If Obama National Campaign Manager David Plouffe is panic-stricken about Hillary Clinton’s big lead in New Hampshire polls, he’s got one of the better poker faces in the business.

   To Plouffe’s way of thinking, the Obama campaign is right on schedule to begin a slow but steady move upward to tighten this race even before the first votes in the Iowa caucuses, assuming New Hampshire doesn’t leapfrog the Hawkeye State and host its first December primary.

   “We could have spent a lot of money on TV during the summer and driven our numbers up some here but it never made a lot of sense to us because most voters aren’t fully engaged yet,” Plouffe said during an interview this afternoon.

    In fact, Plouffe claims their own internals show that among voters who say they know plenty about both candidates, Obama is actually leading Clinton among that group.

    “We’re not talking about a large sample of voters in that case but it tells us that the more people get to know Barack’s story and his track record of bridging the partisan divide, the more support we’ll receive,” Plouffe said.

    Now that Obama is on the airwaves, look for the Illinois senator’s campaign to increasing try and match dollar for dollar with Clinton’s media budget.

    “I can assure you Hillary is not going to have a 20-point lead over us a week or so before the Iowa caucuses,” Plouffe said.

    As for the front-runner, Plouffe offers some surprise at how “aggressively” the Clinton camp is embracing that label and this aura of inevitability given history shows it usually doesn’t last throughout the bump and grind of the primary process.

    “Even nationally, we’re seeing that much of her support is shallow, that people are just parking their vote there right now because it looks like the safe and secure one but that’s going to change.” 

    -30-