WASHINGTON — As the dust settles from the first showdown between the presidential campaigns of Senators Clinton and Obama, political analysts are wondering who will benefit from protracted wrangling between the two top contenders for the Democratic nomination.

A former senator of North Carolina, John Edwards, is emerging as one potential beneficiary of the spat that broke out over critical comments from a Hollywood supporter of Mr. Obama, David Geffen.

Mr. Edwards “is clearly adept at letting two other candidates go after each other and slipping up the middle,” a Democratic campaign adviser, Joseph Trippi, said.

As campaign manager for Governor Dean in 2004, Mr. Trippi witnessed such a scenario firsthand. After leading in Iowa polls, Dr. Dean and Richard Gephardt got into a war of words and television ads, allowing Senator Kerry of Massachusetts and Mr. Edwards to surge into first and second place on caucus day.

Analysts said the scuffle over Mr. Geffen’s comments does not necessarily portend months of fighting between the camps of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. However, Mr. Trippi said such exchanges can become self-perpetuating, as each campaign struggles to get the last word. “When it does something you may not want, or you want to break the embrace, you can’t,” he said.

While Mr. Edwards reaped the benefit of such fights in 2004 by campaigning as a “nice guy” candidate who refused to attack others, such a gambit may be trickier for him this time around. The former senator, 53, still has a cherubic appearance, but recently he has adopted a tougher edge, in part to overcome suggestions that he was too passive as the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2004. This time, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are galvanizing press attention in a way that no candidate did in the last cycle, forcing Mr. Edwards to be more pugnacious simply to make sure he makes it into news stories.

At a union-sponsored forum in Nevada on Wednesday, Mr. Edwards delivered a rebuke of President Bush that was a not-so-veiled critique of Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to say her 2002 vote for the Iraq war authorization was a mistake.

“We’ve had six years of a president who will take no responsibility for what he’s done, six years of a president who is incapable of admitting that he was wrong,” Mr. Edwards said. “We need a leader … who will be open and honest with you and with the American people, who will tell the truth, who will tell the truth when they’ve made a mistake.”

Mr. Trippi said Mr. Obama would be the loser in any drawn-out conflict with Mrs. Clinton. The Democratic operative said the negative for Mr. Obama was not Mr. Geffen’s decision to call President and Mrs. Clinton liars, but the attention the episode drew to the fact that the Illinois senator was raising millions from the Hollywood elite. “He’s the guy saying he wants to find a new way to do politics. What’s new about a big fund-raising dinner in Hollywood?” Mr. Trippi said.

The former Dean campaign manager said the Clinton operation was taking a page from the 1984 presidential campaign, when the establishment candidate for the Democratic nomination, Walter Mondale, faced an upstart boasting of new ideas, Gary Hart. Mr. Trippi said Mr. Mondale attacked Mr. Hart with ads claiming that the Colorado senator wanted it “both ways” and was engaged in the old-style politics he was denouncing.

A campaign manager for Vice President Gore’s 2000 presidential bid, Donna Brazile, said she was amazed at the ferocity with which the Clinton and Obama camps have criticized each other. “To see these candidates fight this early is disheartening,” she said. “It helps Edwards, Biden, Dodd, and anyone else in that so-called second tier.”

Ms. Brazile said she does not believe that hostilities between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama will benefit either of them. “They must remember some of that mud will inevitably splash back on them. That’s a risky strategy,” she said.

For now, Mr. Edwards’s backers seem more focused on keeping their man in the news than with capitalizing on any fallout from clashes between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. “I think that it’s important that the press keep it at least a three-way conversation,” an attorney in Sacramento, Calif., Brooks Cutter, said.

That calculus is driven in part by the new primary calendar taking shape for 2008. In 2004, door-to-door campaigning helped Mr. Edwards flourish in Iowa. He’s still quite popular there and, in a recent poll, led the Democratic field.

However, this time around, retail campaigning may be of less use, since several big states, including California and New York, look likely to move their primaries to just days after the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Mr. Edwards may have little choice but to get rough with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama simply to gain the press attention needed to reach the millions of voters who could decide the nomination by early February 2008.