CONCORD - Hillary Clinton's wounding defeat in Iowa leaves the former first lady fighting to salvage her White House hopes and overcome mistrust of her political baggage, heading into a congested field of nomination battles.
Barack Obama's message that "change is coming to America" resonated among Iowa Democrats as the Illinois senator bidding to be the country's first black president topped the largely white, largely farming state's caucuses Thursday.
Commentators said that for the Republicans, the scale of Mitt Romney's defeat to surprise package Mike Huckabee will benefit third-placed Senator John McCain and, perhaps, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Clinton must now win in New Hampshire on Tuesday to get her electoral juggernaut back on the road, analysts said, while fellow Democratic hopeful John Edwards could be in trouble.
"If your main argument is your electability, and you're not getting elected, it pulls a major leg out from your argument," Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker told AFP.
"She will have to come up with a win pretty quickly, as she can barely survive losses in both Iowa and New Hampshire," he said.
"Clinton's been around for a while and perhaps, this primary season is a referendum on the Clinton years," Baker added.
"One of Barack Obama's most compelling arguments is that he is someone who will move this country beyond the political polarization that has affected it for the past eight years."
Once the heir presumptive for the Democratic nomination in November's presidential election, Clinton managed only third in Iowa's quirky caucuses, with Obama's fired-up supporters showing up in droves amid a record turnout.
Many Democrats in Iowa are fiercely opposed to the war in Iraq and have not forgotten that Clinton, in 2002, voted to authorize President George W. Bush's invasion plans.
Her centrist economic platform may also have driven support to the populist campaigns of Obama and Edwards, according to Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
"Iowa voters had a long time to look at these candidates and they decided she came up wanting," he said.
"But we're a country of 50 states and each state has a different demographic. Iowa wasn't particularly well set up for Senator Clinton," Brown added, echoing Clinton's own argument that these are early days yet.
The wife of former president Bill Clinton enjoys a solid lead in national polls of Democratic voters and for Brown, "Obama has dented the aura of invincibility but is yet not the clear frontrunner."
In New Hampshire, an average of polls by RealClearpolitics.com had Clinton running on 34 percent to Obama's 27 percent and Edwards' 18.
It has McCain at 31.3 on the average, Romney at 28.8, Giuliani at 10 and Huckabee at 9.5.
Former Arkansas governor Huckabee was the clear winner in Iowa on the Republican side as the folksy Baptist preacher came from nowhere in the polls just a few weeks ago to defeat Romney's well-funded, well-organized campaign.
"Huckabee not only won but he basically obliterated Mitt Romney, making it very difficult for Romney to go on to New Hampshire and the subsequent contests," said Costas Panagopoulos, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy in New York's Fordham University.
The former Massachusetts governor had been banking on first-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire to derail the national campaign of Giuliani, who is betting on taking Florida this month and other big states on February 5.
But after losing Iowa, Romney now faces a resurgent McCain in New Hampshire, with the Vietnam war hero staging a stunning comeback after his big-spending campaign nearly died over the summer.
Doubts meanwhile surround Huckabee going forward, given that New Hampshire does not have the legions of evangelical Christians that propelled him to victory in Iowa, and that his organization in the field lags the bigger names.
"Huckabee may have won the battle but there is no guarantee that he will win the war," Panagopoulos said.
Iowa swiftly saw the Democratic field winnowed down as outsiders Joseph Biden and Christopher Dodd, two veteran senators, quit the White House race after their poor finishes.
Edwards, the vice presidential nominee in 2004, could follow them after failing to see four years of hard campaigning translate into victory in Iowa.
"It's very hard to see where Edwards wins from here on in, even in South Carolina," Brown said, referring to the former senator's home state, which holds its Democratic primary on January 26.
jit/ksh

01/04/2008 05:21 GMT