Thursday, January 10, 2008

Who decides? A view from the trenches.



E.J. Dionne (pictured above with this blogger and his wife both of whom think he's wonderful) wonders whether the surprising Democratic primary results in NH where really so surprising.

Maybe the signs pointing to Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary were there all along, hidden in plain sight by the blur of Obamamania and a stack of flawed polls...

Just to be straight up about it, I have never been so certain and so wrong in many years of watching elections, anticipating as I did a solid Obama victory here. It's little comfort that the Clinton camp was surprised, too, as some in its ranks candidly acknowledged...

The campaigns -- and, yes, the media -- need to go back to the drawing board...


There are a lot of theories flying around about how Hillary pulled it off, but here's my take, built on rough theorizing among the foot soldiers of the ground campaign. It was not Hillary who pulled it off (otherwise wouldn't she have some explanation of what happened?) but rather New Hampshire voters who made a decision based on a number of complicated factors but most significantly the new polls. Some went over to vote for McCain, a lot of undecideds (of which there were loads) balked at deciding for the nation.

So it isn't back to the drawing board. Obama will keep with his message of unity that has finally paid off after six months of stagnation. Hillary will continue to try to cobble together ways to bank on her familiarity and technical knowledge of policies. And the press will continue to peddle silly theories. We've gone from the inevitable Clinton to the inevitable Obama to the comeback Clinton in a little over a month.

In the end, America is going to make a decision, and none of us, least of all this humble blogger, have any idea what it is going to be.

No comments: