Clock Ticking as Clinton Struggles to Rewrite Script [View All]

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Clock Ticking as Clinton Struggles to Rewrite Script

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- If you wanted a measure of how discombobulated Hillary Clinton's campaign has been since Iowa, look no farther than to the memo sent out by chief strategist Mark Penn shortly before the Democratic debate on Saturday night.

"Where is the bounce?" the e-mail subject line read. Noting two newly released polls that showed a close race in New Hampshire, Penn argued there was no statistically significant change in the Democratic race pre- and post-Iowa. ... It was an utterly foolish and unnecessary argument to make ... New polls released Sunday showed a surge of support for Obama -- confirming what has been evident since the presidential candidates landed here in the dark on Friday morning after Obama's victory in Iowa.

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Echoes of the 1984 Democratic race between Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart abound here on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. It was 24 years ago that Hart caught fire here in the final days and upset Mondale on primary day with a generational contrast to Mondale and a message of new ideas and a new politics.

Hart went on to lose to Mondale, but only after a long and difficult struggle, and it is Clinton's hope that, with time, she can do the same against Obama. Clinton unexpectedly summoned up that race Monday morning when, during an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, she asked of Obama, "Where's the beef?"

That phrase helped Mondale stop Hart 24 years ago, but veterans of that campaign year see Obama as a more formidable and unshakable candidate than was Hart. The former Colorado senator was an underfunded candidate in 1984. Obama already has enormous resources and, the Clinton team fears, will collect so much money on the internet that he will now have a big financial advantage heading forward.

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What could happen here in New Hampshire cannot be overstated, given assumptions about this campaign a few months ago. An Obama victory will mean a radically different race -- the first-term senator as front-runner and the mighty Clinton machine as underdog. Few could have written the script for that when this campaign began.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/07/post_265.html