Lost in all the buzz about South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg's boom to a commanding third place in Iowa was a marginal but marked increase in the polling of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

With a two-point bump in the Hawkeye State since USA Today's last summertime poll, the Hawaii congresswoman just earned her first qualifying poll for the November debate with the bare minimum 3% support.

The only presidential candidates thus far to have secured their place on next month's stage are Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kamala Harris of California, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, and Buttigieg. With Beto O'Rourke and Julián Castro crumbling in the polls, the stage seemed to be all set with just those seven. Then, Hillary Clinton happened.

In her endless quest to absolve herself of her sole responsibility in losing a presidential election to Donald Trump, Clinton has now accused three different presidential candidates — Trump, Gabbard, and Jill Stein of the Green Party's 2016 ticket — of being Russian agents. She obviously has no evidence, and she sounds like she's nuts. But Clinton's foray into Alex Jones-style conspiracy-mongering could now extend Gabbard's candidacy by several months.

There is very little chance Gabbard will win the primary. Her devout Hinduism clashes with Democrats's increasingly anti-religion posture, and her isolationist foreign policy is unfashionably similar to that of Trump. But if Sanders's ailing health leads even a small portion of his coalition to migrate to Gabbard instead of Warren, who stood by Clinton instead of Sanders during the party's civil war in 2016, an outsider such as Gabbard could keep enough steam to carry her fight all the way to the convention.

That could leave her in a decent position for a Cabinet slot. After all, not one actual candidate has endorsed Clinton's comments, and one very important candidate has slammed them.



Tulsi Gabbard has put her life on the line to defend this country. People can disagree on issues, but it is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Tulsi is a foreign asset. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 21, 2019



The Democratic National Committee's rules for qualifying polls may prove beneficial to Gabbard's odds of making it to the November stage if her ground game in early states continues to provide good polling. Gabbard has earned as much as 6% in nonqualifying New Hampshire polling. She has a little more than three weeks to do it, but if she got three extra polls with 3% from qualifying pollsters nationally or in some early states, she could make it.

And once again, Clinton would have no one but herself to blame.