Get ready to see an intensely fought contest for the Democratic party’s Presidential nomination between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton. In fact, in the wake of his defeat in the New Hampshire primary, Obama is basically saying: “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

And there are signs this is already happening. The “issue”: did Hillary Clinton REALLY cry or not? A big mistake? (We say “yes.”)

No matter. Keep watching the main event which will be Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton Hillary and Bill Clinton since it promises to be lively indeed.

Barack Obama talked of introducing some Chicago smackdown to his politics of hope Wednesday, seeking a rebound after Hillary Rodham Clinton grasped victory in the New Hampshire primary.

…..Obama responded not just to his Democratic rival’s New Hampshire primary win but to attacks on him by her husband, former President Clinton.

“I think that Senator Clinton, obviously, is a formidable and tough candidate, and we have to make sure that we take it to them just like they take it to us,” the Illinois senator said. “I come from Chicago politics. We’re accustomed to rough and tumble.”

Obama is bidding for resurgence in South Carolina and Nevada, which vote this month. On Wednesday, he received the endorsement of the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union local in Nevada in addition to the backing of the state’s chapter of the Service Employees International Union.

Bill Clinton complained in New Hampshire that Obama was getting a free pass from the scrutiny turned on Hillary Clinton and likened the Illinois senator’s campaign to a “fairy tale.” Obama shot back Wednesday that “the real fairy tale is, I think, Bill Clinton suggesting somehow that we’ve been just taking a cakewalk here.”

But there may be perils for Obama if he decides to wade into uncertain waters.

For instance, his campaign chairman has now created a mini-controversy that is about as reprehensible as the controversy involving surrogates going after Obama. File THIS one in the they-should-have-known-better department:

The Tears are now officially an issue in Campaign 2008.

Obama’s national campaign co-chair, Jesse Jackson, Jr., just went on MSNBC and appeared to question Hillary’s tears, which he called “tears that melted the Granite State,” adding that those tears “moved voters.”

He also suggested that Hillary was crying about “her appearance.”

There’s more (go to the link since we have a limit on silliness on THIS site) but the fact that Obama’s camp is now going to wade into the politics of pettiness, provincialism and apparently psychics (does Jesse Jackson, Jr. read minds?) suggests that “hope” and “change” and “experience” are all going to take a back seat to trying to paint another candidate as lying, manipulative or (in the case of Bill Clinton) trying to make press coverage of a candidate the new issue when things go bad for a given candidate.

And Andrew Sullivan thinks Obama has real reason for concern:

This is always about the Clintons. If the Democrats have to lose to McCain in November so Hillary Cliton can become the first female nominee for any major party, that’s a price the country will just have to pay.

Now they have to either kill or coopt the hope that Obama has unleashed. Just as Bush coopted McCain’s New Hampshire message in 2000, so Clinton is coopting Obama’s message in 2007. She didn’t find her own voice; she took Obama’s, removed the eloquence and added a spice of identity politics.

She is the Bush of the Democrats. Which is why Obama must defeat her.

But “stealing the thunder” of a political foe is not unusual in politics.

What is unusual is the amount of passion Obama and his message stir up among the young, and even some Republicans. So if Clinton The Clintons win the nomination through a bruising battle where she and her camp have to essentially take Obama apart, raise his negatives, and (continue to) use surrogates to attack him then her nomination may not be worth much, for two reasons:

(1) If by early March it looks as if Obama is not going to get the nomination or is having trouble, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg could jump in. The Bloomberg boomlet was reaching its peak…until Obama won in Iowa. Then suddenly, there was talk of it deflating since he would have attracted so many independent voters and his message was change. If it looks like the Demmies will be divided, the Mayor could make the leap.

(2) Even if Bloomberg doesn’t get in, if the nomination is won by tactics that Obama’s supporters feel are smelly or unfair, Clinton could be not the new Bush but the new Hubert Humphrey — LBJ’s Vice President who won the Democratic nomination only to lose to Richard Nixon, partially because anti-war Democrats and supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy stayed home on Election Day.

The Clintons have always been skillful politicians and they knew how to build a coalition but this one will test all of their skills.

And Obama? Much will depend on the extent of his hardball politics.

The danger is that his bigger message — the one that turned not just young people on but clearly many members of the news media — will be obscured if the campaign degenerates into something that sounds an episode of the late, unlamented CNN show “Crossfire.” If that happens, “hope” will have morphed into “hopeless.”