MANCHESTER, N.H. - Concluding a five-day sprint to today's New Hampshire primary, Barack Obama told his supporters yesterday they were on the verge of making history, while Hillary Clinton, facing an uphill battle to avoid a second-straight defeat, showed strong emotions in discussing her personal commitment to her campaign.
"It's not easy," she said, after a voter asked how she remained upbeat under intense pressure. "And I couldn't do it if I just didn't personally believe it was the right thing to do."
Clinton choked up as she went on to tell of her hopes and fears for the country, in a rare show of vulnerability that instantly became a video hit on the Internet. Some commentators said it showed her depth of commitment and gave her a more human image; others saw it as an acknowledgement that her campaign is struggling.
Meanwhile, the tight Republican race between Senator John McCain of Arizona and former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts came to a close with both candidates expressing confidence and Romney deflecting suggestions that a second-place finish in New Hampshire would imperil his candidacy.
Like Clinton, Romney came out of last Thursday's Iowa caucuses with his own air of vulnerability after losing in a state where he had spent millions. Both Clinton's and Romney's numbers dropped in New Hampshire tracking polls that they had recently led. Both recast their messages in attempts to inject new energy into their campaigns.
In the past, New Hampshire has been a place for faltering front-runners such as Ronald Reagan in 1980 and George H. W. Bush in 1988 to regain momentum. But this year, the primary is only five days after the Iowa caucuses. Reagan had 36 days to repair his campaign after his defeat in the Iowa caucuses, and Bush had eight days to regroup in 1988.
"We're going to do well here in New Hampshire - I can't predict a victory but I can predict that I'd like a victory," Romney said at a press conference at the Timberland headquarters in Stratham.
Romney took on his rivals forcefully in the final GOP debate Sunday night, prompting some to wonder whether he might recover. But yesterday he rejected the idea that he had to win, noting that he had finished first in the lightly contested Wyoming caucuses over the weekend.
"If I come in a second place finish [in New Hampshire], that will actually say that I am one of the leading contenders," Romney said. "I would have come in second in Iowa and first in Wyoming, second in New Hampshire. That will mean I will probably have more votes than anybody else in these first three states."
One factor in Romney's favor is that the candidate who beat him in Iowa, former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, is far less known in New Hampshire and continues to trail in the polls. Huckabee said yesterday that he hopes to finish better than expected in New Hampshire and then concentrate on winning the South Carolina primary, on Jan. 19.
Weighing against Romney is the fact that McCain has waged a strong New Hampshire campaign and retains some of the same good will that gave him a win here in 2000. His maverick approach to campaigning - vowing to deliver "straight talk" on issues few other Republicans talk about - has a strong appeal to independents, who make up a large share of the New Hampshire electorate and can choose to vote in either party's primary.
Yesterday, McCain highlighted global warming, an issue of intense interest to independents.
"I will clean up the planet," McCain said in Concord. "I will make global warming a priority."
The biggest fear of the McCain camp is that Obama will draw more independents into the Democratic race, leaving McCain without his strongest bloc of support. In that scenario, Romney could do better than expected.
The short time between Iowa and New Hampshire gives Obama a chance to preserve the momentum from his Iowa victory, and at a series of rallies yesterday he showed a different kind of emotion from Clinton: the ebullient confidence of a man on a roll.
He continued to mock Clinton's comments at a debate on Saturday warning against giving false hope to voters and demanding a reality check on Obama's claims. Obama suggested that Clinton's attitude would have led President Kennedy to forgo moon travel and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to abandon his dream.
"False hopes! False hopes!" Obama exclaimed to an overflow crowd in Lebanon. "There's no such thing."
"If anything crystallizes what this campaign is about, it's that right there," he went on. "Some are thinking in terms of our constraints, some are thinking of our limitless possibilities."
At a rally in Salem last night, Clinton shot back that Kennedy had far more experience before becoming president than Obama has had, and that King risked his life for years to achieve his dreams.
Obama's optimistic message was bolstered by his growing personal confidence. He has become increasingly bold in teasing undecided voters who turn out to his rallies, predicting that during his speech they will experience an epiphany marked by a "shaft of light." He jokes that voters will want to sign one of his campaign's pledge cards to "memorialize this moment."
"You are now in our sights," Obama said in a morning rally in Keene, pointing his finger at voters who raised their hands as undecided. "We're coming for you."
To supporters, Obama appealed for caution. "Do not take this race for granted," he said. "I know we had a nice boost over the last couple of days, but elections are a funny business. You actually have to wait until people have voted and counted the votes before you know what's happening."
That's been true in past New Hampshire primaries, which are famous for surprise finishes. Whether such an unexpected boost in support at the last minute can happen to any candidate this year - with its compressed schedule - is unclear.
New Hampshire GOP political consultant David Carney, who is not aligned with any candidate, noted that the short campaign forced organizers to jam three debates into the weekend and prompted candidates to scramble across the state yesterday in a last-ditch effort to woo voters.
Democrat John Edwards, who finished second in Iowa and hopes to at least replicate that strong showing here, embarked on a 36-hour tour of the state in a hectic effort to reach as many people as possible before the voting.
"You can't do much to change the subject, so you are desperate," Carney said of the round-the-clock campaigning prompted by the tight schedule.
Fergus Cullen, chairman of New Hampshire's Republican Party, said the primary "has worked out as well as we could have hoped for, with the one exception of having more time between Iowa and New Hampshire."
New Hampshire law is partly responsible for the problem: It requires that the primary be seven days before any similar contest. Michigan disregarded pleas from the national parties and scheduled its primary for Jan. 15, obliging New Hampshire to move closer to the Iowa caucuses.
Cullen stressed he was not complaining, noting that "a year ago, some people, including me, were concerned New Hampshire might not play its traditional role [as the first primary], but those concerns proved unwarranted."
Sasha Issenberg, Marcella Bombardieri, Susan Milligan, Charlie Savage, and Michael Levenson of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
