Despite their outwardly flippant and dismissive attitude toward the painful results of the Iowa caucuses (HRC coming out with quotes today abut how the caucuses “don’t matter” in the overall race…), the Hillary campaign is in the midst of a frantic retooling effort in preparation for tomorrow’s New Hampshire debate and the primary itself on Tuesday.

Hillary Rodham Clinton opened a five-day campaign to target what her aides call Barack Obama’s inexperience, delivering sharper attacks against the Iowa winner that are likely to become more personal and negative, according to Democrats familiar with the evolving strategy.

“Of all the people running for president, I’ve been the most vetted, the most investigated and — my goodness — the most innocent, it turns out,” she told a cheering crowd in an airport hangar. During the new stump speech, Clinton took a series of easy policy questions from a friendly audience and answered them with jabs that were absent from her more sedate Iowa talks.

In both its format and content, the punchy speech was intended to prevent the Illinois senator from coasting on his Iowa victory, and to pull him into what her advisers hope will be a stumble amid the new scrutiny he faces as the candidates approach Tuesday’s primary here.

In some ways it’s a copy of the unsuccessful arguments paraded around Iowa over the last month: Hillary’s the most “experienced”, “electable,” “presidential-ready,” etc. That’s being touted in the Granite State. But her campaign is also cranking up an even harsher anti-Obama effort with the clear intent of pulverizing him out of the race by February. They’re not pulling any punches, labeling Obama a “liberal” extremist who wants “socialized health care” and higher taxes - among other horrid things. Is it just us, or does this seem to be GOP-style talking points? The campaign has even “directed” ABC News to some unflattering clips from a couple of years ago showing Obama railing against mandatory minimum sentences for criminals and promising to support a single-payer health care system - something he is against doing these days. The piece comes across as a free ad for Hillary. The piece airs like a free ad for HRC…

This massive push rings a bit hollow when really pressed, however. It’s not all that different from the Iowa message and plays into Obama’s stump speech that “change” is needed and only he can provide it. These hardball tricks can only get you so far - and maybe not very in an election year when majorities in both parties wanted a major infusion of fresh faces and ideas into the political landscape.

One other tidbit learned from Iowa for the Hillary camp is to work toward a tighter last-minute organization. A conference call this afternoon featuring Terry McAuliffe and Hillary’s New Hampshire campaign director was filled with glowing references to how “solid” their NH election day organization is set up to be. Underlying feeling is that the effort on the ground was one of the many failings on Thursday.

UPDATE: Hillary campaign event in New Hampshire where she tells NH voters to “wait a minute” before declaring Obama the eventual winner.

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