Clinton Will Do Well in "National Primary" on February 5

One of my reasons for being skeptical of talk of a Hillary Clinton collapse after a Barack Obama win in New Hampshire is the fact that 22 states have scheduled primaries on February 5, including California and New York.

In the event of an Obama victory in the Granite State, the Clinton campaign could have remained in the race, seeking to blunt the Illinois Senator's momentum with an effective nationwide campaign.

With Clinton pulling out a win in New Hampshire after all, her national strategy heading into the February 5 voting looks better than ever. The Los Angeles Times has the details:

The big news Tuesday was not merely that Hillary Rodham Clinton scored an unexpected comeback victory. Emerging from that win was something more durable: a road map that could guide the former first lady to the Democratic presidential nomination.

The margin in the New Hampshire primary was razor-thin. But she clearly beat Barack Obama among core Democratic voters, the very bloc that will grow in influence as the nomination fight continues in the coming weeks.

Strip away the independents who made up about four in 10 participants in Tuesday's Democratic primary, thanks to the state's open-balloting rules, and Clinton outpaced Obama among registered Democrats 45% to 34%, according to an exit poll conducted for a media consortium.

Moreover, she beat the Illinois senator among women - a crucial group for her and one that she lost in last week's Iowa caucuses - and among lower-income households and older voters.

"This is an amazing comeback story for her over the course of a relatively few days," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist who advised Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

"It would seem to indicate that she has the ability to remobilize her constituents."

If her advantage among Democrats holds true in the flurry of primaries set for Feb. 5 - when core Democrats are expected to be more dominant - Clinton could regain the traction that seemed lost when last week's defeat in Iowa ended her yearlong reign as the Democratic front-runner.

I also don't think Hillary's taken advantage of Obama's weaknesses. Had she lost last night, it's likely we would have seen a really nasty round of mudslinging coming from the Clinton camp. As one of my commenters suggested:

If Obama wins big today, as is expected, he will be the focus of the most vicious political attacks seen in decades, initiated by Clinton interests. Drugs, race and "experience" (among other topics) will be fair game. Look for the campaign to get very ugly between now and February 5th.

See the earlier comment thread here.

An interesting hypothesis holds that the Clintons are too invested themselves in identity politics and racial authenticity to mount some type of salacious, racially-tinged attacks along the lines of the provocative Harold Ford "call me" ad from the 2006 midterm.

A key test of Obama's transcendental racial appeal is whether a Clinton ad of this sort would trigger a backlash, or whether a "call me" style attack on Obama would indeed elicitsa good-ole boy effect effect in public opinion.

Time (and polling) will tell.