The photo above — courtesy of the New York Times's Doug Mills — provides a glimpse of that real Clinton.

Yes, Democratic presidential candidate is in a group of people. (It was taken during a rally late Tuesday night in Marshalltown, Iowa.) But, the crossed fingers and the look on her face suggest that she is very much aware of the gravity of the decision that Iowa voters will render in five days time — and what it means for the rest of her life, politically and otherwise.

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Think of it from a purely personal/human perspective for a minute. Clinton had every reason to believe that she would be not only the Democratic nominee but the president when she started running in early 2007. That dream died a slow and agonizing death, ended by a thousand cuts from a thousand delegates in an exhausting nationwide campaign. My guess is that when Clinton ended her presidential campaign in June 2008, she had decided that she had had her chance, missed it and was reconciled to the fact that it wouldn't come around again.

Then, somewhat remarkably, she was given a second shot. And, not just any second shot but one with a very clear path to the Democratic nomination and a muddled Republican field (to be kind) awaiting her in the general election. The only person in her way was a septuagenarian socialist senator from Vermont.

And then, suddenly, Bernie Sanders became a phenomenon. And he not only moved ahead of her in New Hampshire – a state where Clinton could write off a loss to geographic favoritism — but into a tie with her in Iowa.

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Clinton is on the precipice of something that seemed unimaginable just a month ago: losses in each of the first two states to vote, defeats that would almost certainly trigger a full-blown panic in Democratic establishment circles and could badly damage her chances of being the party's pick. Again.

Which brings me to the moment when Doug Mills snapped this photo. Clinton, almost assuredly playing for laughs with the crossing of her fingers, also reveals the stakes of what will happen in Iowa. A career of accomplishments and victories marred by only the 2008 loss, a loss that Clinton saw as a chance to make right in this campaign. And now facing the very real prospect of a doubling down of that first defeat — a loss (or losses) that would jeopardize everything she has worked for over not only the past eight years but really over the course of her life.