 1975 to 1987 was California's state treasurer but the sentiment goes back to America's earliest politics. The classic winner of this imaginary "first primary": Governor George W. Bush of Texas, who won the 2000 Republican nomination even though his fat treasury wasn't enough to provide him with a victory in the primary here, which was captured by Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But now, two years before real campaigning for the two party nominations begins, there is emerging a new phantom primary. It is, like so much else, Web-based, it's heated up substantially in the last fortnight, and right now the red-hot center of it (and not necessarily to her advantage) is the putative frontrunner, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Everyone in Democratic politics except perhaps Vice-President Joe Biden believes that Mrs. Clinton holds as commanding a position at this early stage as any candidates since, well, Mr. Mondale - which may not be the most comforting comparison for the Clinton circle. Ms. Clinton's strength was yesterday's news - and one of my recent blog posts. Now the second thoughts are cascading in. First came a searing New York Times look at the Clinton Foundation that did anything but burnish the image of either Bill or Hillary Clinton. Next came the musings of Maureen Dowd, who began a Times column this month with a flat statement ("Clinton nostalgia is being replaced by Clinton neuralgia") that set up a killer second paragraph: Why is it that America's roil family always seems better in abstract than in concrete? The closer it gets to running the world once more, the more you are reminded of all the things that bugged you the last time around. And while these blasts came in the Industrial-Age medium of a newspaper, they were blasted around the political world by all manner of new-age media, creating instant sensations and sowing doubts about the Clinton machine even as it was cranking into action. But it wasn't only the mainstream media. It was also Camille Paglia, the social and cultural critic and writer on feminism, who offered precisely the view that the Clintonistas least want to hear: It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton...is our party's best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished - beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She's certainly busy, busy and ever on the move - with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts. These assaults on the Clinton campaign vessel were gleefully bounced around the country, particularly by conservatives heretofore unaccustomed to reading Maureen Dowd or Camille Paglia let alone citing them with fervent, frothy devotion. And they prompted a response from the most reliably loyal of all the Clintonistas, the onetime Clinton counsel Lanny Davis, who chimed in with the there-they-go-again counterattack that was as predictable as the rain. It concluded: My gut tells me, just as in the 1990s a majority of the American people will see through this type of journalism, and won't allow compulsive Clinton haters and innuendo journalism to change their favorable opinions of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe, maybe not. It wouldn't be a Clinton political campaign without the jousts of the Clinton critics and the parries of the Clinton loyalists - or mass e-mails detailing the Clintons" trysts and turns like the one from a devoted Bill and Hillary hater that arrived Friday morning in the in-boxes of political commentators and reporters only to be deleted from most of them within seconds. It doesn't matter that there have been precious few sightings of Democratic presidential candidates here. The real primary hasn't creaked into action - but the latest version of the "first primary" is in full gear. Campaign on. David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of U.S. politics.