Political reality will dampen the ambitions and pledges of her Democratic presidential primary opponents, Hillary Clinton said yesterday in Concord.

Other Democratic candidates "say things like, 'We're going to go and make it happen,' " Clinton said. "You've got to get the votes. . . . And that very often means you've got to compromise, which is not a word that people in a Democratic primary like to hear, because we all want to think that we can just go in and do exactly what we believe in and make it happen. Well, the fact is, you can't."

By stressing the importance of political success - even when it involves compromise and bipartisan alliances - Clinton seemed to respond to one of her Democratic rivals. Yesterday in New Hampshire, former North Carolina senator John Edwards decried what he described as a "corrupt" Washington system and implied that Clinton was part of that establishment. Describing himself as the "change" candidate, a moniker adopted by many Democratic candidates, Edwards criticized governance rooted in political caution.

Clinton never mentioned her Democratic opponents by name. But in response to several questions at a Concord house party, she constructed an argument for her victory that touched on comments made by Edwards.

Years of political attacks have hardened Clinton and given her insight into Republican tactics, she said in response to a question about how she plans to beat a Republican in the general election.

Republicans "will go after anybody we nominate. Anyone who thinks that this election will be a runaway because it's so self-evident that we have to have a Democrat I don't think understands the intensity of the campaign that they will run," Clinton said. "It is important that our nominee have no illusions about the difficulty of this race. I have none."

Republican strategist Karl Rove highlighted Clinton's relatively high negative poll numbers last week, calling her a "fatally flawed" candidate. "There is no frontrunner who has entered the primary season with negatives as high as she has in the history of modern polling," Rove said on Rush Limbaugh's radio program.

A USA Today / Gallup poll conducted earlier this month reported that 49 percent of voters surveyed had an unfavorable opinion of Clinton. For Edwards, that figure was 35 percent, and for Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama it was 34 percent. Compared with Clinton, however, many more voters had either no opinion of or had never heard of Edwards or Obama.

Clinton cast those poll numbers in a positive light yesterday, arguing that years of Republican attacks have already unearthed any potentially damaging information from her past. Running for U.S. Senate from New York, Clinton said she was able to break down those negative impressions by interacting with voters on the campaign trail.

It's "fair to say that the tactic used effectively will be to drive up the negatives of whoever our nominee is, and it will all be fresh information. It will all be, 'Oh, you didn't know. Let us tell you. Let us paint a caricature,' " Clinton said of Republican tactics. "Whereas I have the somewhat mixed but rather fortunate blessing of already starting with those negatives. And for me, that's a plus."

Apart from Republican attacks, Clinton argued that her political experience would equip her "to handle things I have no control over" in the general election.

Her remarks peeled back the curtain, ever so slightly, on the possible scenarios Clinton is considering in her general election strategy.

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself 'What if? What if?,' " Clinton said. "But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world. So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that as well."

Years of Republican attacks have left Clinton with "rhino skin that no one else has," Neal Byles, an English teacher at Winnisquam Regional High School, said after listening to Clinton. But talk of Clinton's political experience also raised what, for Byles, was an uncomfortable idea: A potential return to a second Clinton presidency after two Bush presidencies. "That's a level of legacy that the Founding Fathers not only didn't expect, but were very much opposed to."

As for the rhetoric of political change, "I think it's one of those ideas that's appealing in theory," Byles said, pointing to the 2004 Democratic primary, where John Kerry beat Washington outsider Howard Dean.

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