Month: January 2008

They still get a chance to run against Clinton in the fall:

What it actually does is breathe new life into the GOP. The Obama juggernaut was going to be tough to take on. The ‘change’ fever sweeping the nation is not going to want to see Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton… I, as an impure conservative, prefer the GOP to battle Clinton. Or at least I would like to see Obama take some hits before he wins the nomination. So a win for Hillary is a win for the GOP.

Hannity looked pumped too. A RedStater salivates:

We might just get our chance at Hillary if Obama can’t do it.

Well, on the New Hampshire delegate count: 12 to Clinton’s 11. If I’m reading it right. Fired up! Ready to go!

Now buried behind many other posts, here’s my take on what happened in New Hampshire. Part of me is crushed. But part of me is happy to see two candidates forced to battle it out in a long slog. We find out more that way. They grow more. More people get a say. That’s a good thing. And I should say that although I remain a passionate Obama supporter among the Democrats, I also feel little compunction in recognizing that Clinton did have something of a personal breakthrough in the last few days. The brittle exterior cracked. What was beneath is more human and less calculated. She was forced to explain from the heart why she really wants to win.  People responded. As they would.

I have no doubt that Obama is the better candidate, for America and the world. And I believe after this very close race, he will go on to Nevada and South Carolina stronger for not winning in a wave of euphoria. Nothing worth winning comes easily. But Clinton is learning from Obama as he has from her. And both are growing as a result. This is a good thing.

(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty.)

Matt makes an excellent point:

If you look at the breakdown of the results, you’d need to believe that white women, but not white men, are inclined to lie to pollsters about that.

There was a backlash by women against the media’s coronation of Obama. There may well have been something about Clinton implying that she was an older woman who was being passed over by a less experienced man for a job. That may well have resonated with some women, especially after she seemed actually human in the last two days. Once Clinton was weak enough to ask for their help, they gave it to her. But that’s not the kind of thing that happens twice. And she’s the front-runner again. For a while.

Just a smattering of your thoughts:

It’s times like this when I remember that political parties, not the American public, choose the nomines. The Democrats turned out for Hillary. If they want her, they can have her. Just please God, give me McCain as the alternative. Otherwise, I’m out. Once I’ve known hope, I can’t settle for something else.

A re-roller:

As a lifelong Democrat, come February 6th, I am rerolling (as the kids with their fancy computer games like to say) Independent. This party would rather brawl with, and lose to, the Republicans out in the schoolyard than try to come together and achieve anything loftier than keeping Roe v. Wade as good law.

Someone get me a McCain ’08 sticker … These current Dems would have nominated Adlai Stevenson over Kennedy in 1960.

McCain hurt Obama:

I have a feeling that a lot of the Independent voters liked both Obama and McCain and when they saw that Obama had a 10 point lead they opted to vote for McCain who looked to be in a much tighter race.

Madder than ever:

This loss by Obama might be the best thing for him if the reaction of my wife and I are any indication. This Clinton victory is making us mad at hell. Rather than be resentful of the voters of New Hampshire, it is propelling us into becoming more involved in the campaign under the premise of "we’re not going to let this happen in our state". Neither one of us could handle the partisan awfulness that would be the reality of the Clinton presidency. She is not an agent of change, she is an agent of self-importance.

It was a good chance to see how he handles defeats and setbacks; based on his speech, he handles it pretty damn well.

I said my piece here, but I do think that if Obama struggles and fights and wins a long, tough campaign, he will help dispel some of the sense that he is a neophyte and inexperienced – his major liabilities in the fall. This can help him. He’s the under-dog again. And he can – and, I think, will still win. 

 

A reader writes:

I think Obama won Iowa because voters resented Hillary’s coronation.

I think Hillary won New Hampshire because voters resented Obama’s coronation.

Also: you may be moved to transcendent inspiration and hope listening to Obama’s rhetoric, but MANY, MANY of us hear nothing more than beautifully articulated platitudes. As an underdog (Iowa) maybe it boosts him over the sour, dour front-runner; but as the front-runner, it comes off as disingenuous.

Pity me. I’m with Fred.

Now Obama has his real adversity moment. And we’ll see whether he rises to this challenge. This is what campaigns are supposed to do. They are making them both better candidates.

Here are my thoughts: the media piled on too much at the end and there was a voter backlash; independents may have assumed an Obama victory and went for McCain instead; the Democratic base responded to the Clinton appeal, especially women and urban voters; the youth vote didn’t quite turn out as well as it should have; Clinton for the first time looked vulnerable and even human in the final days – and that helped; her final debate performance was also excellent.

She was knocked off her pedestal in Iowa and people prefer candidates not on pedestals. We will hear more about the Bradley effect, but I have no evidence it was actually there. I sure hope it wasn’t. And South Carolina will give us more data.

I am now listening to her victory speech. It is my penance. Two great lines:

"I found my voice. And let’s give America the comeback that New Hampshire has just given me."

But I would still note: this is still a very close victory. Compared to what we were expecting two weeks ago, it’s amazingly close. The final tally isn’t in – and it may come down to one or two percentage points. Nevada and South Carolina will provide two very different forums for these candidates to slug it out. This is going to be a very tough battle.

I do think that both Obama and Clinton have benefited from this campaign as candidates. Democracy works; and we need to pause and honor its findings. Congrats, Mrs Clinton. You earned this.

(Photo: Stan Honda/Getty.)

It looks as if Clinton has indeed won. The college towns may not have enough to put him ahead. The fight is now on for the long haul. I think New Hampshire was doing what it does best: telling the rest of us that it will not be told what the result is ahead of time. We’ll have plenty to chew over in the coming days. But the Clintons deserve congratulations for pulling this off. This will now become a brutal, long slog. Maybe that’s for the best.

(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty.)

It’s one explanation for the big gap between the final polls and the result:

The term Bradley effect or Wilder effect refers to a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voter opinion polls in some American political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate. Specifically, there have been instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots. White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the black candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate. This reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well.

Researchers who have studied the issue theorize that some white voters give inaccurate responses to polling questions because of a fear that they might appear to others to be racially prejudiced. Some research has suggested that the race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor into that concern. At least one prominent researcher has suggested that with regard to pre-election polls, the discrepancy can be traced in part by the polls’ failure to account for general conservative political leanings among late-deciding voters.

Tonight is the first primary – not a caucus. People get to vote in a secret ballot – not in front of their largely liberal peers, as in Iowa. They may have told the pollsters one thing about voting for a black man, but in the privacy of the voting booth, something else happens. I don’t have any hard evidence for this, but the discrepancy in the polls is remarkable. David Kuo cites it. The vast discrepancy between the last polls and the result puts it on the table. I hope it’s not true. But it could be.