Well, politics are certainly interesting, you have to give it that…
Today is usually Q&A day on this blog, but who can resist observing all that went on in New Hampshire yesterday? So I’ll re-post the Question and Answer entry here tomorrow…
Right now…WOW. That’s all I can say. A McCain-Clinton campaign in the Fall is what everyone predicted. Then there was the ‘upset’ in Iowa. But I think that the ‘miracle’ that Ms. Clinton pulled off in New Hampshire is quite something, and says a lot about how and why people vote the way they do. Ms. Clinton received the lion’s share of the Women’s Vote in N.H. (women voters largely deserted her in the Iowa caucuses). And so we see that gender may play a larger role in this presidential campaign than some might have expected.
Not that it wasn’t “expected” that women would vote for Hillary in large numbers…but I don’t think that it was expected that the gender preference would be enough to swing an entire election. It did not in Iowa. Yet that is exactly what it did yesterday in the nation’s first primary.
What we have to understand about the N.H. results, however, is that people can vote across party lines in that state’s primary. The results may not be the same in other states, but it is going to be interesting to watch. VERY interesting.
Can Obama pull it back out? Or is his fledgling candidacy now effectively snuffed out? South Carolina’s upcoming primary will tell us something. There, it is thought by some that Obama may have the wild card, as that state’s higher black population may vote the racial preference, just as women in N.H. voted the gender preference.
One thing we learned in N.H. is that the polls and the pundits can’t be trusted. Polls there showed Obama breaking open a double-digit lead over Clinton just three days ago, and the newspaper and tv commentators were already annointing him the winner. Then Clinton pulled a Truman/Dewey. So much for the polls…
On the GOP side, there appears to be a growing dissatisfaction with both Rudy and Mitt among the Republican rank and file — and when you take those two out of the running, John McCain becomes the obvious choice. One thing this election season is proving is that it doesn’t seem to matter how much money a candidate has to spend in a campaign…voters still pretty much know who they want, and tons of cash on the barrel head is not seeming to change that. Romney spent huge amounts of money in both Iowa and New Hampshire, to no avail.
People still, it seems, vote their BELIEFS. And that is why I am commenting on all of this here at Beliefnet.
It seems clear that women in N.H. believe that it is time, at last, to see a woman president. I am going to assume that some crossed party lines there to prove it. I think women were shocked to see Clinton lose Iowa, and hence rallied behind Hillary yesterday. That is not to say that Ms. Clinton’s proposals and ideas are not also favored. I believe they are, by most Democrats — for what she has to say has not been, after all, that much different than the other Democratic candidates. But it is her gender that caused many Republican women to vote for her. I don’t think there can be any question about that. And that says a great deal about what could happen in November’s General Election should Hillary win her party’s nomination.
If the GOP nominates McCain after all, we will see what everyone actually expected and predicted a year ago: a McCain/Clinton match-up in the Fall. It’s fascinating to note how recent polls showed differently, but that the electorate in New Hampshire confirmed the early line from last January.
Now, Super Tuesday (Feb 5) is looking very important (of course, it always was…but there has been a growing sense in the days since Iowa that Obama might actually have the whole thing locked up before then). Now Barackamania, as some pundits have called it, has had a huge bucket of cold water thrown over it. And Rudyitis seems like thing from the distant past.
So we’re back (at least for today) to the two candidates who were deemed to be the Front Runners all along — John and Hillary. The people of New Hampshire have spoken…but be honest…wouldn’t a Fall ’08 campaign between Rudy and Barack seem less predictable and at least a little more exciting?