Her victory puts Clinton back on track, for now
MANCHESTER, N.H. - By pulling out a surprise win in the New Hampshire primary yesterday, Hillary Clinton resurrected her White House hopes in the state she was counting on as her firewall.
Clinton, overcoming late polls that showed her well behind Barack Obama, pledged to take what she learned in New Hampshire to the rest of the country.
"I come tonight with a very, very full heart," she told ecstatic Granite State supporters in a gymnasium at Southern New Hampshire University. "I listened to you and in the process, I found my own voice. . . . I felt like we all spoke from our hearts."
When she took the stage just after 11 p.m. last night, a beaming Clinton exchanged a tight hug with husband, Bill, and kissed her daughter, Chelsea. Commentators quickly dubbed her the second Clinton to be crowned a "Comeback Kid" by the voters of New Hampshire. Bill Clinton's surprise second-place showing here in 1992 put him on the road to the White House.
Clinton apparently owed her victory to women, who accounted for 57 percent of the Democratic primary electorate and favored Clinton, 45 percent to 36 percent, over Obama, according to exit polls. Clinton also had a double-digit edge over Obama among union members, and did better than Obama among registered Democrats. The tracking polls in recent days that gave Obama double-digit leads may have been unaccountably off-base, some political analysts said.
But other analysts said the crucial turning point may have been Clinton's moving show of emotion Monday, when she teared up in response to a question about how she handles the strain of the campaign, and she talked passionately about her desire to help the country.
All through her years on the national stage, Clinton has struggled with perceptions of her as cold, ambitious, and calculating. Despite taking to the campaign trial with her mother, daughter, and childhood friends, she did not seem to have overcome that problem until Monday. But the crowd of undecided voters gathered in the Portsmouth café where her eyes filled with tears seemed moved.
"I think a lot of people will look back at that, where she wasn't choreographed, where she spoke from her heart, and it will be the kind of moment that [Ronald] Reagan had in 1980," Republican strategist Ralph Reed said on CNN.
The New York senator's deliberate tactical shifts in the wake of her Iowa defeat may have also helped save her. After largely insulating herself from unscripted moments, in the last few days she began taking hours of questions from voters.
And in a key debate Saturday night and in subsequent speeches, Clinton sought to highlight what she called her long track record of bringing change, and harshly attacked Obama for not having a record to back up his soaring rhetoric about changing the country and its politics.
"Words are not actions," she said during the debate. "As beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, they are not actions."
Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said that many voters remained undecided until the final days, and that the debate Saturday night was pivotal.
"She hit the ground running, and worked so hard for four days," Strand said. "She took question after question."
The professionalism of Clinton's New Hampshire operation also received credit for her victory. She hired the most respected local politicos to work for her and set up an extensive field operation that was competitive with Obama's.
In the days before the primary, more than 6,000 volunteers crisscrossed the state to knock on doors, according to the campaign. Nearly 300 drivers were deployed to help voters, especially the elderly, reach the polls.
Despite the jubilance last night in "Hillaryland," as Clinton's staff is known, analysts still believe that the candidate needs to shake up her campaign and craft a more effective message if she wants to be victorious in what is shaping up to be a long and difficult struggle for the Democratic nomination.
"The experience argument alone is not a winner, that's very clear," said Mark Mellman, a top Democratic strategist not affiliated with a campaign.
With a little time to breathe before the Michigan primary Tuesday and the Nevada caucuses on Jan. 19, Clinton is expected to return to New York for a short rest before hitting the campaign trail.
New Hampshire was particularly friendly territory because Clinton had most of the state's political establishment in her corner, and because many in the Granite State had fond memories of her husband's run here in 1992.
But now, Clinton doesn't have any easy turf coming up. The most powerful union in Nevada is expected to endorse Obama as soon as today, giving him a key boost. The next contest after that will be South Carolina on Jan. 26, where the large African-American population is ripe for Obama.
Her campaign is also focusing on the super primary on Feb. 5, which includes 22 states, including delegate-rich California and New York, the state that has elected her twice to the US Senate.
Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com. 