NH Primary Results

[Guardsman Bass]

Correction: A 3% difference with 63% of the precincts in.

[Cairber]

Fox and CNN seem to be refusing to call it yet. I'm pretty disappointed about this...Obama really had me excited about the race. Hope he can come back from this...

[brianeyci]

Yeah, I think Clinton will win too. It looks good that 39 and 36, been like that for more than an hour, but the overall number of votes is too large: 67k to 62k.

Obama would have to devastate Hillary in college. CNN is holding on because they want people to watch their shitty news. Clinton is holding in the cities, and the cities are still counting so as time goes on it gets more and more remote.

[brianeyci]

ghetto edit: gap now 6k votes, almost all of Durham... Obama loses.

[Cairber]

Fox thinks it was the tears that gave HIllary the bump she needed

[Guardsman Bass]

Fox and CNN seem to be refusing to call it yet. I'm pretty disappointed about this...Obama really had me excited about the race. Hope he can come back from this...

Well, I guess we'll see how good a politician he is.

You've got to give that to Clinton, at least; you under-estimate her to your own peril.

On a sidenote, I'm watching MSNBC. Chris Matthews looks rather sad - he was pretty jubilant when Obama won Iowa.

[Guardsman Bass]

EDIT: Changed my mind, Matthews seems more pleased now.

What's going to happen with John Edwards? He placed a pretty distant third, after getting a second place finish with Obama in Iowa. He's got a rather small amount of money and is dependent on federal financing for his campaign.

[Soontir C'boath]

MSNBC just called New Hampshire for Hillary Clinton. Mind you, it's only a 3% difference; but she is about 5,000 votes up. Prepare for Comeback Kid Mark II.

It just shot up to a 7300 vote lead widening to 4%. 29% precincts left to report as well.

[Cairber]

He made a speech they showed and basiclly claimed to be going on...48 states to go...blahblah. But I think it's only a matter of time before he drops out.

[brianeyci]

I don't think it was the tears. I think it was race. The record turnout for Democrats people assumed was for Obama, since his rallies had twice or three times as many people, but there's a name for a statistical problem with polling minority candidates which doesn't show up until the actual vote. Apparently people are afraid to tell pollsters that they'll vote against a minority for fear of labeled racist, but when push comes to shove they either show their true colors or come to their senses (whichever it is, don't have to be racist to vote against a minority duh.)

There's obviously a huge factor not accounted for with the polling and I don't think the tears or Bill counts for a ten percent disparity in the polls.

[General Soontir Fel]

CNN is calling it for Clinton. 6000 vote gap.

[Elfdart]

A lot of it appears to be a backlash by women voters against some pretty blatant misogyny from limp-dicked "journalists" like Chris Matthews.

[Cairber]

OK looks like everyone calling it for Hillary now. Obama is speaking now, admitting defeat.

[Gigaliel]

The 3% difference seems to be holding. Interestingly enough though, both Hillary and Obama have won 8 delegates each. So for actual primaries their tied, for a total of L/T and W/T respectively. Of course politically it will be W/L and L/W.

[Chris OFarrell]

The media over her -at least Australian sky news- have been going on and on about what a surprise it is that Clinton is winning/has won, how people underestimated her comeback bla bla bla.

But as far as I can remember from reading over the last week, Obama wasn't EXPECTED to carry NH, it was only in the last couple of days that polls showed a swing to him.

[Tanasinn]

Barely winning one state after getting trounced in the first is hardly a "comeback," especially when you were supposedly the clear frontrunner to begin with: that's my two cents.

[brianeyci]

Obama's telling his supporters to get ready for the long haul, and invented a new slogan: "yes we can."

I really thought the tears from Hillary and moon landing analogy destroyed Clinton, and maybe it did. It could be because polls showed such a huge lead for Obama in the last day, 13 points, many of them decided to vote for McCain instead to assure his victory, especially since more than half are independents.

[Elfdart]

EDIT: Changed my mind, Matthews seems more pleased now.

What's going to happen with John Edwards? He placed a pretty distant third, after getting a second place finish with Obama in Iowa. He's got a rather small amount of money and is dependent on federal financing for his campaign.

Supposedly, he's doing well in Nevada (but that means zilch after tonight) and should do well in South Carolina. Then the race goes South for Super Tuesday. I get the feeling that the three main candidates are each going to win some states in the next few weeks.

For more on the anti-anti-Hillary backlash, James Wolcott rules -as always:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott

Too Many Loads on the Love Train

I wish Tom Watson had refrained from using the word "lynching" (a metaphor that should be permanently retired from political discourse) in the title of his post about the scabies attack of rampant sexism directed against Hillary Clinton, but I with him in spirit over the ugly spectacle that's unfolding, especially now that Hillary's vulnerabilities are there for the vulture picking. Nothing she does or doesn't do passes muster with the George Jean Nathans of the cable show green rooms: her laugh, her clap, her blink, her nonblinking, her cleavage, her pantsuits, her anger, or conversely her lack of affect--they're all subjected to subjective calibration tests as if she were being reviewed skin pore by skin pore. We're electing a chief executive, not a messiah or a nationwide feel-good wave, a detail that seems to have escaped so much of our media and political class as they trample each other clamoring aboard the Obama Love Train.

I have nothing against Obama--I've donated money to his campaign, as I have Hillary's--I'll vote for any Democrat over any Republican--but as obnoxious as is the chortling, crowing misogyny of a Chris Matthews or the rightwing buffoon (Michael Graham, I believe) Imus had on his show this morning (or Imus himself, for that matter), the rah-rah gaga Beatlemania oozing out of the Huffington Post over Obama is even more revolting. Watching middle-aged men reclaim their innocence and idealism is like having to retrace Kevin Costner's steps through a field of dreams all over again--it was corny enough the first time.

Here is Gary Hart, for example, using Obama's candidacy a mirror with which to study his own fine-etched physiognomy of optimism:

Already the Obama candidacy has sent a powerful message around a watching world: The torch has been passed to a new generation of American leaders, and we don't care what color it is.


As one who has struggled throughout a lifetime for restoration of idealism to American politics, I can only smile, and perhaps shed a tear of happiness, that our time may have come.

I hope that Mr. Hart will preserve that tear of happiness in a Baggie, put it in a freezer, with perhaps a golden snot drop to keep it company, and preserve it in all its crystalline goodness and healing qualities for his grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, or whoever else opens the freezer in search of a Popsicle.

OH SNAP!

[Flagg]

So, McCain and Clinton. People in New Hampshire are stupid.

[Flagg]

Fox thinks it was the tears that gave HIllary the bump she needed

You mean when she went all Susan Smith on us? And followed it up with "Vote for Obama and die"?

[Metatwaddle]

A lot of it appears to be a backlash by women voters against some pretty blatant misogyny from limp-dicked "journalists" like Chris Matthews.

Thank God I wasn't the only one who saw that. And I'm sick and fucking tired of all the coverage of Hillary crying. I'm with Rachel Maddow: why the fuck wasn't it news when Mitt Romney cried three times in December? I'm also with Keith Olbermann: why wasn't it news when she seamlessly segued from being really emotional to being all, "Al-Qaeda is watching our elections RAR!" You'd think that Hillary, being down in the polls with the Democratic base, would have figured out that such things don't work too well these days. But she got lucky - they didn't really comment on it. At least, nobody but Keith did.

As a pretty hardcore feminist, I would love to have a female president. I really would. But that's partly because one would think, normally, that a female president would address issues that women care about (yes, that's long-winded, but I hate the phrase "women's issues") more than a typical male president would - at least, a Democratic one. In other words, I don't think Hillary would be any better than Obama in that area.

Obama's got a solid win in one state and a near miss in another, and I suspect he'll do well in NV and SC. Assuming he's still around on Super Tuesday, I'm voting for him.

[Covenant]

I'm pretty aggrivated by this turnout, to be sure. Very much so--I really like Hillary but I hate the way she's been going at this campaign ever since it started. Instead of embracing her own strengths and trying to really, honestly make a case for it she's been doing a lot of wierd things and going pretty negative in a race that really doesn't require it--but worst of all is this symapthy vote. I really hope it is just an "Up Yours" to the media, but if it's an actual vote for her because she's simply female and the boys are playing rough with ther then I just feel ill. Hillary is way tougher than that, so I don't buy the emotional weakness defense--and if it was true that she was just overwrought, suck it up. It's a shade of the "It's hard work!" defense Bush used. And it was the perfect segue into the Bush Fearmonger tactic. Ugh.

If Hillary wins, I want her to win on strength, calmness, and intelligence--not on dirty pool, emotional armtwisting, and a gender war. Boo!

[Mr Bean]

The vote gap between Obama and Clinton is roughly 4000 now. He might end up with a very narrow loss when all the districts are in. Nothing would amuse me more than to hear him winning by a hundred votes or so tomorrow morning.

[Sam Or I]

Obama's telling his supporters to get ready for the long haul, and invented a new slogan: "yes we can."

He stole it from Bob the Builder.

[The Guid]

You'd have to make that pretty quick:

Barak Obama, can he win it?
Barak Obama, yes he can!

you'd have to treat it like B'rak Obama to make the rhythm work.