January 09, 2008

1/9: Let's Hear It For The Girl

The New Hampshire primary has come and gone, and while most bloggers accurately predicted a John McCain victory, no one expected Hillary Clinton to win. Bloggers on the left and right are shell-shocked that HRC managed to win after a string of polls showed Barack Obama with a substantial lead. Bloggers are speculating that a number of factors could have been responsible for HRC's victory, from the Bradley effect to Michael Whouley's GOTV talents to McCain peeling away Obama's independent voters. Most liberal bloggers agree that women voters broke heavily in favor of HRC out of anger at the media's (allegedly) unfair coverage of her. One thing is clear: regardless of what Matt Drudge says, HRC isn't going anywhere.

DEM FIELD: The Death Of Polling?

Liberal bloggers, who almost unanimously picked Obama to win NH after seeing his lead in the polls, were shocked by the result:

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Wow. What the hell happened? The Des Moines Register poll called it exactly in Iowa. Yet, most of the polls going into New Hampshire grossly over-estimated Obama's lead. Or, were the polls right but something happened in the past 24 hours to cut Obama's lead and add to Hillary's? The tear? The black thing? Or are polls simply no longer relevant in an age of cell phones?"

Jane Hamsher: "Why were all the New Hampshire polls so utterly wrong? How did Clinton overcome such a huge deficit in the polls in one day?...In Iowa, exit polling said that women comprised 57% of Democratic voters, and went 30% for Clinton, 35% Obama, 23% [John] Edwards. In New Hampshire they were likewise 57% of the vote, but it fell 47% for Clinton, 34% for Obama, 14% for Edwards...Obama held his women voters -- Clinton took them from Edwards. Did his pivot against her during the last debate and his comments yesterday contribute to what happened?"

Daily Kos' DavidNYC: "I think we saw one of the greatest political comeback upsets of all time. I've been wracking my brain (and picking the brains of others) trying to figure out how on earth this happened -- how Hillary Clinton edged out Barack Obama despite 17 polls in a row showing Obama with a lead, probably somewhere between 6 and 9 points."

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong links to the RCP Polling Average showing Obama with an 8.3% lead in NH and calls HRC's victory "the death of polling as anything more than a guess."

Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Wow...Shocking, stunning that she could overcome an 8% deficit in the polls in just one day. The huge turnout among Democratic women did the trick, as did her ability to stay even with Obama among the massive liberal vote. Over the last twenty-four hours, there were media character assassination attempts against Clinton because she showed emotion, or something. That simple must have been what put [Clinton] over the top. Seriously -- nothing else really happened in the last twenty-four hours, so that must be the cause. Looks like that attempt to take Clinton down completely backfired."

Bowers goes on to list some other possible reasons why the polls were so wrong:

• A last minute swing toward Clinton, as mentioned above.
• Clinton had a superior, momentum-proof, absentee voting program.
• Bad poll weighting. I wonder if pollsters were weighing down samples of women and Democrats in their surveys, both of which increased from 2004.
• Return of the lying white voter?
• Great weather in New Hampshire brought out older voters? I don't buy this one, since both the under 30 and over 65 voters increased as a percentage of the electorate.
• Another theory: some indies thought Obama had it locked up, so they voted for McCain instead, who was supposedly ahead by less than Obama.

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas, who plans to cast his CA absentee ballot for Obama, was nevertheless thrilled by the result: "And the race is on! Hillary Clinton just showed everyone who had called this thing for Obama that, in fact, there's a much longer race in store. How exciting! No coronation this year. The candidates are going to have to earn their victory the old fashioned way -- one vote at a time."

CLINTON: It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To

A number of liberal bloggers attributed HRC's win to a backlash among female voters to unfair media coverage of HRC's display of emotion:

Moulitsas: "So there's a huge gender gap. Massive. Apparently, women didn't take kindly to people beating up on Hillary for -- gasp! -- tearing up. Can you believe it? In a way, this is a nice middle finger to that bullshit double standard."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "The importance of tonight's win can not be understated. It was a revolt of women sick and tired of the likes of Chris Tweety Matthews and the Media Misogynists. Barack Obama did not lose New Hampshire. The Media did. Their misogynist hatred of Hillary Clinton was soundly rejected by the voters. Especially the women voters of New Hampshire."

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "[Obama] can thank the media for its trashing of Hillary Clinton. There must have been a huge backlash -- or else the pollsters don't know what they are doing."

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "Hillary Clinton's victory felt to me an awful lot like a repudiation of the mainstream pundits who spent the entire weekend first dumping all over her and then playing the 'Hillary in tears' tape on practically a continuous loop yesterday."

The Left Coaster's Turkana: "This is one of the most stunning political comebacks in memory! Even many of we who do not support her were outraged by the blatant misogyny in the corporate media, and it appears we were not alone. The exit polls will need to be analyzed, but there appears to have been a major backlash."

TPM Cafe's Larry Johnson: "I am thoroughly pissed off at the lame, unprofessional conduct of the various networks -- MSNBC in particular. They knew that the polls had at least 17% undecided. Rather than simply report that there were a significant number of undecided voters and any projections were not reliable, they danced around like crack addicts celebrating the demise of the Clintons. Hillary is too wimpy. Hillary is too stern. Hillary is too manipulative. Hillary is not manipulative enough. Special offenders include Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, and Howard Fineman. They were so busy dancing on the Clinton grave that they did not have the decency to do some objective analysis. Hell, they tried to deceive the American people. So much for the death of Hillary's campaign."

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "As we've seen from the exit polls, [HRC] pulled ahead based on strong support from women...We're looking at a combination of gender backlash, plus the fact that Obama was so widely perceived as likely to win led independents to vote for John McCain in the GOP primary."

Ezra Klein has some additional thoughts: "The final 24 hours, of course, were dominated by [HRC] choking up over the state of the country, and all sorts of male pundits lambasting her for it. It's impossible to say whether there's a connection or not, but it seems possible. Additionally, my hunch is that Clinton is better suited for late deciders. Supporting Obama is a gut decision: It's about inspiration, and belief, and even a sort of faith in a relatively untested politicians unique talents. My hunch is that process, if it happens, happens earlier on. Clinton, by contrast, is steady leadership in troubled times. She's Ready on Day One. She's a safe choice. And so voters deciding towards the end chose her."

CLINTON II: Markos' Take

In the days leading up to the NH primary, Bill and Hillary Clinton repeatedly criticized the media, which they claimed was biased in favor of Obama and against HRC. As we mentioned on Monday, a lot of liberal bloggers shared the Clintons' view that the media was treating HRC unfairly.

A notable exception is Markos Moulitsas, who argued (before the NH results were reported) that HRC shouldn't blame the media for her campaign's failures:

"I see Clinton's surrogates complaining about the unfairness of the media coverage, about how Obama is getting a free pass...come on, the Clinton campaign has had surrogates like [Paul] Begala and [James] Carville embedded in the punditry promoting her campaign from within! Who else had such advantages?

Regardless, the media is unfair. I think we can stipulate that without argument. It sucks. But the Clintons have had every advantage in the world -- just about the entire party establishment. The fact that $100 million, the best campaign team in the (Democratic Party) universe, the bulk of the party establishment, well-placed pundit allies, and a fragmented field haven't been enough to put this thing away for Hillary points to her flaws as a candidate.

It's not the media's fault that people are sick of the Clinton machine and want change. The only reason she has even been competitive is that the 'change' forces never coalesced around a single candidate. But even in a fragmented field, Hillary is in serious trouble. God help her if she only faced a single serious candidate. She'd be crushed.

Whining about the media doesn't change that cold, stark reality."

Today, after HRC's surprising victory, Moulitsas chastises HRC's harsher detractors:

"Hillary is my least favorite of the viable candidates on substantive grounds, and I'll be voting for Barack Obama here pretty soon here in California via absentee ballot. The second-to-last thing I want is Mark Penn and Terry McAluiffe anywhere near the White House. (The last thing? Another Republican administration.)

But the more assholish her detractors behave, the more you help her. The way she was treated the past few days in New Hampshire was a disgrace, and likely a large reason for her surprise victory. So keep attacking her for bullshit reasons, and you'll be generating more and more sympathy votes for her. Obama's 'you're likable enough' was likely worth 2-3 points all by its lonesome self. [...]

The more she's attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy [that] will generate, the more votes she'll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they've gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable?

The vote for the two 'change' candidates outstripped the vote for the two 'experience' candidates. I'm with change. I have no interest in seeing behavior that, in essence, helps the status quo."

Glenn Greenwald links to Markos' post and writes: "As has been true for a long time...the most potent asset the Clintons possess is the repulsive malevolence of their media and political enemies."

OBAMA: Likable Enough?

Chris Bowers rejects the argument (made yesterday by The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas) that the leading netroots bloggers don't like Obama:

"I frankly feel it is inaccurate to claim that the progressive blogosphere was, or is, anti-Obama. Even if one takes an extremely narrow definition of progressive blogosphere, a definition like 'Kos, Marshall, Amato, Atrios, Aravosis, Hamsher, Armstrong, Digby, Stoller, Yglesias, Valenti, Marcotte and a few others equals the progressive blogosphere,' even then it isn't true. In addition to the criticisms they leveled, all of those bloggers have said some very nice things about Obama too, and most of them came very close to endorsing Obama before Iowa.

'The progressive blogosphere' is not, and never was, some sort of monolithic anti-Obama force. The progressive blogosphere is a diverse place, on which Obama has always held a significant level of support and captured a significant level of interest. When the primaries are over, if Barack Obama is the nominee, the progressive blogosphere will shatter all of its previous records of activist support in order to help out Barack Obama. [...]

Also, I want to say that despite the tone of this post, I'm not angry at anyone. I'm just tired of the narrow definition of the progressive blogosphere, and what I think has always been the patently false meme that 'we' prominent bloggers are somehow anti-Obama."

We agree with Bowers that the progressive blogosphere is not some "monolithic anti-Obama force." As Daily Kos straw polls illustrate, Obama has long been the second choice (after Edwards) of the netroots rank-and-file. However, we think that Bowers might be underestimating the sheer volume of criticism that Obama receives on a daily basis from many of the "frontpagers" at sites such as MyDD and The Left Coaster -- a volume of criticism that MSM journalists like Vargas have noticed. However, perhaps the criticism that Obama receives is a reflection of the interest he generates among progressive bloggers, even as these bloggers strongly disagree with his post-partisan rhetoric. And perhaps (as several commentators have pointed out), the netroots' preferences and aversions are revealed more by the candidates whom they tend to ignore (i.e., HRC) than by the candidates whom they tend to criticize.

Finally, we think that Bowers is absolutely correct in his prediction that "if Barack Obama is the nominee, the progressive blogosphere will shatter all of its previous records of activist support in order to help out Barack Obama." As Markos Moulitsas says, "The last thing [I want is] another Republican administration."

EDWARDS: Getting Squeezed Out

Ezra Klein thinks Edwards is in trouble: "This is the worst possible outcome for the Edwards camp. A second in New Hampshire would have given them needed momentum. A Clinton second would have at least blunted her chances, and allowed them to continue with their 'two candidates of change' argument. But this simply intensifies the coverage of the Democratic primary as a two-person race. It wrecks their most recent campaign strategy -- to become the 'changier' alternative to frontrunner Obama -- and further squeezes them out of the media coverage."

GOP FIELD: Into The Great Wide Open

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff thinks that McCain will become the frontrunner if he wins Michigan: "If [Mitt] Romney were to win [in MI], the Republicans would have three winners in the first three major races. [Mike] Huckabee, McCain, and Romney would all be viable. Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani would probably have to win in South Carolina and Florida, respectively, to remain viable (a Thompson victory in South Carolina would undermine Huckabee's viability). The race, in any case, would be wide open. But now let's suppose that McCain wins in Michigan. He would then become the front-runner. Huckabee, assuming he wins in South Carolina, would be the main competition. Giuliani or Romney might be able to hang in there as a third choice, but the race would probably be McCain's to lose."

Power Line's John Hinderaker thinks the GOP could see a brokered convention: "2008 shapes up as a very unusual year, with five candidates on the Republican side who can be expected to win delegates: McCain, Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee and Thompson. McCain obviously is back, and Giuliani, while he has slipped recently in national polls, has not yet (in the words of John Paul Jones) begun to fight. It seems likely that he will carry some big states, as will Thompson and/or Huckabee once the campaign moves to the South. Some big states, like California, will be fragmented with delegates going to multiple candidates...I think it is entirely possible that we may arrive at the convention in Minnesota next summer in a position where no candidate commands a majority of the delegates. We could be in for a very interesting 2008."

RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Romney is in serious trouble. Perhaps he can revive his candidacy in Michigan but if he disappoints there, it is hard to see how he will continue. At that point, either it becomes a McCain-Huckabee race or the GOP Powers That Be decide that it is high time for a consensus candidate. In which case, Fred Thompson might -- I said 'might' -- have a second act left in him after all."

Meanwhile, NRO's Rich Lowry is already thinking about SC: "It will be interesting to see how a Huckabee-McCain fight will play out in South Carolina. Will Huckabee -- despite being so outraged by attacks on McCain recently -- go after him hard? Or will we begin to see the outlines of a McCain-Huckabee deal to put Huck on the ticket as VP? There are worse things than being in the second slot on a ticket where the top guy is 71-years old. Just some premature speculation..."

MCCAIN: Return of the Mac

Paul Mirengoff is impressed by McCain: "McCain devoted part of his speech (and not just a passing reference) to the war on terror and, in particular, to winning it. That's not something I recall hearing in the victory speeches of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee...McCain operates at a level of seriousness that the rest of the field struggles, usually unsuccessfully, to match. That's why, for all the things I disagree with McCain about, I don't find myself terribly disappointed by tonight's result."

Townhall's Patrick Ruffini: "[McCain] now leaps to the front of a wounded, broken field. Only in comparison to the others does his path to the nomination seem clear -- but now he has to live up to the hype in Michigan, artfully dodge South Carolina, and capitalize on Rudy's fade in Florida. Though his margin from 2000 was much diminished, he won the grudging respect of enough conservatives in New Hampshire tonight to become more than the one hit indie wonder from '00. A lot of this had to do with successfully branding Romney as a flip-flopper and rendering him unacceptable to authenticity-minded conservatives. I wonder how much this will play in states where the McCain-Romney fight has not been as all consuming as NH."

RedState's Leon H. Wolf is not yet willing to rally behind McCain as the "consensus" candidate: "[McCain] has a long and distinguished history -- the longest and most distinguished of any candidate in the race -- of stabbing us in the back at the worst possible moment. I should be clear: I'm still willing to support McCain in the general. McCain is easily better than any of the Democrats...My only point is that I don't understand how it seems to be that a consensus is forming that McCain is the 'consensus' candidate for us...I mean, for goodness' sake, whatever grievances various factions of the party have with Huckabee (and I do not discount that they exist), Huckabee has never treated any faction of the party with the disdain McCain has shown for all of them at one point or another during his long Senate career."

ROMNEY: Two-Time Silver Medalist

Many conservative bloggers think that Romney must win MI or he's toast:

Campaign Standard's Richelieu: "A tough, tough night for Mitt Romney. He has to win Michigan now. If he pulls that off in a big upset, he may recover and do fine in the Saturday, January 19, Nevada caucuses. Don't forget Nevada's large LDS population."

Leon H. Wolf: "Romney is not dead. Before this race became absolutely crazy in the last month, I would have absolutely said that losses in IA and NH would have crushed his campaign. He is, at this point, still on life support, but he's not dead yet. He does, however, need to reverse the trend of second-place finishes and beat McCain decisively in Michigan. If he can do that, he's got a puncher's chance in South Carolina and then...who knows?"

NRO's Jim Geraghty offers Romney his thoughts: "You're in tough shape, no two ways about it. But you're not dead. Michigan is huge; I think you have to win outright, otherwise you become the King of Silver Medals."

Captain's Quarters' Ed Morrissey: "Romney cannot allow McCain to win in Michigan. A second win makes McCain the momentum candidate and allows him to come into South Carolina with a head of steam."

AmSpec Blog's Jennifer Rubin: "If Romney doesn't win in [Michigan] it would seem he really is finito. The silver medal stuff only goes so far."

John Hinderaker does not agree with the CW that Romney is in deep trouble: "As the only one of the major Republican contenders who currently takes conservative positions in all three major issue categories -- foreign policy, economics and the social issues -- Romney should have a base of support in every state. And he has the financial resources to continue delivering his message."

Uber-Romney supporter Hugh Hewitt also thinks Romney is still competitive: "[Romney] has a bedrock vote that won't be leaving him anytime soon. Call it the Club for Growth vote plus the win-in-November plus the illegal immigration activist vote. Romney also leads in total votes received in the combined Iowa and New Hampshire votes, and of course the delegate hunt. He still has to be considered the front-runner by anyone who will let go of the old 'momentum' model leading to a quickly concluded nomination. Pundits told ourselves that a front-loaded campaign meant a quick decision. In fact it means chaos, and chaos favors the candidate with resources and a bedrock of support."

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat agrees with Hewitt: "Giuliani is trying to mount a big-state comeback after disappearing from the media narrative for a month (and getting beaten by, ahem, Ron Paul), whereas Romney's fight with McCain and Huckabee will be front-page news from here till February; Giuliani doesn't have much institutional support within the conservative movement, whereas Romney does; and Giuliani and McCain are competing for the same pool of national-security-oriented moderate Republicans, whereas once Thompson drops out Romney will be the only candidate of right-wing orthodoxy left in the race. He'll still have the NR endorsement. If he seems viable, he'll have Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and the rest of talk radio in his corner. And he'll be up against one candidate who -- so far -- only does well in GOP primaries when independents are allowed to vote, and another guy whose appeal still looks awfully sectarian. In a race where nobody seems capable of breaking 35 percent in the national polls, why shouldn't the campaign go all the way to the convention?"

Meanwhile, Leon H. Wolf offers some heartfelt advice to the struggling ex-governor:

"It is critical that Romney's people realize that Iowa was not about Evangelicals, it was about the kind of campaign that they have run. Please hear this, someone in the Romney campaign: people start from a position of being skeptical of position changes. It makes them really angry when they perceive that someone who has changed positions recently is attacking someone else for the position that they used to hold. In other words, for God's sake, your man has a resume on which to run, please stop unloading on every other candidate for every deviation from doctrinaire conservatism, when you yourself previously suffered from the same flaws. This is just a harsh fact of life: Huckabee is in a position to throw stones on life issues, you aren't. Tom Tancredo was in a position to throw stones on immigration, you aren't. People feel like you're insulting their intelligence when you do this sort of stuff, and in so doing, you've made so many Republicans angry with you that I take constant crap from various quarters just for supporting you. Stop in the hopes that it's not too late. Run a positive campaign, one that involves less scripts, and every once in a while, let people know that there's a real person under the hair who actually cares about something -- anything."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Gender vs. Race

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias links to Gloria Steinem's much-discussed op-ed in The New York Times, in which Steinem asserts that "the sex barrier [is] not taken as seriously as the racial one" in American politics. Yglesias writes:

"...here's where being black is less of a handicap than being a woman. American society is awash in certain negative stereotypes of African-Americans, especially African-American men. But it's possible for any individual African-American to 'transcend' those stereotypes by simply not living up to them. So Barack Obama can't afford to show the kind of populist outrage John Edwards expresses lest he be deemed a threatening radical, but if he avoids falling into pitfalls of stereotype he winds up getting praised in a somewhat condescending, but still helpful to his political career, manner as 'one of the good ones.'

A woman faces a very different problem. A woman who's seen as possessing the stereotypical characteristics of femininity won't do well in presidential politics. But a woman who's seen as lacking those characteristics will be penalized as well. The female politician can't be too femme or too butch, and she can't be androgynous either. That's why, as Kerry Howley sagely observed in The New York Times, frequently the only way for a woman politician to break through is by more-or-less riding the coattails of a male husband or father. Once some critical mass of women acquire political power, it becomes possible to start creating new models of political behavior. But right now, our model of executive leadership is heavily male-coded, but insufficiently feminine women are disparaged so widespread sexist assumptions create an inescapable trap."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY II: Concrete Always Beats Abstract

The always astute Patrick Ruffini offers some thoughts on HRC's stunning NH victory:

"Not only did Clinton turn out women, but she finally tapped into the vote-rich potential of her 'Downscale Dems'...If your concerns were ethereal, centered around abstract concepts like 'hope' and 'change,' you voted for Obama. If your concerns were concrete, centered around the economy and health care, you voted for Clinton. Concrete always beats abstract.

We always knew Obama's voters were latte-sippers, and we all seemed stunned when he was poised to defy the legacy of futility of Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, and Howard Dean. Gravity kicked in just as soon as the Obama camp started putting out its 'wait till Hanover comes in' spin.

I think a lesson for the 2012 or 2016 version of Obama is to still use the aspirational language of hope but to learn to talk about the economy, education, and health care in concrete terms. New Hampshire shows that it's not all about the concept of 'change,' but how it relates to specific policies on the ground. In a sense, the exits point a way out of the losing change-vs-experience debate for Hillary: talking about change on specific topics that matter to working families, change on health care, change in the economy, etc. This election was the theory of change (Obama) vs. the reality of change (Clinton). The adults finally showed up."

LEST WE FORGET: Bill Clinton Keys Obama's Car

Andy Borowitz has the latest:

"In what political observers called a shocking display of anger from a former President of the United States, Bill Clinton today keyed the car of Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. Clinton's attacks on Senator Obama have become more scathing in recent days, but few Democratic insiders expected his rhetorical attacks to turn into outright vandalism.

That is precisely what happened, however, in the parking lot of a Dunkin' Donuts in Nashua, New Hampshire, where Mr. Obama and his aides had stopped for an early morning campaign appearance.

Spotting the Illinois senator's car in the lot, a wild-eyed Mr. Clinton pulled out his key ring and 'started twirling it on his finger like a six-shooter,' according to one eyewitness.

Saying he was 'damned sick and tired' of everything going Mr. Obama's way, the former President dragged his keys across the length of the senator's car, creating a deep gash in the paint job that experts said would cost hundreds of dollars to repair. [...]

For his part, Mr. Clinton was unrepentant, telling reporters 'you ain't seen nothing yet.'

'Where does he live?' Mr. Clinton shouted at the press corps. 'I'ma go TP that bastard's house.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at January 9, 2008 01:04 PM