Hillary Clinton insisted that her stepped-up operational tempo was always the plan. | AP Clinton opens the spigots on Sanders She insists that she doesn't pay attention to polls and is 'not nervous at all' about Sanders' recent surge.

For months, Hillary Clinton's campaign played it relatively cool with Bernie Sanders.

That's over now.


With the clock ticking toward Iowa and New Hampshire and her poll numbers on the wane in those early states, Clinton and her staffers are blitzing the talk shows and Twitter, hammering the Vermont senator on everything from guns to health care to taxes to sheer electability — all at a furious pace that almost rivals Donald Trump's.

Clinton played notoriously hard-to-get during the first phase of her campaign — so much so that it was considered breaking news when she agreed to a sit-down interview with CNN.

But over the past 10 days, she has appeared no fewer than nine times on five major networks — CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and MSNBC, including live three morning-show appearances Wednesday. The former secretary of state has averaged one interview a day since Friday, Jan. 8, when she called into MSNBC’s "Hardball." Three days earlier, she also appeared in an extensive sit-down interview with “Hardball” host Chris Matthews. And the appearances don’t seem to be slowing down: She’ll appear on NBC's “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" and sit down with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday, all at the same time her campaign looks to get a boost amid sagging poll numbers.

Before the crack of dawn on Wednesday, Clinton rose to assure George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "Good Morning America" in person that she was not concerned—that, despite Bernie Sanders' blazing poll numbers, despite the fact that he overtook her in Iowa and opened up a comfortable double-digit lead in New Hampshire, despite the fact Sanders hours earlier had disputed her daughter Chelsea's assertion that he wanted to scrap Obamacare entirely, despite the fact that the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary are mere weeks away, the Clinton campaign is not sweating the challenge. And then she appeared on NBC's "Today" with Savannah Guthrie, again rejecting the notion that her campaign is suddenly feeling pressure from Sanders. An hour later, Clinton fielded similar questions from the co-hosts of "CBS This Morning."

Clinton insisted that her stepped-up operational tempo was always the plan, that she doesn't pay attention to polls and is "not nervous at all" about Sanders' recent surge.

But with the glow of magnanimity surrounding Sanders' "damn emails" debate moment from October largely faded, both campaigns have sharpened their attacks. In the past, Sanders would speak of his plans to reform Wall Street in broad terms that only hinted at his differences with his primary opponent, while Clinton branded herself as a "practical" progressive who could get things done in Washington. Not anymore: Over the last week, Clinton and her surrogates have assailed Sanders' ideas in increasingly pugilistic terms.

On Monday, she rang the opening bell, saying it was time for a "spirited debate" over their policy differences and warning that Sanders' plans would mean "ripping up Obamacare and starting over." "If that's the kind of revolution he's talking about, I am worried, folks," she added. "I think that would be a big problem."

On Tuesday, she told an Iowa crowd that the time had come to "get real" about the candidates and their differences. In New Hampshire, meanwhile, Chelsea Clinton was assailing Sanders' health care plan as one that could potentially undo the Affordable Care Act because it would give too much influence to governors, a majority of which are Republican.

Then on Wednesday morning, when the Vermont senator's campaign released his plan to pay for his economic agenda, Clinton's campaign was ready with a coordinated Twitter assault. The message: Sanders isn't being honest about how he'll fund his expensive plans, especially his $15 trillion call for single-payer health care, a figure that a top Sanders policy adviser did not dispute to The Wall Street Journal in September.

Clinton's spokesman Brian Fallon quickly tweeted, "He left out the $15 trillion proposal that requires across-the-board tax increases on working families? Go figure." "If you listen hard, you can almost hear [senior campaign strategist Tad Devine] yelling at poor [senior policy advisor] Warren Gunnels on phone abt why it's so hard to find new way to get $15T," Fallon continued in another message.

"Can't level with the American people that $15 trillion for health care would mean a tax increase across the board," campaign chairman John Podesta chimed in.

Deputy communications director Christina Reynolds accused Sanders of "misleading voters" about his "$15 trillion hole." "Not what he's promised," she tweeted, noting that Sanders was backing away from a pledge to release the details of his health care plan before Feb. 1. "And not what Iowa caucus-goers deserve."

Devine initially declined to respond, letting stand spokesman Michael Briggs' statement that the Clinton campaign was "engaging in false and misleading attacks" instead of clarifying how she intended to pay for her own proposals.

The Sanders campaign then put out another statement later Wednesday afternoon, with Briggs accusing Clinton of flip-flopping and engaging in the same tactics she once ascribed to Karl Rove, namely her proclamation in 2008 to primary opponent Barack Obama that Democrats attacking each other on universal health care "undermines core Democratic values" and gives "aid and comfort" to the special interests and "their allies in the Republican Party."

The Sanders campaign didn't stop there — it then began playing up an old photograph from Clinton through Twitter and email. In the 1993 photo Clinton and Sanders are talking, and Clinton has written the note "To Bernie Sanders with thanks for your commitment to real health care access for all Americans and best wishes - Hillary Rodham Clinton 1993." The email came with the subject line "Happy Days."

But Clinton doesn't seem inclined to stop.

"You know, I’ve been laying out very specific policies for months now," she said on Wednesday, "and telling people how I would pay for them. I’m asking that Senator Sanders does the same thing. We need to move now from generalization to specifics so people can see what the differences are. That’s what I’ve always planned to do, and that is what I’m doing."

At the same time, Clinton has been lowering expectations about her ability to win Iowa and New Hampshire, where Sanders leads her by 5 and 14 percentage points, respectively, according to the most recent Quinnipiac University polls.

“I’m gonna do everything I can to win as big a margin as possible in the caucus, then go to the primary, but this is a national campaign,” Clinton told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on Tuesday. “Remember, I campaigned all the way into June last time, and I have always thought that given the unpredictability and the changes in people’s concerns going into this election, that we wouldn’t know exactly how the outcome would be for a couple of cycles of these primaries and caucuses.”

Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.