Onetime front-runner tries evolving to survive

After the crowds went home and the campaign music stopped, Hillary Rodham Clinton faced reporters in a high school gym here and showed just how abruptly her fortunes had turned.

“If the campaign doesn’t evolve, it probably is dead,” she said.

The longtime front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination – the New York senator with $100 million, a slew of endorsements and a two-term president in her corner – goes into a New Hampshire contest today that could be make-or-break.

So Clinton, who had run one of the most heavily scripted campaigns in memory, is trying mightily to evolve. Since touching down in New Hampshire before dawn Friday, she has given herself a makeover, trying to appear feistier, more improvisational.

Clinton even forced a reevaluation of her famous stoicism. Tears welled in her eyes during an appearance Monday in Portsmouth. Asked how she keeps it together amid the rigors of daily campaigning, Clinton’s voice broke.

“It’s not easy. It’s not easy,” she said.

The voters applauded and later said they loved her rare display of emotion.

She has trotted out her 27-year-old daughter, Chelsea – a visual cue that she’s not a relic from the past. Stilted policy lectures have been shelved in favor of punchier campaign speeches.

Is it enough? For all that’s different about Clinton’s campaign, much is exactly the same.

On Saturday, she invited four young adults to spend an hour with her on her campaign bus. Clinton made sure to ask them about their lives and work. But there was no real attempt at an emotional connection – just a discourse on student loan policies and college affordability. Her focus is the head, not the heart.

At an event Monday afternoon in Dover, she urged the audience not to be seduced by Obama’s oratory.

“Words, no matter how beautifully delivered, are gone,” she told the crowd. “And what we judge most people by is not what they tell us, but what they do to us or for us.”

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