As we were discussing the results of the new Des Moines Register poll on Beyond the Beltway last night, Bruce DuMont put the following question to me: if Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton both lose in Iowa, does that make New Hampshire a must win state for both of them?

For Mitt Romney, the answer is an unqualified 'yes.' Romney simply cannot afford back-to-back losses right out of the gate without crippling his candidacy. Clinton, with her money, name ID, and political organization, has a chance of absorbing losses in the first two primaries, though such a result would diminish her chances significantly.

From the beginning, Romney's strategy has been to use Iowa and New Hampshire to slingshot himself to the nomination, and Clinton's candidacy has been based to a large degree on using her status as frontrunner and building a political machine to overwhelm her opponents. With losses in Iowa, both of those strategies will take a hit, and Clinton and Romney will stake everything they have on New Hampshire, making another failure in the Granite State that much more damaging. As a result, New Hampshire is now the firewall for both Clinton and Romney.

We don't know what impact the accelerated primary calendar will have on this year's race, and it can be argued both ways. With only five days separating Iowa and New Hampshire, there may be no time for Clinton or Romney to recover from a defeat in Iowa - especially a crushing one. On the other hand, it may prove that the accelerated schedule helps Clinton and Romney by limiting the amount of time their opponents have to capitalize on an Iowa win and putting more of a premium on organizational strength - something that may be especially true on the GOP side. I think the general consensus, however, is that the former is a lot more likely than the latter.

The problem for both Clinton and Romney is that by virtue of their respective strategies and their position in the polls over the course of the campaign, they've locked in a level of expectation for their candidacies in these two early states. The fact they have both fallen behind in the RCP Averages in Iowa this week is a probably a good thing, in that it resets expectations and allows them a bit of wiggle room and may lessen the damage of a second place finish.

Of course, there are qualifiers which would produce varying degrees of damage (the closeness of finish, whether the same candidate beats them in both states or whether there are split winners, etc). Still, it's nearly impossible to see how Romney can emerge on January 9 having lost both Iowa and New Hampshire and still spin his candidacy as viable, nor is at all easy to see how Clinton can suffer two early losses without her chances of winning the nomination dropping dramatically.