Chris Matthews' obession with Hillary Clinton (and with women in general) is getting downright freaky.
First, it's the tirades, that Clinton's only a serious candidate because the country feels sorry for her, because of hubby's infidelities. Still unable to fathom that voters might actually prefer Clinton to Obama, he cried "foul" over exit polls and Diebold machines. It had to be a conspiracy! (Folks, there's no conpiracy.)
JOE SCARBOROUGH: What the hell happened in New Hampshire?
MATTHEWS:"You remember the Lone Ranger and Tonto? I think paleface speak with forked tongue. You hear me? Forked tongue....
I thought this was over. I thought it ended with "macaca."...
I thought white voters stopped being what they didn't want to be. You know what it tells me? People aren't proud of who they are. They aren't proud of who they are. If they want to vote for Hillary Clinton, fine. Why don't they say so?
SCARBOROUGH: I'm used to people saying that we in the South have problems.
MATTHEWS: Tell me about it,
SCARBOROUGH: But talk about New England.
MATTHEWS: Boston? BOSTON? [with a tone of incredulity]
MATTHEWS: There's different kind of prejudice in the North than in the South. But it exists. It may not be "I think I'm better than you," but it might be "I don't want to live next door to you."
New England Democrats are racist cocksuckers!
Matthews, of course, is revealing here not a thing about the 2008 election, Hillary Clinton, the New Hampshire primary, New Englanders, or racism. This is about him. And who's surprised? Isn't this the logical culmination of modern punditry? Dude's a disgrace. And so is MSNBC for tolerating this kind of "news analysis."
Pollster.com's Charles Franklin mulls over why polls got Clinton 's numbers so egregiously wrong in New Hampshire : "...the failure of polling in New Hampshire was [likely] tied to swiftly changing politics rather than to failures of methodology."
Kossak DHinMI has a must-read, town-by-town analysis of the New Hampshire results, and posits that the media and pollster failures have to do with the demographics of the voters that supported Hillary Clinton -- blue-collar middle-aged and older women living in rural areas -- and her team's ability to mobilize them: "...this win by Clinton doesn't appear to have been brought about by anything else that changed in the last two days. No, it appears at this early stage of analysis that the pieces were in place for this win all along, and that the 'secret weapon' of the Clinton campaign was their field program to significantly boost turnout with their strongest demographic, single women and women with less than a college degree."
Kos himself sums up a possible rationale for Clinton protest votes: "The more she's attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person 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? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe's mug to bring me back down to earth, but most people don't know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can -- by voting for her."
The Notorious Mark T is suspicious that Clinton 's win is a result of jerry-rigged voting machines: "Then there's this small problem - New Hampshire uses Diebold optical scanning machines to count the paper ballots. This is the same machine that was so easily hacked in HBO's movie, Hacking Democracy. The machines are under control of a private company, LHS Associates, which has exclusive control of the memory cards, start to finish. There is no interference in its control, no government oversight. And New Hampshire has done nothing, nothing, since the weaknesses of the Deibold machines were exposed, to remedy the problem. Nothing." (As Mark T noted, you can find more information at The Brad Blog.)
Drunkard's Lamppost examines the difference between the New Hampshire hand count and the Diebold and finds correlation, not causation: "There are so many variables in an election result that to put Hillary's win down to jiggery-pokery without any real evidence is over the top. Demographics of the turnout and McCain siphoning Independents away from Obama at the last minute are infinitely more likely to have affected the than Diebold skullduggery."
Chris Matthews apparently did not learn his lesson: ""The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York . We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..." It's a wonder this guy still has a job. He's an embarrassment to his network.
Obama co-chair Jesse Jackson, Jr. questions Clinton's tears: "We saw something very clever in the last week of this campaign...we saw a sensitivity factor....Not in response to voters -- not in response to Katrina, not in response to other issues that have devastated the American people, the war in Iraq, we saw tears in response to her appearance. So her appearance brought her to tears, but not hurricane Katrina." Er...Obama's not going to make many friends with this approach, IMHO.
Post New Hampshire primaries: Barack Obama wins the endorsement of one of Nevada 's most powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union.
Okay, 96 percent of the New Hampshire precincts are reporting and it looks like Hillary Clinton narrowly defeated Barack Obama, 39 to 37 percent, or by about 8,000 voters. Edwards finished a distant third, as expected, with 17 percent. I'm glad I stayed up the extra hour or two. Obama gained a whole percentage point during that time!
Wow. Given what the polls were showing just yesterday...an Obama blowout...rumors of Clinton ready to drop out of the race...man, that was some turnaround. So. Record turnout, mostly headed to the Democrats...and they turn out to vote for Clinton? Yes, I'm puzzled. The media's primed to ascribe her success to her "real moment," but...a ten-point shift on a news story that happened a day before the election? It's easier to assume that the polls were dead wrong. Or something.
Various & sundry thoughts.
The Iowa caucus distributed its second-tier delegates to the top tier candidates. The New Hampshire primary did not. Would a similar system have benefited Obama, or Clinton in New Hampshire? Or Edwards, as it apparently did in Iowa?
Turnout was huge. Again, as in Iowa, the majority of new voters came out to cast their votes in the Democratic primary. The numbers were ridiculous in Iowa: the top Republican there would have finished fourth in the Democratic caucus. In New Hampshire the Republican winner, John McCain, would have finished third. It's early, but the Republican party has a steep hill to climb. People are flocking to the Democratic party. We talk about the down-ticket effect here in Montana: consider what a huge influx of Democratic voters in swing states like Iowa and New Hampshire mean to all the statewide races there. Remember, one of the Senate battles to watch in '08 is over Republican John Sununu's New Hampshire seat. I bet he's sweating bullets tonight looking at the number of young voters showing up to vote in the primary.
Did Clinton's moment have an effect on women voters? Did Gloria Steinem's op-ed in today's New York Times strike a chord? According to CNN's exit poll, women favored Clinton, 46 to 34 percent. (Men favored Obama, 40 to 29 percent.) In CNN's Iowa entrance poll, women favored Obama, 35 to 23 percent. (Men also favored Obama, 35 to 30 percent.) That's a huge jump, folks, twenty-something points. More on the woman thing tomorrow.
We got ourselves a race here!
Oh yeah, John McCain won New Hampshire. His victory speech, one word: zzz-zz-zzz. Dude looks old.
What's been buzzing in the Inter Tubes today is the massive turnout in New Hampshire. In fact, the turnout for today's primary is so large, towns are worried they won't have enough ballots to complete the election (!):
"Turnout is absolutely huge and towns are starting to get concerned that they may not have enough ballots," Scanlan said. "We are working on those issues. Everything else seems to be going smoothly."
Scanlan said that the Secretary of State's office is sending additional ballots to Portsmouth and Keene (traditionally Democratic strongholds), Hudson (Republican leaning with significant numbers of independents) and Pelham (large number of independents).
According to Scanlan, the ballot strain seems to be on Democratic ballots, which suggests that the undeclared voters are breaking for the Democratic primary....
Record numbers? Democratic ballots? Independent districts? Hmmm....are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Here's some news only political junkies can love: the early returns are in! Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, population 17, is the first "town" to report its primary election results!
Obama, the first-term senator from Illinois who won last week's Iowa caucuses, led the New York senator and former first lady 39 percent to 29 percent in a poll conducted Saturday and Sunday - a sharp change from a poll out Saturday that showed the Democratic front-runners tied at 33 percent.
Sen. Barack Obama has opened up a 13 percentage point lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the battle for votes in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll conducted in the state from Friday through this afternoon.
Obama polled at 41 percent to Clinton's 28 percent.
(Both polls have McCain with a single-digit lead over Romney.)
On a related note, check out this NPR story (courtesy of Jason Wiener) about Obama supporters "bum rush[ing] the big donor section" peopled by Clinton donors at Friday political rally in New Hampshire. It kinda illustrates Obama-rama succinctly.
Wiener makes the point that if a leader is elected by a movement, it's harder to ignore that movement, and Obama, if elected, might give us "four years of movement building from the bully pulpit." Or he might figure it's easier to rely on the big donors and the media coverage the second go-round. Whatever. We know Obama is running a people-powered campaign right now, and Clinton's doing the big-money shuffle. It's exciting, and you no doubt know where I stand on the matter.
Anyhoo, the money quote comes towards the end of the NPR segment:
Stephanie Powers, a Clinton volunteer from Washington DC said she's still amazed by all these young women who have abandoned the chance to elect a female president.
"I tell younger women they should've been through the struggle. (Laughs.) They ought to get on their knees and thank her for all the work she did and for those of us who are in her age group, because we've paved the way. And you know what? It's a lot easier now."
Gee, and you wonder why folks are pulling for Obama?
