With the first voting only four months away (and not much quality campaign time between Thanksgiving and Christmas), Senator Barack Obama is running out of time to catch up to frontrunner Senator Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, says Michael Goodwin of NYDailyNews.com:

Barack Obama doesn't strike me as a guy who spends much time in saloons, but he's probably starting to get that last call feeling. He has to know his presidential campaign is running out of time.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, she of the high negatives and polarizing personality, is pulling away from the Illinois rookie. Like water running downhill, she's filling all the cracks and crevices and leaving him no safe place to stand. The bigger her lead in the polls, the more gaffes he makes, which produces even bigger numbers for her. She has about a 20-point lead in national surveys, is now ahead in all the early states and has huge leads in delegate-rich Florida and California. Even Obama's wife, Michelle, is starting to show the strains, ominously warning an Iowa crowd that "The game of politics is to make you afraid, so that you don't think!"

Read the whole essay at the above link. Since he can't seem to break out in the debate settings, what else is there? Obama is better on the stump, but those appearances only rate a few seconds of coverage, and most of the people there are already supporters or at least disposed to be. Making controversial statements to differentiate himself from Clinton hasn't worked either - the only distinction he has successfully made is that he is hopelessly naive and not ready for higher office.

There's another clock running out on him, too. In contested presidential campaigns, the second and third place candidates almost have to "go negative" and attack the frontrunner's positions, experience, or character. If they don't, it's very difficult to illustrate why voters should prefer them to the leading candidate. However, getting too nasty or just staying negative a bit too long isn't advisable. What if the frontrunner wins? Then the enemy your hostile remarks made will be President for up to eight years, hardly a good situation for a politician in the same party.

A lot of the problems John McCain has, he has made for himself with his positions, but he also started behind the eight-ball with many Bush supporters who remember his 2000 campaign, and aren't inclined to be forgiving.

So Obama can't get too mean for too long, but has gone about as far as he can go with his "Fresh face, new ideas, feel good" mantra alone. So what can he do?

Don't look at me - if I could answer that one, I'd be in the consulting biz.