Hillary’s next move

What happened

Hillary Clinton congratulated Barack Obama on his victory in the Iowa caucuses in a gracious concession speech, but her top political strategist said the Clinton campaign will go after Obama ahead of the New Hampshire primary next week. (Los Angeles Times’ Top of the Ticket blog)

What the commentators said

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Clinton “will be digging her political grave if she allows herself to believe that the results are an aberration,” said Michael Goodwin in the New York Daily News. “They are not. What happened in Iowa can happen anywhere.” And it will unless Clinton becomes “less calculating, less programmed,” and “more human.”

“There's a problem with running on the idea that you are inevitable,” said Karen Tumulty in Time.com. “It leaves little room for a stumble.” And in this year’s unprecedented, compressed rush of primaries, there’s less time than ever to recover. Clinton has to change strategy, and “figure out how much heat to put on the sudden frontrunner.”

Clinton “needs to repeat in New Hampshire the sort of ‘comeback kid’ performance that rescued her husband's presidential ambitions after devastating political setbacks in 1992,” said Susan Page in USA Today. She’ll have less time to pull it off than Bill did, but don’t count her out. She “still has assets to bring to bear, including money in the bank and an extensive network of support.”

“Clinton’s initial inevitability is gone,” said Reid Wilson in RealClearPolitics, but she has “the time, and the intelligence, to retool” her approach “and rebound.” She still has a healthy lead in New Hampshire—something she lost long ago in Iowa—and a strong finish there will reestablish her as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.