I think the crying definitely helped. it made her appear human.

And I think the media piling on the last couple of days rallied women to Clinton's defense.

Tears are like the Bat-Signal to women. They see crying, and they drop everything to help their fallen camrade.

While we're at it, let's shed a tear for Edmund Muskie.

Hillary is not Ed Muskie, his tears came after a vicious attack on his wife, back in the days when divorce was a no-no for a politician and Happy, was Gov. Rockefeller of NY's albatross.

Here is the "crying" reference, and the dirty tricks connection with Nixon. Muskie would have given Nixon a run for his money and who knows what would have been different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canuck_Letter

Who realized Hillary has such man hands?

Gimme a break, the crying was faked. Just like everything else about her. Even the "hecklers" in her crowds.
Anyone see the most recent one? The guy yelling "Iron My Shirt"? Then she makes some comment about sexism, and the women in the crowd go nuts.

This morning dawns with another voting mystery. How can polling and results be so different? Was this Ohio or Florida once again? There was a rush to come up with explanations for why Hillary suddenly did better. Was it the tears? Was it women voters? There was another bunch of stories about pollsters being wrong - how they have to examine their methods so they could get better in the future. The glaring omission in any mainstream media that I watched was even a mention that there could be something funny going on. Look, maybe this was as clean as a fresh New Hampshire snowstorm but if you are listing possible explanations for a fairly large discrepancy, and you don't include the idea that the vote was rigged, then you are not doing your job. The fact that it is so easy to rig an election is already a disgrace. This should be a non-topic because of safeguards. Why isn't it? Why do I have more confidence in the lottery system than our voting technology?
Many Republicans strategists believe Hillary is unelectable based on her negatives. How did Karl Rove put it? She's a fatally flawed candidate? You know about Diebold. We have to get to the point in this society where we don't believe what we are being told as a starting point - the government has earned that from us. We have to be ever vigilant. Who knows what happened last night, but if you are listing the possibilities and you don't mention voter fraud, then you are not covering the story.

Ever since she announced, Clinton has been running a Karl Rove campaign exactly. My favorite headline from today's NYTimes: "Clinton’s Strategy Echoes Bush in ’00"
The Bush years are like a trauma: even after it's over, it still keeps happening.

Bill, the reason vote fraud doesn't get mentioned is because it's extremely unlikely. There's no single person in charge of any election in any state who can just flip a switch and change votes. Any attempt to change votes on a large scale would involve dozens of people.

There are really two possibilities here:
1) The pollsters, who have a pack mentality, simply screwed up by using a little more "art" than "science", taking shortcuts, and asking leading questions, or
2) A vast conspiracy -- either by the Clinton machine or the ghost of Rove -- involving dozens of people was successfully executed without a single peep from anyone.

The former is much more believable.

Dirty tricks or no, Muskie or not or any other nominee, this result was inevitable. An electoral tsunami was what it was.

When confronted with the truth, does the moment turn from "faked" or a "plant" to genuine or do the subsequent attacks rely other false premises?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/01/08/iron-my-shirt-media-fooled-radio-stunters-hillary-stop

Hillary's never been my first choice but shown the full list she is in the top three of all the D's and R's.

Mitt's cried 3 times in 3 weeks and I can't find the relentless attacks for his faked tears. His tears even came in the midst of his lies. Not a mention in the MSM.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/blogs/boston/2007/12/17/tim-russert-makes-mitt-cry/

Am I the only one who thinks this photo and its implication that Hillary won the NH primary by crying, is blatantly misogynistic?

The message -- Keep those over-emotional women at home where they belong! -- belongs at National Review Online...not sure why it's hosted here.

Because I put it there.

Now, as to why you're still hosted here...

We have to get to the point in this society where we don't believe what we are being told as a starting point...

Starting point or ending point, Bill?

As noted in comments to the next post down from this one, the New Hampshire results for the democrats are not necessarily a reflection of the democrats' voting. In other words, candidates may be closer than they appear, or appear closer than they are, or both.

Oh, and Bart, get a grip. The point of all this is not a woman's display of emotion; it is about the possible insincerity of the same.

From CC, a few comments back:
I'd say starting point. At least that's how I approach the "information" from the TV and radio. I used to have a 5-minute delay - I'll call it my idealism phase - where I assumed it was true and then later went back and questioned it. Now I assume it's not true, and work back to the idea that it might be. I also worry about the effect of repeated propaganda - stuff that I know isn't true but just gets repeated so often that you have to remind yourself of what you believe. That's why Ron Paul is such a threat to the GOP. He's not sticking to the BS. Rudy Giuliani said in the last debate, that the reason we are disliked by many in the Middle East has nothing to do with our foreign policy. That could be the single dumbest thing I ever heard an adult say, and yet, that's the message we keep getting: "They hate us because we're free. We're just so darn terrific they can't stand it."
Questioning everything is part of being ever vigilant and that's an American value that we have to keep.
I'm not asking for a screaming headline here - just a phrase. Something like, "Barring any funny business, the results seem to indicate that Hillary made a strong comeback last night."

Bill and Miles-

The polls before the event were known to have a huge margin of uncertainty in them, that being which way the independents would actually swing come primary day. This result could be explained by the independents turning out for Hillary in droves.

As for vote fraud on a large scale, yes Miles wholesale vote-stealing by one person could be possible with electronic voting machine shenannigans. However, I have no idea if NH uses the machines vulnerable to that or not. I doubt it happened here.

Vote fraud, but not illegal vote fraud. Like this: NH allows voter registration right up to election day, with no ID requirements, and with few questions asked. Anecdotal reports of copious MA license plates pulling up at polling places. Blow-out turnout on the D side, to the point that they ran out of ballots. Spot-on polling results that called the R side for McCain with precision, but meanwhile inexplicable grossly erroneous polling results on the D side. What does it all add up to? Who's got a machine that can make that happen?

2007: Mayor Potter walks out of city council meeting that isn't going his way.

2008:(trying something that appears to work) Mayor Potter cries like a vulnerable female in a city council meeting that isn't going his way.

Actually, the stuff I see shows Hillary getting around 5% more of the votes on the machines than by hand, while Obama loses 2% more votes. The other candidates stay around the same between machine and hand ballots. Translation: If this data is true, the machines could have been rigged for Hillary. It is possible that Obama actually won New Hampshire and the polls were correct. The bit about the independents assumes they weren't in the polls. Is that what you're claiming?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiaBqwqkXs

ZQ- Interesting. But eight thousand? Seems a stretch of the imagination, and still is presumably illegal.

BMcD- The independents in NH got to pick which side to vote for on election day. So they could have turned out big for Clinton, or figured Obama was safe and turned out for McCain on the other side.

Also, according to the votemaster: "Women broke for Clinton 47% to 34% (in Iowa they split evenly)". I'd have thought the polls would have spotted that, but if independent women broke that hard maybe it was much of the difference.

Sure will be an interesting discussion, especially with your machine-vote numbers. Source?

I think the whole Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton performance is getting stale.

think the whole Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton performance

Sorry, that's just waaaaaaay too broad a brush to paint with.

Sorry, that's just waaaaaaay too broad a brush to paint with.

Au contraire, mon ami - I don't think the brush will do it.

We need an airless spray setup...

...after the pressure-washing, of course.

The tears were authentic. She had just lost in Iowa, was at a coffee klatch with a handful of women and was asked how she's holding up with the grueling nature of campaigning. She picked up some of the women's vote from Obama and squeaked by in NH. With three top tier candidates, any one of whom would be a vast improvement over the status quo, let the primary unfold. The ultimate winner will be battle tested, which will serve them well for the bigger fight to follow. The other up-side, the Dems. are turning out significant numbers and the electorate is hungry for change. That's why the prediction of a GOP victory in the general election is a stretch. Few, if any, new kids on the block will vote Repub. Just watched Gen. Wesley Clark stump for Hillary. The assumption is she is tight with the Mill/Ind. complex and all those other big money interests. If "sisterhood" makes women blind to her big money connections, perhaps she will win.

Allan L.- I'm 40 years old. I have never yet gotten to vote in a Presidential election where the ballot didn't have either "Bush" or "Clinton" on it. Kids who are just now becoming old enough to vote have never known anything other than "President Bush" or "President Clinton".

That's messed up.

Well, Boo-Hoo. I'm sixty five, and have never been able to vote FOR a presidential candidate -- only AGAINST the other one. As far as I can see, the Bush/Clinton ball of wax, if it were one, presented itself eight years ago. It's not a ball of wax. It's a red herring. I'm not a Hillary supporter, but my objections have nothing to do with her surname or her predecessors'.

Perking up a pair of points, with sigh-tation:

1- Exit polling reported NH Independents majorly chose to vote on the Democratic ballot, and there going first for Obama in the same percentages as the pre-Primary Day polling reported.

As for, "The polls before the event were known to have a huge margin of uncertainty in them" -- not so "known" that I found reported, only the nominal +/- 4% of statistical significance, AND all the polls agreed with each other; and for, (the) "result could be explained by the independents turning out for Hillary in droves" -- yeah, that could explain it, if it would have actually happened ... but it didn't. Reported tally results are outside the advance polling margin of error only in Hillary's and Obama's numbers, (got your +plus and your -minus, right there).

2- Miles: "There's no single person in charge of any election in any state who can just flip a switch and change votes." Except, in NH it IS one single person, who with a switch-flip CAN change ballot counts, (but you ARE RIGHT it does not "change votes," which are preserved as marked right there on the paper ballots right there in the bins available right now to be hand counted). (Here's a link to a blog with a video dossier on New Hampshire's 'One Person,' and the character counts -- see for yourself.)

In practice, computers changing ballot counts is easier than political operatives changing likely voters' minds.

In wider circumspection, much material and with links further to where individual interest may take you, today's edition, on view here: www.OpEdNews.COM/

.

Which future president's policies would be most subject to influence based upon the interests sponsoring their campaign?
(a working definition for the phrase "big money connections" above)
Which future president's policies would more likely insulate their favored interests from change?
Which future president is most likely to curse the favored interests while doing their bidding?
I think it's an "Edwards the Fighter" to the rescue day. Too bad he and Obama split the "Agents of Change" vote. But stay tuned, cuz change is in the wind.

Err, Tens, I think you misunderstood me, or I said it badly before. The margin of error of the polls was relatively small and the various polls generally agreed, yes. But none of them (that I saw) claimed to predict which ballot the independents would actually vote on. So while their margin of error was low, what they were measuring wasn't really the whole story.

I dunno what happened, and I'm not claiming to. Just throwing some less nefarious hypotheses out there.

Wonder why they ran out of Democrat ballots in NH? You'd think they'd have had enough. Oh, right - that's because you can register to vote on the day of the election....

"...Sorry, that's just waaaaaaay too broad a brush to paint with..."

Fair enough, maybe it's not an act, but it has been a dichotomy. Let's see...we had GB41 being beaten by BC, a two-termer who was continually harassed by the right. He certainly didn't help his own cause by the scandals, either.

Next up is GB43 beating Al Gore (who was surely seen as BC's heir) in perhaps the closest race ever. In the meantime HC runs for Senate in New York. A state she suddenly is very concerned about representing.

For two terms GB43 makes a mockery of almost everything he touches. For now the Bush power + money machine is crippled. (Vote Jeb in 2012!)

Clearly this is an election that HC (BC?) was preparing for for years, to recapture power. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't an oversimplification to note that this is the continued struggle between two political families, dynasties, whatever you want to call them.

History is full of examples: Van Buren, Taft, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Rockefeller, Stevenson, Daley, Gore, Bush, and now Clinton.

Democracy, at it's best, offers us the option to throw dynasties overboard when they are of no longer use politically. Time will tell what the election of 2008 brings forth. But I do think many people are looking for new faces this time around.

Right on cue, there was Karl Rove to explain why Hillary won in New Hampshire. Reminds me of the way Dick Cheney planted stories in the NYTimes and then reacted to them later as if he had just read them. I believe the GOP wants to face Hillary in November and they are not above cheating to make that happen. At least they didn't pull out the old "razor thin margin of victory" line - or at least I didn't see it anywhere. Coming from 42 to 29% down was suspicious enough without throwing in that one as well. This thing reeked.

"Vote Jeb in 2012!"

Chelsea in 2016!

Yeah. I think I'll pass.

Can anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher engaging in a Hillary-type display of tears? Think about it.

Incidentally, the woman who asked the question of Hillary on Monday which resulted in the tearful response was interviewed on NPR today - she said she voted for Obama.

"Can anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher engaging in a Hillary-type display of tears? Think about it."

Deng Xiao-ping nearly made her cry. It's true.

Wow. Although I find the Edwards/populist appeal, as a woman I have to wonder which guys commenting here were heckling Hillary to make them sandwiches.

And Greg, although the woman who asked the question voted for Obama, she also said she would totally get behind Hillary if she takes the primary. She's far from my favorite, but at least she's less likely to try to control my body. Try that on for an issue, men.

About the whole potential for vote fraud a few points:

1. They used the same diebold optical scan machines that have been shown in an HBO special that can be easily hacked. And yes it would be possible to do this with as few as one or two people.

2. If the polls were so inacurate then why did they essentially get the Republican primary correct, and also corretly estimated edwards and richardsons totals.

3. If anyone wants to see more info on this they should go to bragblog.com.

I'm as suspicious and skeptical as anyone about vote-rigging, but if you saw John Zogby on Jon Stewart's show last night, you'd have a better understanding of the fallibility of the polling that was done. Ideas like sampling methods, accounting for "undecideds", regression analysis of results, and margins of statistical sampling error seemed completely new and foreign to him. It was stunning.

Okay, some polling 'ideals' are fallible. Yet how does (did) it go in practice?

Those fallible pre-Primary day polls, AND the fallible 'exit polls' (after action -- when some scoundrels lie to the pollster of their deed), ALL of the fallibilities before-and-after practically hit the exact actual tally spot-on, bull's-eye, for EVERY candidate of BOTH slates. EXCEPT H and O ... where programmed computers printed out the count.

Furthermore, in NH precincts where all ballots were counted by hand, the polls practically hit H and O numbers spot-on, bull's-eye, as well.

For documented facts, follow noah to BradBlog.com

(But then, if a fact displays on the documents, and no media is around to broadcast it, does it make anyone think and act?)

The woman who asked the question (which provoked the tearful response) says she voted for Obama.

Because she didn't think Hillary was very genuine.

As for misognysim or sexism on Jacks photo enhancements: we still get to parody and belittle the political class, whatever their gender, skin color, or ideology.

"Iron my shirt!" (shouted at a Hillary campaign event yesterday) is a good example of sexism. Which is still far more polite than the t-shirt, which adds the b-word.