US: The election cycle in the United States has become as ubiquitous as round-the-clock news. It's 17 months until the next Senate election, and 3½ years until the next presidential poll, but there was hustings fever in the Hilton Hotel grand ballroom in Manhattan on Monday.
Some 1,000 members of New York Women for Hillary gathered over orange juice and scrambled eggs to launch Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign to keep her New York seat in November 2006. But most people at the 8am power breakfast really believed they were in at the start of the former first lady's long-anticipated run for the White House.
Even now the polls are focusing on 2008, a sure sign that the race is on. The excitement in the Hilton was fuelled by a USA Today/CNN poll which, astonishingly, showed that a majority of Americans - 53 per cent - say they were likely to vote in 2008 for the supposedly most polarising figure in American politics. This is an improvement of eight points since June 2003, and "strong opposition" to Hillary has fallen by five points.
You also know things are hotting up when someone like Ben Ginsberg is signed up by Hillary's potential Republican rival for the Senate, Ed Cox.
Ginsberg was legal adviser to the "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth" who managed to smear John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran wounded in action, as somehow less worthy of high office than George W Bush based on his war record.
Another sign that we are gearing up for 2008 is the appearance of books on the possible candidates.
The target of the latest, due out later this month, can be gauged from the title, The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President, by Edward Klein. It has been heralded on conservative websites as the book that could wreck her presidential chances.
The Drudge Report said: "Just as the Swift Boat veterans convinced millions of voters that John Kerry lacked the character to be president, Klein's book will influence everyone who is sizing up the character of Hillary Clinton."
It's a stretch, however, to think that any book thrown into the maelstrom of America's partisan politics makes a real difference to a campaign. The supposedly explosive books and films about George W Bush in 2004, like Richard Clark's Against All Enemies and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, didn't sink his election campaign.
In any case there aren't any bombshells in an extract in Vanity Fair from The Truth About Hillary . . . Klein writes that in private Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose New York Senate seat Hillary won in 2000, didn't like her very much, which is hard to check out as Senator Moynihan is dead.
His wife, Liz Moynihan, refused to comment on remarks she allegedly made to a friend, that Hillary was "duplicitous" and believed that God approved of her "and that therefore she can't do anything wrong".
The Moynihans' daughter, Maura, who was prominent at the Hilton breakfast, denied the stories. Unlike Klein she said she was in the room with her parents and Hillary Clinton during an allegedly fraught meeting, and the only other person around was their Tibetan cook. It was a "gracious, polite, serious, thoughtful conversation", she told ABC News.
As with most books of its kind, buyers will be looking for confirmation of their views rather than for information, and will delight in such descriptions of Hillary as a "baggy-eyed zombie" who is metamorphosing "from the old, radical Hillary into the new, moderate Hillary". The NY senator's camp said curtly: "We don't comment on works of fiction."
Coincidentally a new book about Bill Clinton contains some further insights into Hillary's character and about the relationship between Bill and Hillary, always a fascinating topic, at least inside the Washington beltway.
In The Survivor, former Washington Post reporter John Harris describes a scene in the White House when the Clintons held a campaign strategy meeting with aides for her 2000 Senate campaign.
Bill Clinton looked at some polling data and told his wife: "Women want to know why you stayed with me." As people shuffled their feet, Hillary smiled and remarked: "Yes, I've been wondering about that myself." What else could she say?
But Bill Clinton takes the question seriously and muses: "Because you're a sticker. You stick at the things that are important to you."
In two television interviews in recent days the former president added to speculation about his wife running in 2008, which she adamantly refuses to confirm.
"I know that she is focused on finishing this term and getting re-elected, and that's exactly what she should focus on, and if she loses that focus, she might not get to the next election," he said.
But still "she would make a magnificent president, and she should not rule out the possibility of running".
In focusing on her Senate campaign, Hillary has a problem in that she will be asking New York voters to send her back to the Senate for six years when she might only serve two.
Bill suggested she take her cue from George W Bush when he ran for a second term as governor of Texas in 1998 and refused to rule out the possibility of cutting it short if he became president.
"He didn't rule it out, and he shouldn't have ruled it out," said Clinton, who is now a friend of the Bush family as he redefines himself as a statesman - a move that will help make Hillary more palatable in red states.
But at the Hilton breakfast his wife gave the New York Women for Hillary some red meat to satisfy their hunger for Bush-bashing.
"There has never been an administration, I don't believe, in our history more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda," she said to loud applause.
Her party she said "was hamstrung in fighting back because Republicans dissemble and smear without shame".
The next step for the Hillary campaign will be a retreat for her top fundraisers from around the country later this month. The cash is already coming in.
The power breakfast alone raised $250,000 and put the campaign fund at $15 million, with $9 million on hand to spend, and 500 more days to raise funds before November 2008 .