MANCHESTER, N.H. – Both Hillary and Bill Clinton knew she would lose here — but not by this much.

Now, after a drubbing so serious as to call into question every aspect of her campaign from her data operation to her message, the wounded front-runner and her allies are actively preparing to retool their campaign, according to Clinton allies.


Staffing and strategy will be reassessed. The message, which so spectacularly failed in New Hampshire, where she was trailing by 21 points when she appeared before her supporters to concede to Bernie Sanders, is also going to be reworked – with race at the center of it.

Clinton is set to campaign with the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, unarmed African-Americans who died in incidents involving a neighborhood watch representative and law enforcement officers, respectively. And the campaign, sources said, is expected to push a new focus on systematic racism, criminal justice reform, voting rights and gun violence that will mitigate concerns about her lack of an inspirational message.

“The gun message went silent in New Hampshire,” remarked one ally close to the campaign. “Guns will come back in a strong way.” She is expected to highlight the problem of gun violence as the leading cause of death among African-American men as she campaigns in South Carolina on Friday.

In her concession speech, which she gave about 30 minutes after the polls closed with Chelsea and Bill Clinton standing behind her, Clinton began to preview that new message — framing her remarks around a call for human rights and an end to discrimination.

“Where people are held back by injustice anywhere in America, that demands action,” she said. “We also have to break through the barriers of bigotry.” She added that “immigrant families shouldn’t have to lie awake at night listening for a knock at the door.”

Twice, she referenced her visit to Flint, Michigan, this week, a largely African-American city in crisis because of lead-contaminated water that has affected at least 8,000 children under the age of 6. “It isn’t right that the kids I met in Flint on Sunday night were poisoned because their governor wanted to save money,” she told the New Hampshire crowd.

The race issue was also front and center in the memo released by campaign manager Robby Mook before the polls closed, just minutes before the race was called for Sanders.

“It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for a Democrat to win the nomination without strong levels of support among African American and Hispanic voters,” Mook said in the three-page memo. “And a Democrat who is unable to inspire strong levels of support in minority communities will have no credible path to winning the presidency in the general election.”

Mook — who has been laser-focused on the first four voting states since the campaign’s launch in April — on a morning conference call with allies downplayed the significance of the early states. Instead, he stressed that 56 percent of delegates will be selected in March, compared to just 4 percent of delegates up for grabs in the first four voting states, according to participants on the call.

Other allies close to the campaign tried to rationalize the loss by insisting that New Hampshire was always going to be Sanders country — that if it weren't for the emotional connection that both Bill and Hillary Clinton have to the first-in-the-nation primary that twice has bailed out their presidential hopes, in 1992 for Bill and in 2008 for Hillary — they would have been smarter skipping it all together.

But the Clinton campaign chose to invest heavily here. They had more than 50 staffers on the ground for months, 11 field offices and eight “get out the vote” centers. The campaign said more than 10,000 volunteers took part in the campaign.

And as the days grew closer to the voting, with Clinton still trailing Sanders by large margins in the polls, friends tried to comfort themselves and the candidate by telling her she ran the best campaign she could have.

“I feel like we did not leave anything undone or anything on the table,” said Terry Shumaker, a close campaign ally who co-chaired both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns in the state.

In recent days, friends tried to buck up the candidate, telling her that if Sanders won big it would be because he tapped into anger and discontent in the electorate that she couldn’t have prevented. One ally recalled telling her that the elevation Sanders and Donald Trump was beyond her control, and that she nodded in response.

“I didn’t want her second-guessing herself,” the ally said.

But her loss was particularly devastating among young people, including young women, a demographic she once hoped to win over.

And Democrats criticized the Clinton campaign's response to Sanders' surge.

“Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright are not going to appeal to millennial women,” said Marist pollster Lee Miringoff, referring to two Clinton surrogates who appeared to try and shame young women who are supporting Sanders into backing Clinton while campaigning in New Hampshire. “Bill Clinton lacing into Bernie Sanders isn’t going to work, either. People want inspiration and Bernie Sanders makes the case that his campaign is about big ideas. If you want to talk to young voters, political revolution up against incremental change is a tough case to make.”

Clinton acknowledged the problem in her concession speech. “I know I have some work to do, particularly with young people,” she said. “Even if they are not supporting me now, I’m supporting them.”

Another missed opportunity for her campaign here: she failed to create any memorable moments on the ground, like the scene in a Portsmouth coffee shop eight years ago when Clinton finally let her guard down and grew emotional and teary-eyed talking about how she keeps going.

But Miringoff said the dynamics will change out of New Hampshire. “The question becomes, can Sanders modify the basis of his appeal in a state like South Carolina, where about 60 percent of Democratic voters are African American?" he said.

There is also some hope in Clinton circles that Sanders is finally starting to get some of the vetting he needs from voters and the press. Bill Clinton, who over the weekend ramped up his attacks on Sanders, has in recent days told people that he feels those attacks on Sanders -- and how he is also a regular politician playing the game like everyone else -- are starting to sink in. It’s too late to make a difference in New Hampshire, Clinton has told confidants, but it’s about what’s next.

The former president also said in private conversations that he thinks Sanders’ weakness on foreign policy is also starting to gain traction -- that most voters in New Hampshire know that North Korea has one dictator, not multiple, as he stated in last Thursday’s debate.

But for Clinton, an over-arching question remains.

“People want inspiration,” Miringoff added, “and they’re not getting that from Hillary Clinton.”

