The Voters' Revenge

Hillary Clinton supporters rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, on January 7, 2007.

Anthony Suau for TIME

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On to New Hampshire
So why did a message that worked so well in Iowa and looked to resonate in New Hampshire ultimately fall short? In one sense, it didn't. Obama got his bounce out of Iowa, jumped in the polls and inspired people in the surrounding states to get in their cars and drive for hours to see the candidate whom headline writers started calling the Barack Star. Listening to him speak, a former Clinton supporter had goose bumps, saying "I felt I started seeing something in America I haven't seen in a long time."

In fact, Obama's message was working well enough that Clinton had to react to it. "This has been very much a referendum on her," said strategist Mark Penn on the press plane east from Iowa. During private sessions that spread through the weekend, the internal Clinton campaign discussion alternated between how to hit Obama and how to help her. "You're going to see some very sharp media now," an adviser promised. Aides threw out charges one after another in emails and in conference calls with reporters — about Obama's vote for the Patriot Act, his relationship with lobbyists, his violation of election rules governing robocalls.

Clinton's strategists realized she was telling voters too much about what she had done for them, while Obama was talking about what he would do for them. Voters don't like being told, You should support me because you owe me. She began taking more questions, which was a chance to unfurl her plans for everything from student loans to mortgage meltdowns. She even changed the stagecraft. At her concession speech in Iowa, the platform behind Clinton was filled by alumni from the class of '92, including her husband and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It had become clear that a Clinton restoration wasn't selling and she needed a new visual. Behind the scenes as well, the casting changed. Maggie Williams, who had been First Lady Hillary Clinton's fiercely loyal chief of staff, and Doug Sosnik, who had been a top aide to Bill Clinton, both prepared to return to the fray post–New Hampshire. "Maggie will make her feel more comfortable. Doug will make him feel more comfortable," said a campaign adviser. "And they've both been through this before."

Clinton's debate performance on Saturday, which the theater critics panned, actually served her well with voters and raised once more whether Democrats are looking for a fighter or a healer. ABC News brought in market researchers who hooked up voters with electrodes to monitor their brain activity. Her flash of anger when the boys ganged up played well with all of them; so did her humor, when she was asked why people don't like her: "Well, that hurts my feelings." But viewers really hated Obama's graceless barb when he told her, "You're likable enough."

Campaign insiders, however, remained pretty sober about her chances. Just about the best they could manage by Monday was to concede that "it is a reasonably long shot, but it is not a fool's errand" for Clinton to continue her campaign past New Hampshire. In a sign of the passing of remote-controlled, big media campaigns, their best hope lay with a ground operation run by a 34-year-old named Nick Clemons, a veteran of former Governor Jeanne Shaheen's operation. "The heart of our ground game was face-to-face contact," he said Wednesday morning, describing a strategy perfected by the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in 2004. "I know that sounds like old ward-style politics, but it really works." The day before the election, Clemons had an army of 4,000 volunteers knocking on 105,000 New Hampshire doors. Early on, Clinton's team had put together a list of 70,000 of her most likely supporters, slicing and dicing the data by every demographic measure of education level, income and gender to figure out who they were looking for. The answer: "It was women ... We knew we had to go after those women and make sure they voted," said Clemons. Those deemed least likely to make it to the polls got three visits over the final weekend.

Team Clinton even had a worst-case scenario in the event that results out of Iowa weren't all they might hope for. Organizers focused on getting absentee ballots into the hands of seniors, Boston commuters and students on winter break who might not make it to the polls on election day. In the end it was enough to make the difference.

Obama held his own with the labor vote in Iowa; Clinton got it back in New Hampshire, by 10 points. He won among women in Iowa; they swung over to her by a 13-point margin in New Hampshire, along with blue collar workers, a reflection of the fact that voters' greatest concern in the state was the economy. Round 2 went to Clinton. Now both candidates set their shoulders to head back into the fray. And voters in the other 48 states get ready for their turn.