Clinton's Faithful, Bruised but Bouncing Back

PENACOOK, N.H., Jan. 8 -- The day did not begin well for Carol Burney, a former state legislator and Hillary Clinton's "visibility" coordinator here. First, she slipped and fell at home, which meant she arrived late at the Ward 1 polling location where she was supposed to be coordinating visibility -- the signs, the bodies, the chants. With a nasty knot on her noggin, Burney was not pleased.

That would have been enough misfortune for one day, except it wasn't. When she arrived at the Immaculate Conception Parish parking lot, where volunteers for the presidential contenders were greeting voters as they headed to the polling booths, an Obama campaign worker bopped Burney on the head with a rake handle being used to make a sign. An accident, all agreed. But by then, the political irony of her misadventures was inescapable.

"Obama knocked me out," Burney quipped. "What can I say?"

The day would become a jubilant one for the Clintonites. But first it was tense.

Penacook is a small independent village six miles from downtown Concord, the state capital. In the strange political geography of New Hampshire, it has its own post office and school district but is also a ward of Concord, a heavily Democratic city that Bill "Comeback Kid" Clinton carried in 1992. An old mill community, Penacook had long been known as a blue-collar place with a lot of scrap and fight. But the mills closed, jobs were lost and many of the decaying buildings were remodeled. Local officials say Penacook is on the rebound, with white-collar and blue-collar denizens, and will someday become, in the words of one state legislator, "a boutique village of Concord."

Undeterred by her bruises, Carol Burney took control of the Immaculate Conception parking lot as soon as she got there. The Clinton forces had the 10-foot wooden sign trees, the lawn chairs, the hot chocolate and donuts from Dunkin' Donuts. Barack Obama? His campaign was represented by two state legislators holding up puny placards not much larger than legal pads. "I know. It's a little ridiculous," said state Rep. Liz Blanchard (D-N.H.), who was trying to get reinforcements, the good signage having been dispatched to other areas.

If you were to judge by the battle in the Immaculate Conception parking lot -- one stiff McCain guy doing nothing, one Kucinich kid passing out pocket copies of the Constitution -- you'd have been ready to summon some buglers for a round of "Hail to the Chief," in tribute to President-to-Be Hillary Rodham Clinton. But, oh, do looks deceive, just as inevitability is often a mirage.

Burney was nervous about the day's outcome. "We've got a lot of visibility," she said at about 11 a.m., "but it doesn't mean we got a lot of votes."

She was wearing a yellow "Turn Up The Heat" campaign T-shirt over a green turtleneck, but her mood communicated worry.

"It's going to be tight," Burney said. "But I'm still hoping Hillary can win. A lot of us worked very hard."

How hard?

Burney, a retired teacher, had made dozens of phone calls, distributed signs and buttons and shown up at campaign headquarters in Concord on many occasions to offer her time. In the final days of the New Hampshire primary campaign, the Clinton team shifted from their battle cry that experience is paramount, to this: "Change only comes with experience."