White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is risking his relationship with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) by skipping an American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) presidential forum in Nevada on Feb. 21.

All the other Democratic presidential contenders are showing up in Carson City, paying their props to Reid and organized labor in a key primary state. Obama, in a strategic countermove, will instead touch down in Nevada for a student rally this Sunday.

The longer Senate workweek provides more time for Obama and chief rival Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to avoid personal or even accidental or casual contact with each other in Washington as their rivalries swiftly heated up over the weekend.

Obama returned to the Capitol after a three-day sprint through Illinois, Iowa and New Hampshire, where he got a taste of the big-league scrutiny he’ll now be the target of as a presidential candidate. The Illinois Democrat, running for president at the age of 45 in large part because of the mass of favorable, upbeat media treatment — swelling since 2004 — is even griping about his press coverage.

“The problem is that that’s not what you guys have been reporting on. You’ve been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit,” said Obama.

A small gut check here. An often-used Obama rhetorical technique is to set up a straw-man argument, only to knock it down.

Accuse me, as Team Obama might, of being nitpicking and literal, but it is hard to see where the swimsuit story ate up the time or space of congressional reporters — or other journalists outside of Washington who may be doing serious reporting on Obama’s policy proposals and legislative record.

The circle of reporters who actually did the work of following up on the People Magazine picture of Obama in his trunks includes only myself and Dana Milbank of The Washington Post.

We cornered Obama outside the Senate radio-TV gallery after a press conference. Milbank asked a few leading questions and we both wrote columns based on his reply that ran the next day. Between the Chicago Sun-Times running the Obama photo on the front page hyping my column and the reach of The Washington Post, the attention inspired other outlets to do derivative feature stories. Of course, it also made great gab for the cable news shows.

But did that coverage wipe out stories that might otherwise exist about Obama’s views on ethanol and energy, universal health insurance, ethics, federal court security and how to get U.S. troops out of Iraq? That’s not how it works.

Meanwhile, Obama and Clinton let it rip against each other over the week on the central, defining issue of Iraq, signaling what a long primary year this is going to be. In Iowa, at his first press conference as a presidential candidate, Obama took a shot at Clinton and other senators who voted to authorize the Iraq war. But at the same session, he committed his first gaffe, calling the lives of soldiers killed in Iraq “wasted.”

After Obama suggested in New Hampshire that Clinton opposed a phased redeployment in Iraq, the Clinton team spokesman sent out a memo saying Obama was mistaken. Team Obama did not back down.

Sweet is the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it