Hillary Clinton says her tears in New Hampshire helped her beat Barack Obama, who vowed to fight back hard against Clinton and her combative husband, former President Bill Clinton.
“We have to make sure that we take it to them just like they take it to us,” Obama told MSNBC.
Obama complained that “Hillary came after me” in a debate Saturday, while Bill Clinton “distorted my record.” The former president mocked Obama’s candidacy as a “fairy tale” and accused him of avoiding scrutiny in earlier debates.
“We’ve been undergoing scrutiny since I announced in February — I mean, it’s not as if you guys in the press have given me a pass,” Obama protested. “That’s the real fairy tale, is I think Bill Clinton suggesting somehow that we’ve been just taking a cakewalk here.”
He added: “I promise you this, though: I come from Chicago politics. We’re accustomed to rough and tumble. Idon’t expect this to be a cakewalk.”
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton credited her display of emotion at a campaign stop as helping turn the tide against Obama, who had beaten Clinton last week in the Iowa caucuses. Long seen by critics as emotionally distant, Clinton appeared to change that image when she choked up in answering a question about how she was holding up under the rigors of the campaign trail.
“Maybe I have liberated us to actually let women be human beings in public life,” she told Fox News. “You know, we are. Let’s be that.”
Appearing on CBS, she added: “I had this incredible moment of connection with the voters of New Hampshire, and they saw it and they heard, and they gave me this incredible victory last night.”
Clinton’s campaign had been reeling since her third-place showing in Iowa on Thursday, although she said she “felt the ground shift” during Saturday’s debate and has now been able to “really regain my footing.”
During her victory speech in New Hampshire late Tuesday, Clinton said she had finally found her voice.
“I felt really for a long time that I was kind of running against myself,” she acknowledged, adding this prevented her from explaining herself effectively.
“I knew that I hadn’t — to be blunt, hadn’t done a very good job doing that,” she said. “Trying to present not just what I stand for, what I’ve worked for, what I care most about in terms of my public life.”
Obama won a key endorsement Wednesday, from the culinary workers union in Nevada, site of the next Democratic contest on Jan. 19. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said money is pouring into the war chest of his boss, whom he described as well poised to win in both Nevada and South Carolina on Jan. 26.
