Analysis: Stayin' alive

MANCHESTER, N.H. - They're back. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain's victories Tuesday night keeps them alive, but both face a series of challenges ahead.

Averting the blowout loss that many polls had predicted allowed Clinton's campaign to portray the result in the Democratic primary as a stunning turnabout. Given how dire her situation had appeared just hours earlier, the spin was at least plausible.

For McCain, who had been left for dead seven months ago, his comeback victory puts him back in the Republican presidential race -- but not as a clear front-runner. "I don't think this makes him the national leader" among Republican candidates, said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster. "I don't think there is a national leader. I think this keeps it completely wide open."

A compressed nominating schedule -- with 25 states voting in the next 20 days -- combined with the fragmentation of Republican voters among the leading candidates, means that McCain still faces determined challenges from Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani.

Romney said he was determined to "fight across this nation" and Huckabee said his third-place finish gave him continued "momentum." And Guliani said, "Think of it as the kickoff."

The mythology of McCain

But even so, McCain supporters said the victory -- which they say could not have happened without the candidate's dogged persistence -- shows McCain's staying power.

Former Sen. Phil Gramm, whom McCain asked midyear to play the fiscal "Grim Reaper" and decide how many aides had to be fired, recalled "extraordinarily small" crowds at the start of McCain's mid-September "No Surrender" tour, a relaunch of the campaign using the military theme trumpeting his approach both to Iraq and his campaign. Gramm said it should have been a humiliating moment that would have chased most candidates from the race.

"If you go back and look at McCain in this dark period, he performed. He did his job. It wasn't pitiful. It wasn't pathetic. It was courageous," he said.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, national co-chairman of McCain's campaign, joked that McCain's Lazarus-like rise could become the latest addition to the McCain mythology -- "another chapter of John McCain, American hero."

Supporters hope the victory will yield financial support that can help McCain rebuild his operation.

Takeaway lessons moving forward

Clinton also is now likely to find it easier to raise money than she would have if she had been drubbed by Obama. There were lessons from her victory that could prove instructive as Clinton and Obama head this new phase of the campaign.

The internal squabbling about her campaign's management is likely to be quieted. And she will no doubt go forth making the obvious comparison: that just like her husband 16 years ago, she is now well positioned to battle her way to the Democratic nomination.

Clinton solidified her position with Democrats and won support with her emphasis in recent days on her gender and experience. Obama enjoyed again, as he did in Iowa, support from independents voters. But many of the states where the Democrats are heading now allow only Democrats to vote in their party's primary.

In Obama, Clinton is facing an opponent who has seemed over the last week or two to embody a movement rather than to be a mere political candidate. Her performance suggested that Obama is a vulnerable candidate. The Clinton campaign has already signaled that it would go after Obama, contending that he needs more inspection and vetting, that he is not ready to serve in the Oval Office and that he is too ideologically out of step with the country to win a general election.

Obama will certainly come under new examination and will be pushed -- to use the phrase that Clinton used, borrowing from Mario Cuomo -- to see if he can match the poetry of his campaign promises with the prose of what it takes to govern.

The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.