(See also: “Hillary wins round 2, shocking the Obama crowd” on Blast’s PSA Blog)

NASHUA, N.H. — Senator Hillary Clinton took an early lead and held on to defeat Senator Barack Obama.

The Associated press was the first to call the race for Clinton, NBC News followed before CNN around 11 p.m.

Obama was hoping to get a boost from college towns, but in the end he came up short.

Former Senator John Edwards finished a distant and disappointing third with about 17 percent of the vote.

Senator John McCain has won among the Republicans, it is projected. Iowa winner Mike Huckabee looks to finish third ahead of Rudy Giuliani

Turnout has been upwards of 70 percent statewide — over 500,000 votes.

McCain gave his victory speech around 9:30 p.m. local time. No word from Mitt Romney. Senator Obama conceded around 11 p.m.

Though he talked about winning and had the crowd cheering "Mich-i-gan" and "Mac-Is-Back," his enthusiasm giving a prepared speech seemed to be lacking … his crowd didn’t seem to mind though.

As the world looks to New Hampshire, turn to BLAST.

Stick with Blast’s political blogs, PSA and Touch of Class for more developments.

Blast’s reporters be updating their stories all night as returns come in and reactions start.

Trevor Timm reported from Nashua, N.H. Blast Magazine staff writers Heidi Buchanan and John Guilfoil and correspondents Colin Vallance, Kellen Rice and Ryan Rice contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — In what could become one of the most spectacular front-runner failures in presidential politics, rivaling that of Howard Dean in 2004 and Edward Muskie 1972, Hillary Clinton is now rumored to be considering whether or not to drop out of the election if she suffers a heavy loss in New Hampshire as she did in Iowa.

Senator Clinton is facing double defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire if current polls are indicative of the way the Tuesday night primary election will swing with Senator Barack Obama currently leading the way in New Hampshire with 39 percent to Clinton’s 29 percent in the most recent polls. (CNN, January 5).

Insiders are rumored to be split on the issue with advisers like James Carville who led her husband’s campaigns “urging her to fight it out through at least February and Super Tuesday, where she has a shot at thwarting Barack Obama in a big state” according to the Drudge Report.

“She can’t take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” laments one top campaign insider told the Drudge Report. “If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn’t want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats.”

Officially, Senator Clinton’s campaign has indicated that she has no reason whatsoever to drop out after only one loss. But with her national lead eroding, and fundraising numbers down it, will be interesting to watch how her strategy changes to handle her shattered myth of her inevitability. Given her show of emotion at an event in New Hampshire last night, her patriotism and passion finally showing through her thick skin, the speculation of her withdrawal is likely just that…

WASHINGTON — In recent conversations, many of my Democratic friends have begun camping out for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Now, I must say, being in Washington for the past year and half has somewhat, how do you put it, numbed me to politics. Presidential campaigns began rallying their troops nearly two years before the 2008 Election Day with a few candidates throwing their hats in the ring before the end of November 2006.

But among Democrats, I’m finding conversations about the candidates to be the same. People are voting for their candidates for hopeful reasons. Hillary supporters by and large are looking to her to lead us forward based on her experience. Or maybe there’s a hint of nostalgia, having gone astray the past eight years from the good old years with Bill. Hopeful Hillary supporters are hoping that she can bring us back to the good times but forward from the havoc that the “evil Republicans hath wrought on America” over the past couple of years.

People who oppose Senator Clinton cite her lack of passion — her voice, which is often seen as being harsh and cold. Senator Clinton has been criticized vastly for coming off as too harsh however, if she were to show a softer feminine side, would this change the views of people who may have held critiques of her since 1992?

While Obama may not have the advantage of being in the West Wing previously, he does have one thing to give his supporters — hope. For many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, he creates an excitement when he brings a Kennedy-esque youthfulness to the stage, much like he did after his victory in Iowa on Thursday night.

However, even those he manages to rouse excitement in are skeptical about his lack of experience on the Federal level which is something he will have to overcome when being compared to Hillary Clinton.

What is really going to differentiate the winner from the loser in this race to the top of the Democratic ticket is really going to be how the voters value experience over passion. Voters this year seem to agree that we need a candidate who will take us forward but it’s going to be a fight to determine who will be the better candidate to take us there.

So far, the media presentation of the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton candidacies has been one of opposites—the fresh newcomer versus the Washington elite; progressivism versus Democratic Leadership Council centrism; grassroots campaigning versus the biggest war chest in the game. But looking at the two Democratic frontrunners now shows how money, power and political clout have the ability to erase all such distinctions, making both candidates more similar and less interesting.

The opposites myth would have been much more valid long before the campaign, before Obama was a member of the U.S. Senate, a place where principled people and fearless progressives are not easy to come by. The Senator’s October 2002 speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago, having showcased a passionate condemnation of the march to war in Iraq, shows an Obama willing to take a politically unpopular position, confronting not only power but the consensus.

In the speech, neoconservative war architects Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz are "armchair, weekend warriors" and Karl Rove is a "political hack." Saudi Arabia and Egypt are our "so-called allies" who commit human rights violations. These are strong words, and one can’t help but be disappointed when remembering that this is the same guy who weaseled uncomfortably out of a simple question that arose after controversial comments by Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace: is homosexuality immoral? We had to hear it later through Obama’s spokesperson that he disagreed with Pace’s remark that it was. It appeared that the climate of Washington had claimed yet another progressive victim.

Eight days after Barack Obama delivered his anti-war speech in Chicago, Senator Hillary Clinton gave a speech of her own—on the floor of the U.S. Senate, explaining her vote in favor of the war authorization. In the speech, she says, "I come to this decision from the perspective of a Senator from New York who has seen all too closely the consequences of last year’s terrible attacks on our nation. In balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I know that I am."

Just as Obama’s speech is a reminder in our vapid and endless election season of how he once acted on principle, Clinton’s speech is a reminder that it was not only the Bush administration that evoked September 11th in their support of a wholly unrelated war in Iraq that acted on instinct—as Obama says, a war of "passion"—rather than facts.

The distrust– and indeed loathing–by the left of Hillary Clinton goes beyond her war vote and subsequent refusal to apologize for it. She also voted twice to authorize the Patriot Act and co-sponsored legislation that would make flag-burning a crime, an unconstitutional law according to Justice Scalia.

Given just the above, it’s quite clear as to who is the better pick for president in 2008. But a lot has changed since 2002.

Now, the former antiwar community organizer and Illinois State Senator is a presidential candidate who supports a slow withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, but not the cutting of funding for the war, which is the only way to really end it.

Hillary Clinton is a former unabashed hawk who has since grown critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the conflict, and supports a troop withdrawal but not fund slashing—the same stance as Barack.

On other issues, neither candidate is willing to say what both most likely believe—that to deny gay Americans the right to marry is discriminatory religious pandering. Both Senators support "universal and affordable health insurance," but neither supports the means to get us there: a single-payer system. Both think that we must deal with Iran diplomatically, but neither are leaving out any options.

Both of their websites are written in the language of campaign management: that banal, humorless, and odd code that sees "strengthening families" and "supporting parents" as key "issues." It’s the language that says a lot but means nothing, and in a political campaign you can always identify the candidates with the littlest chance of winning by how little they take refuge in its blandly safe vernacular.

So this, then, is what voters are left with: two mainstream Democrats bent on talking points but short on specifics, in favor of reform but not revolution, critical of the establishment only to a point.

The last scene of George Orwell’s Animal Farm famously described pigs dining with men and the rest of the animals unable anymore to tell the difference between the two. Looking at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton now is a little like being outside that window, trying to remember which one is the establishment candidate and which is the outsider.