Clinton Comeback

Obviously, polls predicting a big Obama win in NH were wrong. It's going to be close, and it's quite possibly going to be for Clinton. 25 I thought:

I wouldn't be surprised if this inane "Clinton crying" pseudo-story winds up redounding to her benefit; it's a stark reminder of how much sexist BS there is out there which, in turn, gets people back to thinking about how the first woman president in American history would be a pretty damn transformative event all on its own terms.

It seems to me that Hillary Clinton's return to dominance among women bears that out. I don't think pissing off Chris Matthews is a good enough reason to pull the lever for Clinton, but I can certainly understand the impulse.

Comments

Perhaps even more significantly in the long run, CNN just had an exit poll which showed that Obama won comfortably amongst those who were economically well off, while Hillary won easily amongst those who are concerned about their economic future.

Doesn't this go back to the original concern about Obama, that although he's popular amongst well-educated, well to do democrats, he won't have enough support from the working and lower-middle classes to get the nomination.

Posted by shariq | January 8, 2008 10:17 PM

Don't call it a comeback...

Seriously - the Clinton camp deserves a lot of credit for tonight's showing, no matter what the final result.

Can't believe the polling was this far off.

Congratulations to her, her campaign staff and her supporters.

I don't know what they really see in her, but to each their own.

Posted by SoCalJustice | January 8, 2008 10:17 PM

Good for her if she wins but, if you're theory is correct, it's a pretty silly reason to vote for someone.

Posted by esa | January 8, 2008 10:17 PM

According to the exit polls, Hillary has a big problem with young people, especially men. Among voters under 24, Ron Paul did better than her. Different sets of course, but you get the point.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein | January 8, 2008 10:18 PM

Not anymore silly than voting for someone because he won a state caucus a few days earlier. Which was the whole idea of the Obama surge.

Posted by Rob | January 8, 2008 10:19 PM

Oh man, can we expect her voice to crack before EVERY primary for the next month now?

Posted by sweaty guy | January 8, 2008 10:19 PM

"I don't think pissing off Chris Matthews is a good enough reason to pull the lever for Clinton"

How about pissing off Andrew Sullivan?

Posted by jane | January 8, 2008 10:20 PM

"i don't think pissing off Chris Matthews is a good enough reason to pull the lever for Clinton."

Anything is worth destroying his worldview.

Posted by Andruw | January 8, 2008 10:22 PM

How about pissing off Andrew Sullivan?

Pissing off the Obama supporters in these comments sections is good enough for me.

Posted by Dan the Man | January 8, 2008 10:25 PM

Don't call it a comeback
I been here for years
Rockin my peers and puttin suckas in fear
Makin the tears rain down like a MON-soon
Listen to the bass go BOOM

Posted by JFD | January 8, 2008 10:26 PM

Edwards is giving his speech right now. It's very similar to the Iowa speech. Got 48 states left to go, and this is not about him but giving voice to those who he's come to represent. He says he's making it absolutely clear -- he is in the race through to the convention.

My guess is that the campaign will take on even more of the aspect of an organizing drive that did when it was first launched.

Posted by El Cid | January 8, 2008 10:26 PM

Looks like a win for Clinton. MSNBC just called it.

Posted by mad6798j | January 8, 2008 10:32 PM

Maybe Obama will reacquaint himself with the left side of the party in order to pick up Edwards supporters. Until mid-December I didn't think there was anyway they would vote for Clinton but after some of the shots (real or imagined) the Obama campaign (not to mention its supporters) took at progressives you never know.

Personally, I will vote for him on 2/5 if starts sounding more liberal on economics. I am looking for a little more Wellstone and a little less Biden.

Posted by liberals for ???? | January 8, 2008 10:33 PM

Wow.

Hillary.

Stunner.

Congratulations.

Posted by SoCalJustice | January 8, 2008 10:33 PM

NBC just projected her the winner. Tim Russert is already giving away some of the exit polling: she won with women and independents; Obama didn't get the independents he thought he would...

Posted by artappraiser | January 8, 2008 10:38 PM

Edwards gave basically the same damn speech, listing the same people. He was also pretty off tonight. I don't know if he was expecting better returns or what.

Posted by ben | January 8, 2008 10:42 PM

I am waiting for Petey to tell me how this helps Edwards and the contingent of Obama supporters (hlah, brewmn, Dilan, et al) to tell me this is proof that progressives/liberals hate black men, change, hope and America.

Posted by reality | January 8, 2008 10:46 PM

...it's a pretty silly reason to vote for someone.

Worse than voting for Obama because he's "for change"?

Posted by Xanthippas | January 8, 2008 11:22 PM

artappraiser: "...Obama didn't get the independents he thought he would..."

Don't distort the facts as much as the Clintons have been the past few days. Exit polls clearly show Obama took independents by at least 10 points over Clinton, a fact that will become even more important in the general election. Who do you want as a candidate? Someone with 50% negatives? Or someone who can pull significant numbers of independents and moderate republicans?

Posted by converse | January 9, 2008 12:01 AM

Why would we want people who have witnessed the past 7 years and still not signed up for the Democratic Party to pick the nominee of the Democratic Party?

moderate Republicans love Obama, progressive Democrats are a bit more skeptical.

Posted by nike | January 9, 2008 12:12 AM

It wasn't the crying. It was the sexist BS that the press has been engaging in for weeks. (And, yes, I mean you too Chris Matthews.) Enough was enough.

I'm an Obama supporter and I would have voted for Hillary tonight because I think she has been held to an entirely different standard than the men in this race. We keep hearing how she is too cold, then too emotional. She was criticized for not taking questions, then Dana Milbank and Roger Simon said she was dull because she did. Anything negative she said about Obama was criticized, while Romney got a pass for running negative ads.
We had the nasty photos on Drudge and the NYPost.

George Bush is pond scum and the MSM has never had the long knives out for him the way they have for Hillary.

I still like Obama better and now I can vote for him in South Carolina knowing that Hillary has gotten a little support in return for what she has done for our country and the Democrat party.
And that Chris Matthews & Andy Sullivan will have to suck on it.

Posted by Teresa | January 9, 2008 12:40 AM

Oh, Nike. You think you can tell voters what party they "owe" allegiance to, and how they get to vote? Sorry, if you really want to win, not just make an angry point, you put out a candidate who will appeal to the greatest number of voters.

I guarantee that progressive Democrats will vote for Obama long before they'll vote for the Republican candidate.

Posted by converse | January 9, 2008 12:52 AM

Well that sucked.

Posted by hlah | January 9, 2008 1:00 AM

Teresa is exactly the problem, based on the exit polls:

"I'm an Obama supporter and I would have voted for Hillary tonight because I think she has been held to an entirely different standard than the men in this race."

In other words, even though you know Obama is the better candidate, for you, and even if you knew that Obama was better able to defeat a Republican than Clinton - which is what the exit polls said was the position of the NH voters - you would have voted for Clinton.

Now explain how that is in any way smart.

In other words, a bunch of women voted their emotions.

And we men are supposed to be give you some credit for that?

This is the national election process to elect a President of this country. Do try to remember that.

As an anarchist, *I* know it's all bullshit. But YOU'RE supposed to be taking it seriously.

And your post - and the exit polls - shows you and your female colleagues really aren't.

Bottom line: WHO CARES if the press beats up on Hillary? Vote for the candidate who can 1) beat the Republicans, and 2) run the country intelligently (not necessarily in that order.)

Otherwise, quite frankly, you deserve Giuliani.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 9, 2008 1:47 AM

To all the women out there who "voted for Hillary because the mainstream media made her cry"...

That's a little unfair. Obama has run a positive campaign with dignity and class, drawing in new voters, young voters, and independents and Republicans.

*In reply, Bill Clinton marches out before the cameras and implies Obama is a "fairy tale" whose success thus far can be solely attributed to his blackness. (Nevermind the virtually nonexistent black vote in Iowa.)

*On the day of the New Hampshire primary, Gloria Steinem publishes an op-ed in the New York Times urging single white women to vote for Hillary because we must have a white female President before we have a black male one.

*Hillary's own campaign, I suspect, leaks to Drudge Report that her campaign will fold up shop and that she's running out of cash, which dominates the news cycle, drumming up sympathy. And, then she -- coincidentally -- breaks down on the campaign trail, generating even more sympathetic press, which culimates in a soft-focus interview with a soft-spoken Matt Lauer asking her about her feelings.

I am a white woman.

An old one.

A Democratic one.

A liberal one.

I'm supposed to be squarely in Hillary Rodham Clinton's base.

If it bothers me that a viable female candidate had to fake tears to generate a narrow sympathy win, then it should bother you. If it bothers me that many single, white women are voting for Hillary Clinton just because she is white and female, then it should bother you. If it bothers me that by crying fake tears and playing the victim, Hillary Clinton used a dirty, Nixonian campaign trick, it should bother you. It is more important to me to restore the promise of the greatness of America than to have a white, female President. And if that is more important to me, then it should be more important to you.

Posted by America Is Better Than Fake Tears | January 9, 2008 3:45 AM

"I don't think pissing off Chris Matthews is a good enough reason to pull the lever for Clinton, but I can certainly understand the impulse."

Me too. On the other hand, he seemed kind of pleased.

I think the man actually enjoys freaking out about her woman parts.

Posted by Royko | January 9, 2008 5:37 AM

I just want to say that, Richard Steven Hack to the contrary, not all anarchists are sexist assholes.

One very rational reason why NH voters, male or female, who may have been leaning to Obama might have considered voting for Clinton (especially in the wake of the MSM attacks on her) is simply that Obama has not yet been subjected to the same attacks. It would be helpful to know, before the final votes are counted, what those attacks are going to look like. Is he really as electable as we think, given the press honeymoon he's gotten? Part of that press honeymoon is that he wasn't yet quite taken seriously as a frontrunner. Now he will be. I think there's a good reason to keep at least two solid contenders in the race and not let one of them tie it up too soon. We don't know what the press and the Republicans really have in store for him, and a little more time to sort that out than the four days between Iowa and New Hampshire would be helpful. It also keeps Democrats fired up for a contest, which energizes people toward the general election.

Posted by rabbit | January 9, 2008 9:13 AM

Aside from not being the best basis for voting for someone, I don't think Metthews et al are going to take the right message away from this, no matter how carefully Rachel Maddow explains it to them. I remember him saying something like "Was this a case of women voters say 'Leave her alone'?" And Pat Buchanan agreed with him, so that in itself should tell you how ridiculous he is.

Posted by ibid | January 9, 2008 12:35 PM

Wow, MY's commenters are really letting loose -- sexism ahoy! I really don't know why HRC won last night -- it probably had something to do with an actual voting process (as opposed to a caucus). It may also have had something to do with the misogyny that seemed to really bubble up after she lost in Iowa, but which has been very much in evidence for the past, oh, 15 years.

There are always a million reasons for every outcome -- so it's interesting that so many commenters (men?) are so unwilling even to entertain the notion that people might be sick and tired of (a) the media telling us who will win and (b) sniping endlessly at HRC. It's "silly" only if you're unwilling to acknowledge the damage it does to everyone.

Posted by mary | January 9, 2008 12:37 PM

To Richard Stevens Hack: It's people like you that make people like me want to vote for Hillary. On policy questions, there is so little policy difference between them that the choice beweteen thme is mainly based on character and likeability. If you honestly assess their policies, the differences are minimal and Clinton's policies area as often better than Obama's as the reverse. Yes, they took different positions on the war - but it was far easier to be against the war on the outside than on the inside.

But really, when it comes down to it, it's time women stood up against the rampant day to day sexism that so overwhelms us that we tend to discount it so we don't go mad. The Clinton campaing stripped off the paper thin facade of equality and showed again why it was that women were the LAST to get the right to vote and why Women are STILL unprotected explicitly in the US Constitution.

Personally, I would like to spit in Chris Matthew's condescending rathole face and grind my stillettos into his beady eyes, but lacking that opportunity, Hillary has my vote. And if that pisses of Richard Stevens Hack, well, so much the better.

Posted by kija | January 9, 2008 4:51 PM

This is one of the happest days of my life Yes Hillary won NH and she will win many more primary.
I just want to thank Chris Matthews for all your help, we all know how much you were trying to kill her chance of winning. Go work at Fox!!

Posted by Boatsan | January 9, 2008 4:52 PM

To RS Hack (In other words, a bunch of women voted their emotions.
And we men are supposed to be give you some credit for that?)

Well the country has been stuck with this abomination of an administration because you men would rather have a beer with GWB. Thanks for nothing.

Posted by Irene | January 10, 2008 5:20 PM