Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Clinton Pulls Out Narrow Win

How did Hillary beat the predictions? Three ideas are being floated:
  1. The "Bradley Effect" - defined by the Wiki as: "a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voter opinion polls in some American political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate"

  2. Independents in New Hampshire saw the polls overwhelming favoring Obama and cast their ballots for McCain - depriving Obama of a decent amount of support (its such a small state that the 1000 people = 1% of the vote). Or, in general, Obama supporters thinking that the race was no contest and deciding to do whatever people do in New Hampshire when they're not voting

  3. The repeated line, on my news outlets and blogs, was that female voters rallied behind Hillary because of the (a) open misogyny of the press in reaction to her loss in Iowa, and (b) her weepy moment.
E.g. of the weepy moment comes from the NYTimes primary live-blog:
10:42 p.m. | Reactions From Clinton Camp Terry McAuliffe, Mrs. Clinton’s chairman, on MSNBC attributes her apparent victory to her tearful moment yesterday: “That humanizing moment yesterday,” he says. “That did it.”
Does anyone still want to say that it wasn't calculated?

This is a narrow win for Hillary. Let's remember that until Iowa, Obama was behind Hillary by a few points. But the press likes conflict and the horse-race, so we're going for a longer slog.

Lessons

1. To you voters - never take the polls and info for granted. Get out and vote for the best person! (Or, as the case often is, against the worst person... certainly Hillary is worse than Romney!)

2. To you Hillary supporters - if you think that this is how you win a state, with crocodile tears, pathetically playing the gender card, then I am going to enjoy seeing you burn.

3. To you Obama people in the early states (I do get to vote on Feb 5, thanks Connecticut) - seal her doom, vote for the man.

4. To Edwards: DROP OUT! DROP OUT! DO US ALL A FAVOR! Make a deal with Obama to be Attorney General or Sec. of Labor or something. Just go, you had your chances and if you make us get Hillary I'm holding you responsible!

1 comment:

JC said...

"It would be nice to have a woman in the white house."

I agree. I just don't want that woman. She's bad news.

What Obama should do is get a woman as a running mate...