Clinton camp expects to lose New Hampshire, reports say  Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is strongly favored within Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) camp to score a major second victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary, according to Tuesday's front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
“We’re all resolved to the probability that’s she’s not going to win New Hampshire, and the mood has turned very despondent — fatalistic, probably,” one of Clinton’s leading fund-raisers told the Times Monday on condition of anonymity.
The Washington Post also says a New Hampshire loss is expected.
"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton braced for a second jarring defeat to Obama (Ill.), her voice breaking as she told a questioner in Portsmouth of her experience here, 'It's not easy,'" the authors write. "Her campaign, its air of inevitability gone, is now setting its sights on the large block of Feb. 5 primary contests to salvage her hopes of winning the Democratic nomination."
The Journal also asserts that associates are pressing for New York's junior senator and erstwhile first lady to drop out if she loses big in the Granite State.
"Some Clinton associates have begun lobbying for her early exit if she loses the primary by a big margin, as polls suggest she could," the piece says, though it does not quote anyone in the piece saying it. "Several Senate colleagues who have sat on the fence are now in talks with Obama advisers about endorsing the freshman Illinois senator over his more experienced colleague."
Clinton said she'd press on in an interview with CBS Monday. Her husband, Bill Clinton, placed second in New Hampshire and went on to win the presidency in 1992.
"Whatever happens tomorrow, we're going on," she told CBS. "We're going to keep going until the end of the process on February 5. I've always felt that this is going to be a very tough, hard-fought election, and I'm ready for that."
Clinton has also begun to feel the sting of tepid fundraising.
"Clearly, by every measure, I hear they are in a real financial crunch," one 'prominent fundraiser' told TIME late Monday. "Here's the dilemma: You have a situation where there clearly is a full court press to raise more money, but considering the state of decline of the campaign, there's a real question of whether people are going to want to give. It's more than just raising money; you've got to give people a sense of potential."
"Clinton's travails have ignited infighting within her organization, much of it aimed at pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn," the Journal says. "Critics say Mr. Penn underestimated the electorate's appetite for change as the campaign promoted her Washington experience, a charge he contests. "On the very first day of the campaign, Sen. Clinton talked about the bold change we need, and the campaign slogan began 'Ready for Change.' ... So it has always been a central part of the campaign," he said in an email.
Clinton advisers, however, told the Times her fundraising situation was "not dire."
A national poll Monday showed Obama obliterating Clinton's lead in national polls of Democratic voters, and maintaining a solid edge in New Hampshire.
For the first time, Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee has also vaulted to a national position among Republican voters, a USA Today/Gallup poll said.
It said that senators Obama and Clinton each drew 33 percent support from Democrats, compared to an 18-point lead for the former first lady in mid-December, well before Obama won last Thursday's Democratic race in Iowa.
All other polls have given Clinton a commanding lead among Democrats at the national level. But after his stunning success in Iowa, Obama is riding a wave that could see him to a second win in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
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