Candidates press cases for Round 2

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire: A day after back-to-back debates before New Hampshire voters, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates set off Sunday on a breakneck day of campaigning to make their final arguments in person, with wounded front-runners seeking to regain momentum for the primary Tuesday.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, her campaign rattled by a disappointing showing in Iowa and facing a new, de facto alliance of her top Democratic rivals, fought back Sunday, trying to persuade voters that the victor in Iowa, Senator Barak Obama of Illinois, lacked the substance to back up the message of change that carried him to a surprising victory in Iowa.

"There's a big difference between talking and acting, between promising and performing," Clinton told supporters in Manchester. "I'm going to be making that case."

But Obama claimed to have unstopable momentum.

"If I've got the American people behind me, I fear no man," he told supporters at a large morning rally. "Nobody can stop us. We can do this."

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, after enduring a night of attacks from all sides on his credibility and consistency at a nationally televised debate Saturday, sought to portray the barrage as evidence that he is leading in the Republican race. Players attack the one holding "the ball," the former Massachusetts governor said on ABC. But even his network interviewer spoke of what seemed to be "almost a visceral dislike of you" by his rivals.

As Senator John McCain of Arizona worked to expand on his growing lead in fresh polls of New Hampshire Republicans, and Mike Huckabee, the Iowa winner, brushed off his low poll standing here as unimportant, they and their rivals appeared on Sunday morning television shows.

Clinton was stung Saturday in the Democratic debate following the Republican debate, when she found herself fending off attacks not only by Obama but by John Edwards, who edged her out for second place.

After Clinton attacked Obama as waffling on security issues, she sought to make an ally out of Edwards, suggesting that Obama had hypocritically portrayed him as inconsistent. All eyes turned to Edwards, and he delivered a coup de grâce - siding dramatically with Obama. "Any time you speak out powerfully for change," Edwards said, looking toward Clinton, "the forces of status quo attack." Both he and Obama, he said, "believe deeply in change."

Clinton responded combatively, arguing that her longtime experience did not prevent her from being an effective advocate of change, rather, she said, the opposite. "Making change is not about what you believe," she said. "It's not about a speech you make. It is about working hard." And in a direct attack on Obama's theme of inspiring hope, she said, "We don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."

But clearly the Iowa results had changed a dynamic. Obama's victory left Clinton, whose lead in national polls has been fading for weeks, with a delicate challenge, needing to fight back and continue stressing her experience, without appearing unlikable, shrill or too wed to Washington, compared with the likeable outsider, Obama. In an apparent effort at softening her image, Clinton took voters' questions for a full two hours Saturday morning, far longer than expected.

A new CNN/WMUR poll among likely New Hampshire voters showed Clinton and Obama in a tie, at 33 percent each in the state. The survey, released Saturday, put Edwards at a distant third, with 20 percent.

But Edwards said Sunday on ABC that whatever happens in New Hampshire and the following states, "I'm in this through the convention and to the White House."

On the Republican side, if McCain wins Tuesday, the party will have to look to primaries a week later in Michigan, and South Carolina four days after that, to sort things out.

New Hampshire appears crucial for Romney, but less so for Huckabee, who never expected to do well in the Northeastern state and who said, amiably, on Sunday that he would be perfectly happy with a third-place finish.

A new survey for MSNBC showed Huckabee making no gains at all in New Hampshire, despite his Iowa victory; it had him battling Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, for third place. Giuliani still counts on a big showing in the multistate contests of Feb. 5.

Amid a tightly compressed calendar, both races have entered tough, few-holds-barred phases.

Asked Sunday on ABC whether he and Obama were cooperating, Edwards said he had a "conviction alliance" with Obama. But the former North Carolina senator would not term it a full-blown alliance and said the two had not discussed collaborating.

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