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Now that Hillary won despite (because of?) her emotional moment yesterday, it seems an okay time to point out that last night, TBS ran the Sex in the City episode about ... women crying at work!
The scene: Samantha and her three best friends are sitting at dinner discusing the workplace (rough transcript):
[Unknown]: Emotional is just code for, "I don't want to hire this woman."
Miranda: Exactly. They're that way at my firm, too. Think you're gonna cry over
a legal brief.
[Unknown]: Have you cried over a brief?
Miranda: Yes, but only in the privacy of my office.
Charlotte: I cried once at the gallery, once, in
10 years... and from that day on it was, ''Careful, don't make Charlotte cry.''
Samantha: I have never cried at work.
Carrie: I fake cried to my editor when I missed a deadline. I told him I was
having a bad time at home, but really...I was having a good time in the Hamptons.
[Unknown]: That makes the rest of us look bad.
Carrie: Boo hoo. it was 80 degrees and sunny.
[Unknown]: A guy gets angry in a meeting, he's a pistol, a woman, she's emotional.
At the end of the episode, Samantha gets turned down for a job, accuses the guy who didn't hire her of being sexist, and leaves in a huff telling herself "Don'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcry." He then chases after her and changes his mind: "That took balls," he says. Hence the episode's title, "Belles of the Balls."
Coincidence? That, or Hillary has friends in high places ... like TBS.
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It's been at least 45 minutes since MSNBC announced Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire, and it still doesn't make any sense.
The narrative has not changed since Iowa. Barack Obama had the message "Americans" believed in. His crowd sizes were huge in New Hampshire. Pollsters were enamored with his numbers. Obama and Clinton's debate performances were both praised, but the mainstream media didn't think the momentum shifted.
All of this matters because those are the metrics that affect public opinion. And public opinion affects how voters vote. Or so we thought.
So, what the hell happened? Well, something triggered New Hampshire voters that didn't trigger the media nor the pollsters. There's nothing else we can think of outside of The Diner Sob. These may be the most famous tears that never fell from an eye. There's just nothing else that explains this drastic, 15-point shift besides Clinton's moment of vulnerability. (Obama was favored by 10 points coming into tonight).
Or it may be even simpler. New Hampshire voters just decided to flip the bird at Iowa. In the process, what they really did was say eff you to the media, the pollsters, and conventional wisdom. I pondered whether this might happen a couple of weeks ago, but I based my prediction on the assumption Clinton would win Iowa and New Hampshire would support Obama out of stubbornness. At this point, I probably shouldn't be surprised I had it all wrong.
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NASHUA -- The energy is at a 10 here during Obama's concession speech, but you can tell that if he'd won, it would go up to 11.
His message is what you'd expect: pride for what's been achieved, despite falling short of victory. "No one would have imagined we would accomplish what we did tonight in New Hampshire," he says. A chant builds: "We want change!"
He congratulates Hillary on her victory, but still works a slight dig in there: America wants politicians "who can disagree without being disagreeable," he says. And then a reference to her claim that Obama raises "false hopes": "There has never been anything false about wanting hope."
Here in the press filing room, the sound is gone from the feed broadcasting Hillary's victory speech. "Sound!" people are yelling. The muting almost feels deliberate. What better move than to keep a roomful of reporters from watching the speech? Finally, they turn it up.
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Judging by this morning’s headlines, just about everyone was confident that Barack Obama was going to win the New Hampshire primary by a comfortable margin. “Clinton Braces for Second Loss; Union, Senators May Back Obama,” the Wall Street Journal declared on today’s front page. At 8:07 p.m., FOXNews.com reported that its exit polls showed Obama ahead by five points, 39 percent to Clinton’s 34 percent.
But now Clinton leads. This sort of jarring of our expectations conjures up past examples of black candidates who have polled significantly higher than their white opponents, only to confront a very different reality when the votes are counted. Pollsters know this as the “Bradley Effect,” christened for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black man who narrowly lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to a white opponent even though Bradley led in the polls. (It’s sometimes also referred to as the “Wilder Effect,” after Douglas Wilder, who had been polling at 10 points ahead of Marshall Coleman in the 1989 governor’s race, beat Coleman by less than a point.) Harold Ford Jr., who lost his bid for a Senate seat in Tennessee in 2006, also polled better than he performed.
One theory is that voters contacted by pollsters are more likely to say they support a black candidate running against a white candidate out of desire to seem progressive. Social psychologists called this “social desirability” – the urge to act in ways that one believes his or her environment finds appropriate.
In a February 2007 article, the Pew Research Center noted that this effect was decidedly less pronounced in 2006. While black candidates lost four of five statewide races against white opponents, the polling tended to reflect this. “Taken together,” it states, “the accuracy of the polling in these five biracial elections suggests that the problems that bedeviled polling in the 1980s and early 1990s may no longer be so serious.”
If Clinton sustains her lead, however, all future polls between her and Obama will be suspect.
Update 11:35 p.m.: Jon Krosnick, a Stanford social psychologist and polling
methodology expert, points out that evidence for the Bradley Effect is largely
anecdotal. There is, however, a large body of research on the effect of the
gender and race of an interviewer, both in person and over the phone, and
Krosnick points out another scenario:
“People are startlingly good at detecting the race of a
person over the phone,” Krosnick told me. An interviewer who is perceived to be black by the respondent can subconsciously
influence an undecided voter in favor of a black candidate—something Krosnick
describes as a “priming of positive images.” But the same could apply to on-the-fence
voters who have some reservations about supporting a female candidate, but are subtly influenced by a capable female interviewer. (The same might hold true in
the negative, but people are much more likely to hang up on incompetent
interviewers before the interview is complete.)
“You can make up the story either way,” Krosnick says. But he
was doubtful that this sort of effect was responsible on its own for the differential
between Obama’s lead in the polls and Clinton’s victory tonight: “I just don’t
see how you get the discrepancy.”
If the Bradley Effect becomes an issue moving forward in the Democratic race, look for the pollsters to fall back on their blanket defense: The polls were correct, but the voters changed without telling anybody.
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Always count on Fred Thompson to put a positive spin on things. Especially election losses. This statement just went out:
Tonight's results, with no clear frontrunner, prove the GOP nomination is wide open. The next battlefield is South Carolina, where voters are far more conservative than in New Hampshire and deeply concerned about illegal immigration in America. Fred Thompson is uniquely positioned for victory in the Southern states. He is the only true conservative with a plan to end illegal immigration and protect our sovereignty.
He's right until the third sentence. Sure, the race is as wide open as ever. Romney has failed to snag either of his
make-or-break states. But that doesn't mean Thompson is the one who benefits so much as Giuliani does. While we've all been drooling over Huckabee and McCain, Rudy has been hiding in the grass, getting a big head start on the Feb. 5 states. Unless McCain makes a clean sweep of the other early states, Giuliani has as good a chance as anyone to take the nomination. Thompson, on the other hand, is still third in South Carolina, his best state, and he doesn't poll in the top four nationwide. He might be "uniquely positioned," but it's not for victory.
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A question I haven't heard asked yet: Is Hillary's lead (and maybe win) John Edwards' fault?
The Edwards campaign has lumped Edwards and Obama together all week to try and ride Obama's coattails out of Iowa. By latching on to Obama's surge, Edwards may have siphoned some of this fabled "change vote" that everybody seems to be talking about. (After all, Ralph Nader did endorse Edwards.)
If that's the case, the Obama-Edwards fight we saw in Iowa may heat up all over again. And if Edwards really believes in change he'll pull out of the race to leave all of the change voters to Obama.
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Watching McCain's speech, I find it striking how little emotion he's putting into it. Considering he just went from political oblivion to first-primary champion over the course of six months, you would think he would be a bit more triumphant.
It's probably because McCain is reading from notes. Mitt Romney, in contrast, pulled off a more emotional (for him) speech because he could pace around the podium flashing that Guy Smiley smile. He wasn't tethered to a podium, microphone, or legal pad.
It isn't like McCain didn't know he was favored to win. You would think he could have prepared a speech ahead of time. But then again, he is superstitious. Regardless, McCain has a national audience right now, and a national audience likes emotion. It likes public speaking. It likes people to look at the camera when they talk.
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NASHUA -- "Hillary Clinton's lead has shrunk to four points now," says Keith Olbermann's voice, booming from the jumbotron at the Nashua South High School where Obama is holding his election night rally. Cheers go up, seeing as last time we checked, she was five points ahead.
The gym here is packed to capacity. Beyond capacity. Fire hazard is an understatement. To get in, I had to wait till the door guard had her back turned. Everyone's watching the results come in on the big screen. It's like a basketball game, but the action is in a thousand places instead of one.
UPDATE 9:16 p.m.: Three percent! Every time the MSNBC stats graphic flashes, there's a burst of glee. You can hear McCain fans chanting "USA! USA!" during his acceptance speech over the TV. The crowd here greets the challenge with a round of "Fired up! Ready to go!"
UPDATE 9:29 p.m.: Two percent. Damn. "Younger people vote later," a guy here tells me. They have jobs; Hillary-loving retirees don't. That could explain the late-in-the-game gap shrinkage.
UPDATE 10:02 p.m.: So much for that. More than 50 percent of the vote is in and Clinton's still ahead. I've been biting my nails. And I don't bite my nails.
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Mitt Romney, in his (sort-of) concession speech this evening, has picked up a new (to us) verbal tic. He listed a variety of Washington's failures and then said Washington promised to fix them.
Then he said, over and over again after each point, "but they ... they haven't." The ellipsis signifies an uncomfortably pregnant pause.
I guess this is supposed to be a rhetorical device, but it merely sounds like he zoned out in the middle of the speech. A Slate colleague suggests it's a stilted call-and-response effort, but that makes it even worse. Considering Romney has already adopted Obama's change message, it seems like he is now trying to copy Obam'a's "Fire it up! Ready to go!" call-and-response battle cry.
Have the people voted for Romney? They ... they haven't.
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It's dawning on the cable newsers that the Obama coverage they were planning for this evening may not be in store. So, considering we wondered what would happen if Obama lost, it's worth wondering what happens if Clinton wins. Yes, there's a difference.
- Hillary Clinton competes in Nevada and South Carolina. You can't take two primaries off when you have "Comeback Kid" momentum coming out of New Hampshire. Clinton doesn't necessarily want this to happen, because she could still get wiped in both states. So, in a way, Clinton is damned if she does, and damned if she doesn't.
- Bill Clinton simmers down. All of a sudden, the anti-Obama rhetoric that he's been spewing the past few days looks overly harsh, which means he has to rein in the stream-of-consciousness attacks. Suddenly, the "unbound" Clinton machine becomes the Clinton machine we're used to.
- Does Clinton still go through with the staff shake-up that has been widely rumored over the past few days? If so, does that mean she fixed what was already working? Or does it mean that she still acknowledges the mistakes of Iowa?
- I've said it before, but it's worth mentioning again: The cable networks will not shut up about The Diner Sob.
All of these half-baked thoughts could be for naught rather soon, of course. Also of note: Even if Clinton comes close but doesn't win, most of this still applies.
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This is what happens when you skip the early primaries. You drop below the top three, which means you get lumped in with the Ron Pauls and Duncan Hunters of the world. Even if Keith Olbermann slipped when he said Giuliani was outside the Romney-Huckabee-McCain triumvirate, the words still came through the TV. The more often that happens, the more problems Giuliani has.
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NEWS: McCain is projected to win New Hampshire on the Republican side, but it's unclear by how much.
An initial thought: Is this because Tom Tancredo dropped out of the race on December 20? Without Tancredo, McCain hasn't had an uber, uber hardliner pushing the conversation on the right during the campaign. Remember, McCain's chief weakness is his relatively tame stance on immigration, something that Mitt Romney harped on over and over this weekend at debates.
But notice what happened at the ABC debate. None of the other candidates rallied to Romney's side when he was hammering McCain. Instead, they turned on Romney and started attacking him, leaving McCain to grin in the void.
Something tells me that Tancredo wouldn't have let McCain off the hook. Instead, he'd link everything back to the border and demonstrate that McCain can never out-Tancredo Tancredo. The pundits keep waiting for the immigration-minded voters to rise up against McCain. But without a fringe candidate like Tancredo rallying the troops, it may never happen.
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So says the Blitzer and his employer. Gee, Wolf, thanks for letting me know. Took some real sleuthing there.
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One of the seedier traditions of cable news is displaying the precinct returns as they come in. Polls haven't even closed across the state, yet Fox News is telling me Clinton is up by two percentage points. Whatever happened to serving in the public interest?
Now, I know better than to think this means anything more than Chris seeing an anagram for Hillary in a urinal. But I still get a palpable sense of excitement that there might be an upset. It's a primal urge to jump to conclusions and build a narrative in my head before the actual results come through. I know it's foolish, the cable news anchors know it's foolish, and I hope the American public knows it's foolish. For some reason, I doubt that last part.
UPDATE 10:15 p.m.: Uh, maybe I was right to be foolish.
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Spotted this in a bathroom at the Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H. I know it's not as reliable as chicken entrails, but should her campaign be concerned that it contains the word "Hillary"?
Moreover, should anyone be concerned that I'm whipping out my camera in the Holy of Holies?
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If you haven't yet heard about Bill O'Reilly's pushy moment at an Obama event over the weekend, read John Dickerson's first-hand account here. Then watch the video from O'Reilly's program here.
Apparently O'Reilly wanted to set the record straight about what happened. But he doesn't come off particularly well in the clip. What the video does not capture is the heckling John describes in his piece:
A number of people shouted falafel, the word O'Reilly used in a racy set of telephone conversations
with a young woman he was trying to seduce as he described a shower
they might take together. He meant loofa, which is not a Middle Eastern
delicacy but a bath item.
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Whatever you think of Mike Huckabee's opinions on immigration, the IRS, and quarantining AIDS victims, you can't deny he's one of the most fascinating presidential candidates in some time. From his American Legion event last night in Rochester:
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Be sure to check out The Colbert Report tonight at 11:30 ET on Comedy Central. Apparently the show's booking team worked its way down the list of credible journalists all the way to ... us!
Also, check back tonight for live updates on the New Hampshire results.
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While the Barack Obama coronation parade marches on, it's worth taking a breather from the Obama maniacs, devotees, and apologists to ponder what happens if he comes in second tonight. Sure, it may not happen, but what if it did?
- Obama is only sort of screwed. The culinary union in Nevada will probably still endorse him tomorrow, and his colleagues in the Senate will probably still come out publicly in support. Plus, black voters in South Carolina will probably still vote, and probably vote for Obama. Note the number of times I had to use probably. All of a sudden, the falling dominoes that once seemed like a sure thing aren't nearly as wobbly.
- Clinton is still sort of screwed. Clinton is still going to have a hard time competing in Nevada and South Carolina, which means the glow from her New Hampshire win may wear off by Feb. 5 (just like the glow from a New Hampshire loss may evaporate). And now there are rumors that she's strapped for cash (which we find hard to believe). It gets easier, but it's not a done deal.
- Mitt Romney and John Edwards are definitely screwed. Romney has been grafting a bastardized, Republicanized version of Obama's change message on to his platform since Iowa. John Edwards is convinced that every vote for Obama is a vote for change, which is a vote for Edwards. He thinks this will somehow magically trickle down and help him once Clinton is out of the race.
- Crying will be the new nuclear option. If Hillary wins, then the press will need to attribute the shocking outcome to anything concrete they can get their hands on. They'll turn to 2008's water works. "The Diner Sob" will become legendary.
- The press will have a meltdown. Chris Matthews will have to find a way to one-up his grandiose claims of what would happen if Obama won Iowa. Plus, he'll have to start being even more "obsessed" with Hillary. NBC News reporter Lee Cowan will have to find a way to stay objective, even though it's hard. Conservative writers (i.e. Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, and the New York Sun's editorial page) will have to retreat back into their hyperpartisan corner.
Now, with rumors of record turnout and ballot shortages (which suggests independents are voting for a Democrat), this is all very unlikely. But, as Obama likes to remind us, so was a black guy named Barack winning Iowa.
We also have a breakdown of what happens if Hillary wins. Yes, there's a distinction.
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Maybe this happens every four years, but I feel like there's been an unusual number of animals trotted out on behalf of candidates this cycle. Here's one dog I caught at a Huckabee event at the local American Legion last night:
Then there's the Great Dane prowling the streets of Manchester, N.H., for Richardson:
And finally, the Obama goat (or whatever that thing is). He was stumbling around a bit, as if drunk or sedated:
In terms of publicity, an animal is worth 1,000 humans.
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A major theme of this campaign so far has been message theft. Everyone wants "change"—so much that if you want to stand out, you pretty much have to defend the status quo. Everyone claims to be running for the youth of America. And here's the most recent line to work its way into every candidate's speech:
“For me and Elizabeth, this is personal.”—John Edwards, everywhere he stops, distinguishing between "academic" and "political" motivations of his opponents.
“This is personal for me.”—Barack Obama, Lebanon City Hall, N.H., Jan. 7
"This is very personal for me."—Hillary Clinton, Jan. 7, during “crying” episode.
Why don't they just merge their candidacies already?
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Forget who's going to win. It's just as fun to figure out who's going to drop out. We've seen two candidates bail since our last death watch, and one more is likely to go tonight.
R.I.P.
Chris Dodd and Joe Biden: Fittingly, their candidacies are buried next to one another in Iowa. Your legacies are still with us, gentlemen.
Dead on arrival
Bill Richardson: He wants to stay in the race until we get to the West in February, but it's just not possible. He's polling poorly in Nevada, where the New Mexico governor should be doing well, and every fourth-place finish only reinforces the idea that a vote for Richardson is a wasted vote. Plus, he ruined all of his Hillary Clinton VP karma by maybe/maybe not forming a last-minute pseudo-deal with Barack Obama in Iowa. Look for a concession speech tonight or tomorrow.
On life support
John McCain: Anything other than first is going to be a disaster. Not withdrawal-worthy, but a disaster nonetheless. All of the media attention will evaporate, the money will dry up, and the pundits will blame it all on immigration. (Sound familiar?)
Mitt Romney: Romney won't drop out tonight, but he's all-but-done if he doesn't hit expectations in New Hampshire. To do so, he needs to grab more Republicans than McCain and hope he comes in first or a close second because McCain grabbed more independents. From there, his campaign can spin the results to suggest Romney is the real conservative draw and that McCain's support is from people who aren't true Republicans. Then he has to hope nobody realizes that his independent draw means McCain is the most electable in November. Yeah, it's looking bleak.
The enigmas
Dennis Kucinich: If his sticking around means more Viggo Mortensen sightings, count us in.
Mike Gravel: If his sticking around means more inappropriate drug comments, count us in. Per the Chicago Tribune, " ‘I'm sure a lot of you have tripped out on alcohol,' Gravel told the students. ‘It's a lot safer to do it on marijuana.' "
Duncan Hunter: We've said all we needed to say already.
Not going anywhere
Hillary Clinton: Drudge is full of it.
John Edwards: On a conference call with senior Edwards staffers yesterday, it was very clear he's not leaving any time soon. (He's said he'll stay in through the convention.) It sounded like he's playing chicken with Hillary Clinton, waiting for her to drop out so he can get Obama one-on-one. He may get his wish if Clinton skips South Carolina.
Barack Obama: Oprah must be so proud.
Mike Huckabee: The stakes are surprisingly low for Huckabee tonight. His Iowa momentum is relatively insulated from a fourth-place finish. A third-place finish ahead of Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul would be a huge boost and would make him the co-front-runner with McCain in South Carolina.
Rudy Giuliani: Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Yet, we can't seem to get rid of them. Giuliani, as everybody has said ad nausem, is in this through Feb. 5.
Ron Paul: His appearance on Jay Leno last night suggests his priorities are elsewhere. Even if he finishes third in New Hampshire (a real possibility), this still feels like a practice run for a third-party run.
Fred Thompson: He's going to South Carolina. Sigh. Meanwhile, for all of you Fringe devotees, pay attention to the bottom of the returns tonight. It's possible all of the fringe candidates combined will get more votes than Thompson in New Hampshire.
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ROCHESTER, N.H.—We’ve already spent many a post cataloguing the various morbid quips that come out of the Mike Huckabee’s mouth. What we didn’t know is that his wife, Janet, has the same sense of humor.
Tonight she held court at the local branch of the American Legion, a veterans’ organization, telling a story about sky-diving with one of her husband's political rivals. “I said to her, ‘I’ll pack your chute.’ ” Pause. Coy smile. Nervous laughter. “Just kidding,” she said.
Later, Janet Huckabee playfully clarified the state motto: “If someone tries to mess with you living free, they will die!”