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Politics

Poor finish puts Clinton on offense

Stakes for her campaign are raised significantly in New Hampshire.

By WES ALLISON and ALEX LEARY, Times Staff Writer
Published January 5, 2008

"Some people think you make change by demanding it, some people think you make change by hoping for it," Hillary Clinton said, taking a shot at Barack Obama.
	[Getty Images]

MILFORD, N.H. - Suddenly, Hillary Clinton's world looks like a very different place.

Once considered the inevitable Democratic nominee for president, Clinton's surprising third-place finish in Iowa on Thursday has significantly raised the stakes for her in New Hampshire, and put her long, carefully planned run for the White House in jeopardy.

A campaign built around the notion that Clinton alone offered credibility as a leader and as a national candidate found itself struggling to prove it, while her chief rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, quickly gained credibility in both categories.

As she stormed into New Hampshire on Friday to try to regain her mantle, Clinton, 60, told 3,200 party activists at a state Democratic Party dinner in Milford that she has the experience and toughness to bring the broad change voters want. Many waived blue placards emblazoned with "Ready" as she spoke.

"Some people think you make change by demanding it, some people think you make change by hoping for it," Clinton said, taking a shot at Obama, who has adopted hope as a key theme. "I think you make change by working really, really hard. ... That's what I have been doing for 35 years. I am ready to take all that experience and make it work for you."

Obama beat former Sen. John Edwards and Clinton, a senator from New York, by a decisive 9 percentage points Thursday night in Iowa. Aside from highlighting Obama's appeal, the trouncing challenged key assumptions many had made about the potency of her candidacy and revealed weaknesses in Clinton's campaign that could spell real trouble in New Hampshire:

- Clinton's message of sober, measured experience was bested by Obama's call for change.

- Female caucusgoers, whom Clinton cultivated with a call to help elect the first female president, favored Obama by a slight margin.

- And the success of Obama, 46, the first black candidate with a real shot at winning the presidency, calls into serious question Clinton's claims that she is the only electable Democrat in the race.

"The aura of her campaign was she was the inevitable nominee. That argument's out the window now," said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political science professor.

"Most of the time, insurgency candidates like Obama find their resting places in Iowa," Scala added. "But this is a candidate who actually won. And now he comes to a state that has historically been friendly to change-oriented candidates."

At the Democratic dinner in Milford, Clinton talked about her commitment to change, and touched on another key Obama theme as well: the need for more bipartisanship in Washington. While she was warmly received, however, the crowd went nuts when Obama took the stage.

He clearly has the momentum here, and with only four days between Iowa's caucus and New Hampshire's primary instead of the usual eight, Clinton has very little time to reclaim it. A strong performance in this evening's debate would be a good start, but she has almost no time to tweak her message or launch a sustained attack on Obama that's likely to stick with voters.

"It's not so much the message that comes out over the last weekend, but how well an organization comes together - making phone calls to people they identified as their voters, and making sure their people get to the polls," said Andrew E. Smith, a political scientist and pollster at the University of New Hampshire.

In Iowa, Clinton's top-down, Democratic establishment-driven campaign machine was outmaneuvered by an Obama campaign that used bottom-up, community organizing techniques to get its voters to the polls. She'll face a similar Obama network in New Hampshire on Tuesday, and in South Carolina later this month.

Scrambling to limit the damage from her Iowa loss, her campaign's top organizers held a conference call Friday to downplay Obama's win, noting that he hails from nearby Illinois and worked especially hard in the state.

"From Day 1, we were going to run a national campaign," Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton campaign chairman, told reporters. "We've got the resources to go on. I can tell you Hillary is fired up."

With another early loss, Clinton could be forced to adopt a strategy similar to the one chosen by Republican Rudy Giuliani, who is ignoring the early primary states and instead hopes a big win in big Florida on Jan. 29 launches him into the lead just before a wealth of states vote on Feb. 5.

Although Florida's Democratic primary offers no delegates, due to a dispute with the Democratic National Committee over the primary schedule, Clinton could be in dire need of even a symbolic victory by the end of this month. She leads in most Florida polls.

Clinton ahead in a poll

Still, the campaign said it has made 1.4-million calls in New Hampshire, and began airing a new television ad Friday night, with a new one planned today. Clinton also is advertising heavily on the radio.

In those ads and appearances, Clinton continues making the case that as a two-term U.S. senator and as an unusually active first lady for eight years during the presidency of her husband, she alone has the experience to lead the nation.

Clinton's message, the centerpiece of her pitch to become leader of the free world, failed her in Iowa, however, and many voters in New Hampshire say they, too, want someone who better represents change.

In interviews from Concord to Manchester to Nashua, independent and Democratic voters viewed Clinton as the establishment candidate, unlikely to alter the status quo and unable to cure what they see as a cancer of destructive partisanship in Washington.

"I'm not crazy about the Clinton baggage she carries. I remember back in those days of President Clinton, there was always some new scandal," Steven Calawa, 56, a dentist, said as he hacked at the ice on the sidewalk outside his niece's clothing store in downtown Nashua. He plans to vote for Edwards. "I think we've had enough of the Bush-Clinton dynasties. It's over. Done."

Lisa Willis, 49, of Bedford, N.H., is trying to choose between Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Obama. She likes McCain's experience and integrity, but like many Iowa voters is drawn to Obama's status as a relative outsider and his potential as a peacemaker.

"I think he's fresh," Willis said. As for Clinton, "I think that she has a lot of enemies in her own party, and I don't think she'd be that effective because of it. She's too divisive, and we really need to get away from that."

To be sure, Clinton is strong in New Hampshire, and prideful voters in the first-in-the-nation primary are famous for saying they ignore what happens in Iowa.

The latest CNN/WMUR poll by the University of New Hampshire, released early this week, showed Clinton with 34 percent of the vote versus 30 percent for Obama and Edwards running a distant third, with 17 percent.

Obama did far better among independents in Iowa than Clinton or Edwards, and independents make up about a fourth of primary voters in New Hampshire - a sizable number. But among New Hampshire independents planning to vote in the Democratic primary, the University of New Hampshire poll found Obama with only a slight edge, 34 percent to Clinton's 29 percent.

Cynthia Daigle, 24, a receptionist in Nashua who lives in nearby Merrimack, dismissed talk that Clinton's dismal finish in Iowa weakened her in New Hampshire. She's backing Clinton because she lacks health insurance, and, "I'm hoping she'll give it another go" as president.

"She's got a lot of support here. Everyone I know around here is either supporting her because she's a woman, or because she's not a Republican" and has the best chance of winning, Daigle said. But, she added, "I think Obama's got a really good chance, to be completely honest. And I wouldn't be horribly disappointed."

Wes Allison can be reached at allison@sptimes.com or (202) 463-0577.

After victory, a quick pitch for donations

"Turn on your television," Sen. Barack Obama said in an e-mail to supporters late Thursday night after his historic Iowa caucus victory. "We just won Iowa, and I'm about to head down to talk to everyone," he wrote at 11:30 p.m. "Democrats turned out in record numbers tonight, and independents and even some Republicans joined our party to stand together for change. Thank you for everything you've done to make this possible. Barack" At the end of the e-mail was a link to a page on Obama's campaign Web site that said: "Make your donation online. Iowa was a great start - let's build on the momentum of that victory."

DES MOINES, Iowa

Biden says he has no regrets

The second time around was no better for Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, who dropped out of the presidential race Thursday after finishing back in the pack in the Iowa caucuses. Biden told supporters: "There is nothing sad about tonight. We are so incredibly proud of you. So many of you have sacrificed for me and I am so indebted to you. I feel no regret."

NEW YORK

ABC News limits hopefuls at debate

ABC News is eliminating Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter and Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel from its prime-time debates tonight because they did not meet benchmarks for their support. The GOP debate begins at 7, followed 90 minutes later by the Democrats.

Information from Times staff writer Amy Hollyfield and the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified January 4, 2008, 23:58:31]