After Obama win, Clinton warns of "false hopes"

By Claudia Parsons

NASHUA, New Hampshire (Reuters) - New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, reeling from defeat in Iowa at the hands of Barack Obama, urged Democratic voters on Friday not to build up "false hopes" by choosing an inexperienced presidential candidate.

In Iowa, which kicked off the process of choosing the next U.S. president with its caucuses on Thursday, the former first lady finished a disappointing third, nine percentage points behind Obama and narrowly behind former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

That contest turned into a battle between Clinton's message of experience against Obama's of new hope which the Illinois freshman senator won decisively.

Clinton, 60, a New York senator who would be the first woman U.S. president, has led national opinion polls for months and was once seen as the all-but-inevitable Democratic presidential nominee for the November election.

But Obama, who would be the first black president, goes into next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary with all the momentum on his side, anticipating a substantial bounce in the polls from his Iowa triumph. Many analysts now believe New Hampshire has turned into a must-win contest for Clinton.

"This is a new day, this is a new state," Clinton told reporters after arriving in the New England state. Despite her loss, she said she would continue to contrast her resume with Obama's comparative youth and inexperience.

"We can't have false hopes. We've got to have a person who can walk into that Oval office on day one and start doing the hard work that it takes to deliver change," she said.

Asked how disappointed she was about Iowa, Clinton said: "I was never a front-runner of any significance in Iowa. Iowa, I knew, was always going to be hard for me."