As she watches her support melt away, the horror on the face of Hillary Clinton sometimes resembles that of C.S. Lewis’s Snow Queen on seeing summer return to Narnia.

Today, as New Hampshire voted in unseasonably warm weather that turned snow into slush, a woman who once held a solid lead was already looking beyond the early primaries for any sign that a comeback could yet be staged.

Aides have suggested that she still has four weeks to find an answer to Barack Obama’s youthful idealism before a red letter date early next month, when half the delegates for the Democratic nominating Convention will be chosen.

Frank Luntz, a pollster, is one of several pundits predicting that Mrs Clinton remains “the most likely nominee”, partly because he believes that Mr Obama will be unable to generate the same level of excitement in what is in effect a national primary. Increasingly, the campaign now goes from “retail to wholesale”, moving on from the intimate, intense, contests held in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Mrs Clinton, whose original strategy was designed to secure early wins and for her to be seen as the inevitable nominee before February, has now been welling up with tears on campaign stops and is reported to be considering major surgery to her inner circle of advisers.

Her remaining hopes are focused on “Super Tuesday” — February 5 — when populous states such as California, New York and New Jersey hold primaries. Although the most recent poll suggested that her long-standing lead nationally has been chopped away by Mr Obama, with whom she is now running neck and neck, it still held more comfort for her than surveys in the early voting states.

Nor should it be overlooked that Mrs Clinton already has more delegates than any other candidate because of support from “unpledged” party officials. And she may gain still more when she stands unchallenged in the Michigan primary next Tuesday — if a wrangle over rules is resolved and they are allowed to take their seats in the convention.

She once also had high hopes of winning the Nevada caucuses with support from Hispanic voters, but with the powerful Culinary Workers’ Union in Nevada rumoured to be backing Mr Obama, a state dominated by Las Vegas is no longer a surefire bet for recouping early losses.

The next week South Carolina holds its primary, but polls suggest that Mr Obama’s recent momentum has finally persuaded African Americans — who comprise half the Democratic electorate in this Southern state and who were formerly sceptical that a black man would be a strong presidential candidate — to back him.

Florida, which holds its primary on January 26, may be more fertile ground for Mrs Clinton because it is a “closed primary” in which independents, who have flocked to Mr Obama, will not be allowed to vote. But its 110 delegates are also barred from the convention.

Fighting on to Super Tuesday will require Mrs Clinton to raise vast sums of cash from possibly reluctant donors to pay for an “air war” of negative advertising against Mr Obama — and the co-operation from a media that she believes has not subjected her rival to proper scrutiny. But she believes that the Obama bubble will burst. In a television interview, she suggested that Democrats could come to regret choosing the “untested” candidate as their nominee if, or when, Republicans sink their teeth into him in the general election in November.

“At some point the free ride ends. Maybe it ends now, maybe it ends in a month, maybe it ends in the general election,” she said. “You cannot be elected president if you do not withstand the tough questions.”

Bill Clinton also appeared baffled at how Mr Obama had been given such a soft time by the press, asking why he had been allowed to trumpet his opposition to the Iraq war without once being challenged for saying in 2004 that he did not know how he would have voted. “Give me a break,” said the former President. “This is the biggest fairytale I’ve ever seen.”

For crying out loud

— Hillary Clinton’s teary moment in New Hampshire on Monday was the latest in a fabled history of presidential candidates choking up while on the trail in the Granite State. Such shows of emotion can be make-or-break moments

— She fought back tears in response to a voter’s question in a Portsmouth coffee shop. The tears appeared genuine; probably the result of a gruelling campaign that is in danger of collapsing.

— “My question is very personal: how do you do it?” Marianne Pernold Young, 64, a photographer, asked Mrs Clinton at a breakfast with undecided voters. “How do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?”

— Mrs Clinton’s eyes filled: “It’s not easy. It’s not easy.” Her voice cracking, she went on: “I couldn’t do it if I didn’t passionately believe it was the right thing to do”

— In 1972 Ed Muskie, Democratic frontrunner, lashed out at a newspaper for “attacking” his wife. He appeared to wipe away a tear. The apparent show of weakness destroyed his campaign — despite his insisting that he was wiping a snowflake from his face

— In 2004 John Kerry broke down when an unemployed mother spoke about her hardships. He won New Hampshire and the nomination

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