Clinton struggles to catch up to Obama after Iowa caucuses

Her voice quavering, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton struggled Monday to avoid a highly damaging second straight defeat in the Democratic presidential race. \n“You’re the wave, and I’m riding it,” Sen. Barack Obama, the new Democratic front-runner, told several hundred voters who cheered him in 40-degree weather after being turned away from an indoor rally filled to capacity.\nObama has been drawing large, boisterous crowds since he won the Iowa caucuses last week, and a spate of pre-primary polls showed him powering to a lead in New Hampshire as well.\nClinton runs second in the surveys, with former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina third, and the former first lady and her aides seemed to be bracing for another setback.\nAt one stop, she appeared to struggle with her emotions when asked how she copes with the grind of the campaign – but her words still had bite. “Some of us are ready and some of us are not,” she said in remarks aimed at Obama, less than four years removed from the Illinois Legislature.\nObama won his Iowa victory on a promise of bringing change to Washington, trumping Clinton’s stress on experience. She has struggled to find her footing in the days since, at the same time insisting she is in the race to stay.\nSen. Clinton’s aides have urged her to show more passion and emotion – including laughter – to give voters a sense of her warmer side.\nBy coincidence or not, she did so as she set out on a final day in New Hampshire.