By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

MANCHESTER, N.H., Jan. 8 -- New Hampshire proved to be the political firewall that the Clinton campaign long had hoped for. Just as New Hampshire voters saved Bill Clinton's candidacy 16 years ago, they revived Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's faltering presidential campaign Tuesday night.

Clinton's battle with Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) now moves to Nevada and South Carolina, then to almost two dozen states, including California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, that will hold contests on Feb. 5. Both campaigns are ready, and with two well-liked, well-funded and determined candidates, Democrats face a battle almost unlike any they have seen in a generation.

Tuesday's outcome defied the final poll results, which had shown Obama heading toward a handsome victory. It provided a huge psychological boost to the Clinton campaign, just as the results Tuesday buoyed Republican John McCain, and instantly deflated the almost giddy sense of anticipation inside Obama's headquarters.

What arrested Obama's surge was not clear. Some strategists speculated that it was Clinton's performance in Saturday's debate, in which she declared that "words are not actions" and sought to refocus voters' attention from the soaring rhetoric and energy of Obama's candidacy and back to the nuts-and-bolts question of what it takes to produce real change -- and who is better equipped to do so.

Others suggested that it was her emotional moment at a New Hampshire diner on Monday, when her voice cracked as she talked about what kept her going. That moment, played and replayed on television over the final hours of the campaign, revealed a side of her rarely seen before, a more vulnerable Clinton than the one described by her own campaign as "one tough woman."

Whatever it was, women flocked to Clinton's candidacy in a way they had not in Iowa. There Obama captured more of the female vote than Clinton, but in New Hampshire on Tuesday, exit polls by the National Election Pool showed Clinton winning women handily. Obama won the votes of men by about the same margin, but with women making up more than half the electorate here, Clinton's victory was assured.

Stunned by the loss in Iowa, Clinton was in the midst of shaking up her campaign as New Hampshire voters went to the polls Tuesday. She was recruiting new advisers to join the existing team. Newer, tougher ads are likely. A new assessment of where to fight and where not to fight between now and Feb. 5 was underway.

But the key for Clinton, say veterans of past campaigns and some of her supporters, may still be her ability to articulate a rationale for her candidacy that goes beyond the assertion that her experience makes her far readier to step into the Oval Office than Obama.

"I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice, " she said in her victory speech, a speech that Clinton advisers saw as the first critical step in redefining her candidacy and her message.

"There has to be a recalibration and a readjustment," said one Clinton loyalist, who asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly about the challenge ahead.

"Her rationale has been all based upon tactics," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who is not affiliated with any campaign. "Everything has been tactical. It's, 'My five-point program is better than your four-point program,' and, 'I am ready from Day One.' That's just not where the country is at." Obama, he added, "clearly fits the mood of the year."

Obama has his own challenges. The first will be to try to rebuild his campaign's morale, which plummeted Tuesday night with the first reports that Clinton might win. His loss will take some of the luster away from his candidacy, as he attracts more scrutiny from the media and probably comes under the kind of attacks he has not experienced in his political career.

Clinton has enjoyed the edge in endorsements, but since Iowa, Obama had lined up support from leading politicians in some of the Feb. 5 states. "There's a lot more interest today than a week ago," an Obama adviser said a few hours before the polls closed here.

Some of those elected officials had been holding back to see how the race developed. Whether they will continue to wait as a result of Tuesday's close race was not immediately clear.

Obama's campaign has said for weeks that it has been preparing for a nomination battle stretching at least until Feb. 5. Campaign manager David Plouffe said Tuesday that the campaign already has staff members and organizations in 19 of the 22 states and will soon have staff members in the other three.

"We have the financial and organizational capacity to do that," he said. "We're not in a situation where we're picking and choosing states. We're ready for all of them. . . . We want as much Obama blue on the map that night as possible."

Clinton's goal now is to win a delegate war with Obama. She hopes to combine the delegates earned in the Feb. 5 contests with support from "super delegates" -- party officials with automatic votes at this summer's national convention in Denver -- to emerge from those contests with the advantage over Obama.

The next state on the calendar is Nevada, which will hold caucuses on Jan. 19. Obama has anticipated winning the endorsement of the Culinary Workers union, which would mean a big boost in the low-turnout event.

Clinton's team had long seen Nevada as friendly territory, but after Iowa it was reassessing its prospects there. It was not clear whether the campaign would make an all-out effort there.

Clinton's advisers were far gloomier about South Carolina, fearing that Obama's victory in Iowa and the energy surrounding his campaign would consolidate the black vote behind him. In a three-way race that includes former senator John Edwards (N.C.), the Clinton camp concluded that South Carolina might be a lost cause.

But begging off a fight in the first state with a substantial black population might be difficult for Clinton, given the long and close relationship that she and her husband have had with the African American community.

"They will have to take a new and closer look at Nevada and South Carolina," said Democratic strategist Anita Dunn.

Clinton's victory provided a real-time reminder that this Democratic race may have more surprises ahead. Weeks or months ago, it was Clinton who had been anointed as the inevitable nominee. Then after Obama's victory in Iowa five nights ago, he was being fitted for the nomination crown.

But presidential campaigns rarely end this quickly, and it was as if the voters of New Hampshire on Tuesday were divided enough in their choice of candidates to assure that voters elsewhere will have the opportunity to settle the issue.

"I think it's awfully interesting that they made her the underdog and she came back," said Democratic strategist Bill Carrick. "Obviously, a lot of these voters don't want to close down the process. It's like, 'Wait a minute.' "

Long before the polls closed, pollster Hart offered an unexpectedly prophetic word of caution about the unexpected twists that often define presidential politics.

"Everybody keeps thinking we've now hit the straightaway," he said, referring to commentary about the momentum building behind Obama. "What I say is, this is a presidential election with only hairpin turns."