About Last Night

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who watched coverage of the New Hampshire primary last night and spent a lot of the time shaking their head and asking: "What the fuck just happened?"

It's probably a good thing that we don't have yet another primary in five days. Or do we?

I'm just going to set down some first impressions on the morning after Hillary Clinton's surprise victory in New Hampshire:

• You have to wonder how her "Monday Meltdown" played into the equation. As Robert George in his "Ragged Thots" blog points out this morning, Hillary Clinton is never as dangerous as when she's playing the victim. After all, that's how she got into the Senate to begin with. Could the turning point (or, perhaps, the tipping point) of the campaign have been in between the two parts of Saturday night's debate? In the first half she came off as a harridan; in the second she smiled winsomely and said, in response to a question about her lack of likability as opposed to Barack Obama, replied:

Well that hurts my feelings. But I'll try to go on. He's very likable, I'll agree with that. I don't think I'm that bad . . .

Could that moment of ironic self-deprecation have swayed older women, who, is it thought, made the difference last night? Could we be seeing in the future much more of a kinder, gentler Hillary? Especially since it seems to work with women voters?

• Why were the polls so skewed? How could they have gotten it so wrong? Was it race? People are notorious for not wanting to tell pollsters that they're planning to vote against the black candidate, so they tell them one thing and then go into the polling place and do something else. Was that a factor? Polls were predicting a double-digit victory for Obama and he ended up losing. Either the pollsters really need to get their shit together or there is something really wrong here.
• Where do we go from here? South Carolina is looming, where Obama is thought to be a lock, but then they thought that about New Hampshire, didn't they? And what happens on what they've taken to calling "Super-Duper Tuesday"? No less than 24 states will be up for grabs on February 5th, and it could be a real free-for-all -- what happens if the results on that day are inconclusive? You can already hear pundits whispering in hushed tones the words they love to toss around this time in the cycle: "brokered convention." The fact that there isn't been a brokered convention in most people's lifetime doesn't stop them. It's every newshound's wet dream: to have a convention that actually chooses the candidate, instead of the coma-inducing coronation we've had from both parties since 1972 or so. Me, I'd be happy just to see a second ballot (offhand I don't think there's been one since Adlai Stevenson put the VP nomination up for grabs in 1956).

Finally, there are two things to keep in mind when thinking about the events of last night:

• John McCain won New Hampshire in 2000 -- and didn't win the nomination.
• Bill Clinton didn't win New Hampshire in 1992 -- and did win the nomination.

Believe me, this thing is far, far from being over.

Tom Moran