New Hampshire

Our new friends Why Tuesday? have posted their New Hampshire photostream on flickr. Here are media reporter John Koblin and columnist Choire Sicha, filing.

At the Observer offices, Why Tuesday? does not immediately seem to refer to election nights.

On my way out of town, I ran into one of Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire field directors. "So were you shocked?" he asked me. I told him I was. He smiled. "So were we."

NASHUA, N.H.—After Barack Obama spoke last night, and most people filed out of a high school gym here, one cameraman and one golden-tan man with a microphone started swerving over the entire room taking shots of the steaming wreckage.

When you saw who it was, you couldn't help but double take: Inside Edition was really here.  read more »

NASHUA, N.H.—Barack Obama and his supporters were brought down to earth in stunning fashion here tonight after their post-Iowa days in the stratosphere.

"Tonight belongs to you," Mr. Obama told the crowd in his concession speech. But, really, it belonged to Hillary Clinton, who pulled off a shock victory that put an abrupt end to Obama's momentum and re-established her as the Democratic frontrunner.

The obituaries written for her campaign in recent days now seem hopelessly premature.  read more »

Perhaps no one in the Clinton campaign had more riding on the New Hamsphire results than Mark Penn, the campaigns chief strategist and pollster, who has taken heat inside and outside of the campaign for the loss in Iowa.

So what happened in New Hampshire?

“I think people started to see the real difference between the candidates as she began drawing the contrasts and then they also heard her speak from her heart,” he said. “Those two things together stopped the momentum.”  read more »

Hillary Clinton has become a better candidate.

And in these last few days she has also become a more emotional one. “I want especially to thank New Hampshire, over the last week I listened to you and in the process, I found my own voice.”

Everyone in the packed gym, one day after she was publicly moved to near-tears yesterday at a Portsmouth diner, knew exactly what she was talking about.  read more »

Here's what it looks like now.

Barack Obama and his wife were just met with rioutous applause. The first thing he said was, "Thank you New Hampshire."

There's no sense of defeat or loss to them whatsoever--you'd have no sense at all that he hadn't won the primary if you hadn't seen it on the TV, just before they shut it off.

"There is no destiny we cannot fulfill," he said.

"When I am president of the United States, we will end this war in Iraq." The crowd is delighted: This is no longer a mourning party.

UPDATE: “First of all I want to congratulate Senator Clinton,” said Obama.  read more »

The Associated Press has now called New Hampshire for Hillary Clinton, and other outlets are likely to follow suit shortly. And with that, Hillary has undone the near-fatal damage inflicted on her campaign by her third place finish in Iowa last Thursday night. One question now is how she engineered this upset win -- but some of us saw this coming a month ago.

In introducing John Edwards to the stage to give another concession speech, Elizabeth Edwards gave no indication that her husband planned to bow out.

“Today we have taken steps, steps not as big as what we had wanted,” she said, adding “The goal is still in sight, and what is that goal? To make as our next President of the Unites States John Edwards.”

John Edwards was defiant.

“Tonight I congratulate Sen. Clinton and Sen Obama,” he said. “Two states down. 48 states left to go.”

MANCHESTER, N.H.—Twelve-story buildings qualify as skyscrapers here, so when you come into town, the Radisson on Elm Street is one of the first things you see.

It’s the hotel where NBC, ABC and C-SPAN are all kipping, and it’s also where Hillary Clinton’s campaign bus drops and picks up reporters every day, and where New Yorker political reporter Ryan Lizza said he comes to have a drink at night.  read more »

MERRIMACK, N.H.—Rudy Giuliani polled terribly in New Hampshire and therefore lost every candidate’s apparently God-given right to an attentive press corps; he was mostly down to New Hampshire TV and a handful of New York-based daily reporters.

Who could resist? (Besides most everyone.) I decided to embed.

In the packed spin room after the Republican debate on Saturday, Katie Levinson, his hard blond communications director, said some words. “Tested”! “Florida”! “I think his focus is on increasing turnout”!

His friend Frank Guinta, the mayor of Manchester, chopped away at reporters. “What he has to do is finish—finish strong.” “Dropped crime rate by 70 percent.” “Cut taxes 23 times!” (I did not feel a reason to believe these numbers, given the campaign’s history of bad facts; Mr. Giuliani himself later said he cut taxes 15 to 20 times.) But did Mr. Giuliani feel bad about killing all those people during and after 9/11, one (sorta wingnut!) reporter wanted to know. “I do know he’s a tested, proven leader,” Mr. Guinta replied. A red blotch crawled from the right side of his neck to his cheek.  read more »

Dixville Notch has shut Hillary Clinton out on the first official voting of the New Hampshire primary. The tiny town in far northern New Hampshire (actually, it's not really a town—its voters all live and work in the Balsams resort hotel) handed Barack Obama 7 votes in its primary, ahead of John Edwards (2 votes) and Bill Richardson (1). Hillary didn't even hit the board.

On the Republican side, John McCain won with 4 votes, to 2 for Mitt Romney and 1 for Rudy Giuliani.  read more »

ROCHESTER, N.H.—Barack Obama waited until the very end of his 49-minute speech in this 30,000-strong town before sticking it to a wounded Hillary Clinton.

Referring to Saturday night's debate between the four main Democratic candidates, Obama mentioned "one of [his] opponents" who, he said, had suggested that candidates should "stop offering the American people false hope" and that "people need a reality check."

"What does that mean?" he went on. "Does that mean J.F.K. should have looked up at the moon and said, 'Too far?'"  read more »

Not every presidential nominee in the modern era has won both Iowa and New Hampshire. But they have all received a boost from at least one of them.

And therein lies Hillary Clinton's predicament: If she loses to Barack Obama on Tuesday night, she will have suffered back-to-back defeats in the lead-off states, both in raw numbers and in terms of media perception. Never, in either party, has a candidate endured such a fate and gone on to claim the nomination. And never has a candidate won both events—as Obama is poised to do—and been denied the nomination.

The same history applies to the Republican side, underscoring the do-or-die stakes of the John McCain-Mitt Romney contest in New Hampshire: the loser will have suffered clear losses in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Only one of them figures to emerge with the viability to challenge Mike Huckabee, Iowa's winner. And history doesn't smile at all on the waiting-game strategy being employed by both Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson.  read more »

CONCORD -- John McCain hopped onto a makeshift stage in front of the State House here to address a mid-afternoon rally of a few hundred supporters. He took note of a group of environmental protesters in the front row who held giant signs that read, "Make Global Warming A Priority."

"I will make global warming a priority!" he announced. "And today is a lot easier day than a few days ago to say that."  read more »

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Reporters were mostly only half-listening moments before Hillary Clinton's eyes welled up with tears in a coffee shop here early this afternoon.

It was another of the increasing number of hour-plus gatherings put on by her campaign, and the majority of the reporters were scrolling around on Blackberrys or reading the newspaper or whispering to one another about the ubiquitous but somehow unmentionable Chelsea Clinton.  read more »

DOVER--Hillary Clinton is back on stage, this time at a high school, taking questions and hitting her opponents for she says is their failure to stand up to special interests, achieve health care reforms and or take consistent positions on the war in Iraq.

There's more of the hardwood gym floor visible than usual behind the small crowd of 250, which is listening to her slam her rivals.

"No matter how beautifully delivered a speech is, when the words finish, it is over," she said.  read more »

Downtown Nashua (an intersection with a town green on the north) is torn apart by two competing demonstrations. On opposite sides of Main and Amherst Streets, Obama and Clinton supporters are jumping and shouting. The Clinton team is chanting "What do we want? Experience!"

On the other side, one of the dozens for Obama has a sign that reads "Obama for Presdent."

Funny mistake or the world's most brilliant plant.

PORTSMOUTH—Marianne Pernold Young, the 64-year-old woman whose question prompted Hillary Clinton to choke up at a coffee shop earlier, said she had no doubt that Hillary's reaction was genuine. "Could you do that?" she asked a TV reporter who raised the question of Clinton's sincerity. "Could you cry like that?"

HUDSON—Rudy Giuliani has now picked up hecklers.

In the midst of a carefully stage-crafted appearance (there was theme music! It was dramatic!) at a town hall-style meeting with hundred or so supporters and undecideds, a man asked, "Are you going to end the baby-killing?" He encouraged Giuliani not to accept communion before repenting from killing babies. The questioner was escorted from the hall.  read more »

Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who doesn't embrace the idea that the United States has an obligation to provide economic, military and diplomatic support to Israel.

This could be taken as an extension of Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy, which calls for all nations to be treated neutrally—no foreign aid and no "entangling alliances," as he frequently argues.

Paul's critics contend that his approach would expose Israel to a mortal threat from hostile neighbors. And his views have also been invoked by critics to charge that he is anti-Semitic, or, at the very least, that his campaign has become a magnet for people who hate Jews.  read more »

PORTSMOUTH--Responding to a question from a voter asking how she manages to get up and run and look so good everyday, Hillary Clinton teared up.

"Luckily, I do have help," she said.

"If you look at some of the Web sites and listen to some of the commentators, they always find me on the day that I didn't. It's not easy--it's not easy. I couldn't do it if I didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do.”

There was a long pause.

"This is very personal for me--it's not just political," she said choking up. "It's--not just--I see what's happening."  read more »

NASHUA—A woman named Gina Weathers, 37, approached Rudy Giuliani as he ambled down Main Street towards City Hall.

Where can I get a job, she asked; she said she had two kids and a working husband but doesn't have a place to stay. Giuliani told her that he would "boost the economy."

She looked dissatisfied with this. After, she asked reporters: "If he's going to boost the economy, when?" And: "How long is he going to boost it for?"

PORTSMOUTH—Hillary Clinton is meeting right now with undecided voters, most of them women, in a coffee shop, where she said she would answer any question to help them and others in New Hampshire make up their minds "on their own."

She is running up against the full force of the compressed calendar, as new surveys of New Hampshire's voters show Barack Obama enjoying momentum from his Iowa win.  read more »

NASHUA—Rudy Giuliani got it from both sides this morning outside Jackie's Diner on Main Street. Inside the diner, he was met by Edwards and Obama and Clinton supporters. On the street, there was something I haven't yet seen in New Hampshire: actual protesters, with a big sign that proclaimed: "NYC says no to Rudy." But wait there's more! The press is asking him questions like the one from this ABC TV reporter: "Why isn't your message resonating in New Hampshire"?

Downtown Manchester.

Michelle Obama—or 'The Closer' as she is known these days to her husband and his campaign team—sought to live up to her nickname with the people of Plymouth this evening.

Speaking at a well-attended meeting in the Obama campaign's local office—organizers estimated attendance in this small town at around 200—she tried to defuse the idea that her husband lacked adequate toughness for the rigors of campaigning or governing.

Baldly asserting that "Barack is not naïve," Obama drew attention to her husband's stint as a minority member of the Illinois State Senate.

Referring repeatedly to "tough Illinois politics," she told the crowd that when people suggested the senator may be too soft, "I just think, 'C'mon people, where do you think we have been?'"  read more »

Yet another New Hampshire poll is out tonight, but this one deserves your attention. The CNN/WMUR survey was conducted on Friday and Saturday, providing the most accurate reading yet on how the Iowa results affected New Hampshire voters.

The poll finds Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton by 10 points, 39 to 29 -- the first time Obama has opened a double-digit lead in the state in a reputable independent poll. On the Republican side, John McCain leads Mitt Romney, 32 to 26 percent.  read more »

At the Ron Paul headquarters in Concord this afternoon, 16 volunteers were phonebanking.

"We're not getting anyone who says 'I don't know who Ron Paul is,' the situation we were in four or five months ago," said a young volunteer named Chris. "We're looking to place well, in what they call the top tier."  read more »

During her visit to Nashua North High School here in New Hampshire earlier this afternoon, Hillary Clinton did her second presser in three days and got into a testy exchange with Chris Matthews.

He asked her to distinguish her platform on returning troops from Iraq versus Barack Obama. Mrs. Clinton said a few words, not particularly in season; she said she'd be very responsible about it. Matthews asked a follow-up and she said, "Well you guys can figure out the difference."

"No, you tell us the difference!" he barked.  read more »

In yet another post-Iowa press conference, Hillary Clinton answered reporters’ questions in Nashua for 19 minutes, talking about everything from her vote on the war in Iraq, her meeting with Rudy Giuliani on the stage between debates last night, the cross on her bracelet, her refusal to look back at Iowa and Barack Obama’s “four pollsters.”

She shrugged off a question about her statement at a campaign event here only minutes earlier that she would not have gone to war if she had been president, saying “You know I’ve said that many times.” She added, “Clearly at the time that vote took place I said it wasn’t a vote for preemptive war.”

She once again attacked Obama and John Edwards on what she said has said is a rhetoric that does not match reality, and when asked why she waited until after losing Iowa to make those contrasts, said, “I thought it was time to draw the contrast.” New Hampshire voters, she said, were famously independent, and “They want to know answers.”

When asked how she could stand up to a movement like that surrounding Obama by running a campaign based on “Mark Penn poll-tested talking points,” she responded, “I don’t know, but I think Senator Obama has four pollsters.”  read more »

After playing his usual punching bag role in last night's Republican debate, Ron Paul found himself surrounded by his most devoted and fervent friends on Sunday afternoon.

The occasion was Paul's keynote address at the annual convention of the Free State Project, a group of libertarians who are essentially trying to colonize New Hampshire. The group's goal is to convince 20,000 people to move to the state within five years. Others have pledged to follow the initial settlers if the 20,000 threshold is met.

Paul, whose was preceded at the podium by the President of the John Birch Society, entered to a raucous standing ovation and spoke for about 45 minutes.  read more »

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton emails a statement on Hillary Clinton's Iraq comment in Nashua: “Hillary Clinton may try to rewrite history, but it's hard to believe she didn't know what would happen after she voted for a resolution with the title ‘A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.’ While Hillary Clinton continues to make the same kind of attacks that voters are rejecting, Barack Obama will continue telling voters about his consiste  read more »

Pat Aurenz, a 45-year-old undecided voter from Nashua, didn’t have a problem with Hillary Clinton saying she would not have gone to war in Iraq as president. “She voted to go to war based on information that was a bunch of lies,” said Aurenz, who sat in the bleachers at a Hillary event in Nashua with her husband (an Obama supporter) and daughter.  read more »

From R.N.C. spokesman Danny Diaz: “Senator Clinton said her vote on Iraq was one of ‘conviction’ and the ‘right decision.’ Candidate Clinton says just the opposite on the stump. Clearly, voters in New Hampshire cannot trust Senator Clinton or Candidate Clinton as neither is willing to be honest with them.”

A young girl in the crowd at a Nashua high school just asked Hillary Clinton how she knows she would not have gone to war in Iraq like President Bush if she were president. Clinton said this:

“After 9/11, I would never have taken us to war in Iraq." More of her answer after the jump.  read more »

The twenty-odd reporters waiting for Rudy Giuliani in a Radisson hotel room on the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border are talking Ron Paul. One reporter has a bet going that Paul will get more than 11 percent in the primary. Nobody present is willing to take the other side of that bet.

After last night's debate, New York Times columnist David Brooks was chatting with a group of people. One of them said: "I hear you hired that conservative Bill Kristol." David Brooks responded: "More like a pseudoconservative."

Last night’s debate was not a fluke.

Hillary Clinton is wagering the success of her campaign in New Hampshire, and possibly her entire candidacy, on her ability to destroy the reputations of Barack Obama and John Edwards as change-makers.

After building them up as making a “tremendous contribution to this campaign” and offering “service to our country,” in a Nashua high school just now, she fervently went about the business of knocking them down.  read more »

What will happen on primary day if 50 percent of the women voters of New Hampshire are still undecided this weekend?

On Saturday morning, Lifetime Television convened a meeting of local women. At the end of a program of speakers that included Martha Burk (of Augusta National Golf Club protests fame), who is currently serving as Bill Richardson's senior adviser for women's issues, the
audience took part in a straw poll.

Though the results for actual candidates were all over the map and were therefore not released--Lifetime wanted to stress that they did not consider this a terribly scientific poll--they did tell me that a full 50 percent of the 100 or so women present declared themselves undecided.

In the audience was Laura Fink, 31, of Londonderry, NH. "First I was Hillary, then I said I don't like her stance on some things. Then I met Obama. He reminds me of Howard Dean: young, fresh. I hope the media doesn't do the same thing to him," she said.

Her meeting with Obama was back in early September, and she's still committed to him--she had been canvassing for him that week. "He's very friendly. There's a toughness about Hillary, but he's so gentle. And he has a heart," she said. "We want someone to listen to us."  read more »

Meet the Driscolls, who say they got up at 6 this morning to see Barack Obama at the Palace Theater in Manchester.

By the time they got there, the place was filled to capacity and they were locked out.

They said they'd go to see John Edwards instead.

Another new New Hampshire poll is out this morning, but be careful with it: Most of it was conducted before the Iowa results were in, so it does not reflect the "bounce" Iowa's winners traditionally receive.  read more »

After last night's debate, Barack Obama’s chief adviser David Axelrod assumed the posture of a disappointed observer who was hurt by the Clintons’ decision to go negative.

“They are trying to create doubts. It’s classic strategy,” he said, adding, “I thought one of the telling things Senator Clinton said tonight was let’s not give people 'false hope.' I think that’s a sad thing to say.”

He doubted the jabs she scored on Obama during the debate would have much effect (“I don’t think anything happened here tonight that would have changed the dynamic against us,” he said) but also doubted her new negative approach would penetrate the electorate before election day on the Jan 8.

“That’s one of her problems,” he said. “It takes a while for distortions to sink in.”

He said that “they’ve sent out negative mail,” and, “Today they sent out a negative mail piece and suggested that he is somehow anti-choice, which is absurd.”

It was “the second time they’ve tried this," he said. "They tried it in Iowa, and I think it helped earn then third place. So you’d they’d have learned.”

It certainly seemed last night that John Edwards had thrown his lot in with Barack Obama last night in his attempt to get Hillary Clinton out of the race as soon as possible, defending the Illinois senator fiercely against her criticisms.

But Elizabeth Edwards said that her husband did it, Drago-like, for himself.

“John was defending that he actually is a change candidate,” she said after the debate at Saint Anselm College. “Every time we have someone saying they are an agent of change, someone from the status quo comes along attacking them.”

So, she said, her husband came to the rescue.  read more »

This morning's edition of the Union Leader contains a reminder of why the endorsement of New Hampshire's largest (and most conservative) newspaper is so coveted by Republicans: Two separate editorials (technically, one is a note from publisher Joseph McQuaid) touting McCain and disparaging Mitt Romney, his chief rival in the state.  read more »

The enormous cluster of reporters surrounding Mark Penn dispelled any question as to whether last night’s debate was all about Hillary Clinton. It was.

With four Clinton spinners on the spin room floor (Penn, media consultant Mandy Grunwald, and spokesmen Jay Carson and Phil Singer) the Clinton campaign was clearly imbued with what Barack Obama might call “the fierce urgency of now.”

Here’s what Penn was saying, essentially continuing Clinton’s assault on her opponents’ change credentials.  read more »

This was not a particularly good debate for Barack Obama. Of course, the same was said after many of the previous debates, and it didn't stop him from scoring a clear Iowa victory.

Throughout most of tonight's 90-minute affair, Obama faded into the background while Hillary Clinton confidently asserted herself with a series of specific policy riffs that buttressed her campaign's themes of preparation and experience.  read more »

Hillary Clinton finally got angry.

Less than a week after losing her front-runner status with a crushing loss in the Iowa caucuses, she found herself fighting for her political life on the stage of Saint Anselm College.

She went directly after Barack Obama, attacking him for what she said were inconsistent positions on health care and funding for the war in Iraq, and arguing that he had not received sufficient vetting.

She met with a concentrated, and combined, backlash from Obama and John Edwards, who needs to end Clinton’s candidacy to have any chance of staying viable.

“He could have a pretty good debate with himself,” Clinton said of Obama. She said to him, “You have changed your positions in three years.”  read more »

During tonight's debate, at the back end of the media room, far away from the mainstream press (and cut off thereby from reliable wireless internet service), sat a bunch of young writers. They wore ski caps, flannel shirts and had a healthy dose of acne. They also had a nickname for themselves: the Backseat Bloggers.

"Hi, nice to meet you, and yes, we can speak," said Brian Lawson, a 22-year-old, who runs the blog New Hampshire Presidential Watch. "This is the fifth debate I've been to and they're still saying the same thing," he said.

In the background, TVs and speakers showed Republicans were trading barbs. But with wireless internet on the fritz, Lawson said he was making up the time by playing solitaire. He was also making new friends.  read more »