THE NOTE: Alright for Fighting

Jan. 5, 2008 -- MANCHESTER, N.H. --

Ten presidential candidates (six Republicans, four Democrats) will pull up swiveling chairs and take to the very same debate stage Saturday night in Manchester for two of those encounters on the presidential calendar that merit circling in bright red (and blue) magic marker.

ABC's Charles Gibson has a bit of a different format in mind for the evening than we've seen in previous encounters -- more genial than gotcha, like a very chatty (and very well-lit) kitchen table. But the candidates will surely provide the fireworks: In this excruciatingly brief window between Iowa and New Hampshire, subtly just doesn't work.

The dynamics would be different even if the format was the same: We have the time crunch, of course, but we also have new frontrunners: "Barack Obama enters Saturday's Democratic debate as the undisputed front-runner with a bull's-eye on his back -- and a humbled and hobbled Hillary Clinton itching to open fire," writes the New York Daily News troika of Michael McAuliff, Ken Bazinet, and Michael Saul.

The Republicans get their 90 minutes first, starting at 7 pm ET from Saint Anselm College and broadcast live on ABC nation-wide -- good entertainment while you're staying up late waiting for returns from the Wyoming caucuses (and you know who you are).

The Democrats kick off shortly after that -- following the photo-op of all photo-ops: All 10 on stage at once, sharing handshakes and awkward conversation.

The aftermath of the Iowa earthquake wasn't pretty for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. The takeaway from the "100 Club" dinner Friday night in Milford, N.H., is simple enough to give Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., another round in the scorecard: Clinton was booed, while Obama's supporters were so energetic that organizers were worried about the security situation.

"Three thousand people packed the auditorium and it seems like there are many more Obama supporters than Clinton supporters," ABC's Eloise Harper and Sunlen Miller report. "It was not Clinton's best performance."

And this was not the headline she wanted out of her first post-Iowa day: "Hillary Booed at NH Democratic Party Dinner." "When Obama, the dinner's last speaker, took the stage the crowd surged forward chanting 'O-bam-a' and 'Fired Up, Ready to Go!' " Time's Jay Newton-Small reports. "So many people pressed toward the stage that an announcer asked people to 'please take their seats for safety concerns.' By comparison Hillary was twice booed."

Clinton didn't even wait for her flight to land in New Hampshire to start changing her campaign's message. "I think everybody needs to be vetted and tested," she told reporters upon landing. And this, which Sen. Barack Obama's campaign should read as a warning: "I'm not doing this as an exercise."

Yet one Democrat with close ties to the Clinton campaign tells The Note that Clinton won't run any negative ads against Obama, out of a fear of a backlash in this hyper-politicized crunch between Iowa and New Hampshire.

So the dirty work falls to surrogates and oppo-researchers, who got off to a rollicking start, per ABC's Kate Snow. "While the senator was vague, her campaign pointed out to ABC News examples of Obama's liberal positions, including his 2004 statement to abolish mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes," Snow writes. "They also pointed out a statement Obama made in 2003 that he was 'a proponent of a single payer health care program,' which he no longer seems to support today."

Former President Bill Clinton tells Snow that his wife can turn things around, but adds: "I just wish we had 10 days instead of five."

He's right: Redefining a campaign inside of five days is never easy. Redefining a campaign that's the product of years of meticulous planning -- and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of (sometimes) smart strategic advice -- is a monumental task. And it's one that was not completed inside of the first 24 hours after Iowa.

"Mrs. Clinton is recalibrating her message in hopes of producing Comeback Kid: The Sequel," Patrick Healy and John M. Broder write in The New York Times. "She said she wanted to appeal to young people, and surrounded herself with them at the rally [in Nashua], in contrast to her caucus night party where older, familiar faces from the Clinton administration and her political team stood out." (You mean Madeleine Albright isn't the face of change?)

"Yet many of the challenges and questions she faced in Iowa -- like Clinton fatigue and the generational showdown with Mr. Obama -- remained part of her baggage as she flew east," write Healy and Broder. (They even work in a Monica quote from a voter).

And they document just enough infighting to keep things really interesting over at Camp Clinton: "One longtime adviser complained that the campaign's senior strategist, Mark Penn, realized too late that 'change' was a much more powerful message than 'experience.' Another adviser said Mr. Penn and Mr. Clinton were consumed with polling data for so long, they did not fully grasp the personality deficit that Mrs. Clinton had with voters."

The bruised-but-not-beaten narrative would seem to be the favorite storyline -- but Sen. Clinton isn't leading with humility. Rather than acknowledge defeat and say she's learning from the licks she's taken, she's . . . slamming Iowa?

Imagine how badly Clinton would have lost the caucuses if these sentences were uttered 24 hours earlier: "You're not disenfranchised if you work at night," she said of the New Hampshire primary. "You're not disenfranchised if you're not in the state."

Clinton also declared herself "the most innocent" of all the Democrats, a reference to the fact that Obama is untested and less vetted (and that is a fact). But the problem is that the jury hasn't come back yet.