Isn't it wonderful how democracy can kick the political punditry classes in the face from time to time. I don't recall a single person who thought Hillary Clinton had an earthly in New Hampshire yesterday. Indeed, many thought Obama would win by a double digit margin (I predicted 8 per cent).
When I went to bed at 1.30am I was still under the illusion that it was Obama's victory, even thought the early results showed Clinton had a four point lead. And at this point let me apologise to those who I had encouraged to blog with me through the night. I had forgotten I had rather stupidly arranged a meeting in Westminster early this morning, which meant I had to get up at 7am.
Thew great thing about both the McCain and Clinton victories is that the race is wide open going into Super Tuesday on 5 February. At a stroke, Hillary resumes her front runner mantle, and who knows, it may indeed be the spur she needed to find her voice, as she said in her victory speech. The moment of vulnerability she displayed on Monday (whether real or not) could turn out to be the point at which people began to see her in a more human light. Who knows?
On the Republican side, McCain wasn't just dead and buried as a candidate a few months ago, he had been put in the coffin. He had money, had fired most of his campaign staff and seemed to be going through the motions. A month, as Harold Wilson might have said, is an eternity in presidential politics. While Mike Huckabee has come out of nowhere to be a semi-serious candidate (Lord help us) it is clear that McCain is the big winner fron the last week. The big losers are undoubtedly Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. Romney has a home in New Hampshire, had been governor of neighbouring Massachussets and should have done much, much better. I watched his concession speech and could see why he lost. He gave his stump speech again and seemed to think that just because he looks like an identikit US President, the position should be his for the asking.
Giuliani didn't have a campaign in New Hampshire. His strategy is to win big in Florida at the end of the month and then sweep the board on Super Tuesday. It's very risky for a candidate whose campaign has so far been the dampest of damp squibs.
To those who slag off the US and its electoral system, last night will have come as a shock, as indeed it was to the rest of us. But whatever the result, the best statistic of the evening was that there was a record voter turnout. Let's hope that is repeated in every primary and in the general election itself in November.
44 comments:
On Newsnight Clinton was writen off by all the 'experts'.
They have been proved wrong again. Its like the weather, just when you think your forcst for a sunny day is cretain it rains.Its the same principal for climate change.
Well we can all take heart from the fact even Luntz got it wrong too - predicting an Obama win in mid single digits based on exit polling. The BBC breathed a sigh of relief that their candidate has scored a victory.
Iain I heard that Clintons team and spinners had been in overdrive negative campaigning against Obama the last few days.
God help the world if she gets into power. America and the world needs a change there has been a Bush or a Clinton in the white house since god knows how long.
And also if your Mother was white and your father black does that make you an African American or a mixed race American?
She found her voice was written by a spin doctor no doubt about it.
Aside from the obvious momentum/media boost, Obama won New Hampshire.
They got 9 NH delgates each and he already had 3 NH superdelegates to HC's 2.
Forget the pundits - how close to the West Wing final election is it ?
If the pundits and pollsters can't predict the result of an election poll what hope do the poor voters have?
I only hope the punditocracy improve their forecasts by the election in November or we'll have to rely on the results of those notoriously inaccurate and unrepresentative ballots to choose a President.
Tears for souvenirs
Are all ......
I'm so gutted Hillary won! Whilst nothing is certain, it depresses me. Obama and Edwards are far more agreeable than her. She just has an absolute naked lust for power and it seems like her fake display of emotion won people over.
Even Huckabee would be better than Clinton!
With the momentum against Giuliani, and the other "moderates" doing well enough to stay in the race, I think Huckabee wins Florida, you know.
At least if Hilary Clinton does win the nomination, it ensures a Republican victory. I may have to eat my hat on this, but I can't see america voting for her. And if she does win, then we may as well all give up on the next four years.
I think Obama got stung here by acting as if he expected to win; the impression that she feels the presidency is hers by right will contribute to Mrs Clinton's ultimate downfall.
Absolutely. Wouldn't it be great to see huge swathes of voters come out in the UK as well? Quite a lot of people have been blogging about using primaries in this country and on the evidence on New Hampshire, anyone who says people don't care about politics are so wrong.
“On the Republican side, McCain wasn't just dead and buried as a candidate a few months ago, he had been put in the coffin.”
Well yes – when people are buried they usually are put in coffins.
Delighted. Not because I'm a fan of Hillary but because the frenzy around Obama was all starting to sound dangerousingly like the UK in '97. I really hope Obama isn't just another "I'm a fairly straight sorta guy" but at least it looks like the NH voters have taken a step back and made some of the hysterical media look foolish. Never a bad thing.
It is clear that the media's 'choice' is Obama. Obama this, Obama that, Oprah supports Obama!!!- and he's BLACK!!!! A black man who just doesn't talk about black issues- like tha' hood! Sod that- Hillary puts the fear of God into insane republicans, so as far as i'm concerned- the democratic candidate has to be Mrs C.
Is it possible that part of the explanation for the big swing between Iowa and New Hampshire is due to the election systems used? The Iowa caucuses are much more public, and it's clear whom individuals are supporting, whereas NH is a private vote. Perhaps in Iowa there is a tendency to be seen to be voting for the person you're supposed to be voting for? Rather like in opinion polls in the UK, which (until recently at least) have consistently undre-esgtimated Conservative support because many people have been unwilling to tell a stranger that they would actually vote Tory. In Iowa the tendency may be even stronger because the people who can see which way you're voting are friebnds, neighbours and political colleagues.
I may be totally wrong, but it's just a thought that occured to me, testable perhaps by comparing future poll/caucus results?
What happened last night could have been more a reflection on the behaviour of the Obama campaign than on the popularity of Clinton. In an error of judgment Obama allowed his aides to give the impression that New Hampshire was already in the bag.
The public love to punish any hint of arrogance – this must be especially true in the case of an electorate who are as politically astute as the people of New Hampshire. They value their influential place in US politics and will not have liked having their polling intentions so confidently predicted.
Gordon Brown experienced something similar during the summer leading up to the Labour Party Conference when he allowed his aides to gloat publicly about how Labour would crush David Cameron in a General Election. We all know what happened after that.
The moral of the story is: No matter how good the polls look - be humble in the face of the electorate, they hate to be taken for granted.
"Lord help us" - are you quoting him there?
One of the polls that gave Obama a 10 point lead was based on only 500 callers - is this good polling? I thought that a minimum of a 1000 is used here.
Maybe the NH folks just fell for the slushy nonsense from Clinton, I hope that stuff won't ever wash here.
It is clear that the media's 'choice' is Obama. Obama this, Obama that, Oprah supports Obama!!!- and he's BLACK!!!!
Oh come on - and for over a year, we heard the relentless drumbeat that there wasn't even a 'choice' where Hilary was concerned - hell, why bother having an election! Hilary this, Hilary that, Hilary is so 'experienced' (when, as a point of face, when you remove her eight years as an unelected First Lady she's the least 'experienced' candidate), look at Hilary's celebrity supporters, and let me remind you again that she's a WOMAN and her husband was AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT.
I'm actually pretty glad that both Clinton and Obama are going to have work to earn the nomination, and both of them might actually be forced to answer some substantive policy questions as opposed to repeating their stump speeches and talking points until everyone (including themselves) lapses into a coma.
But please spare me the b.s. that Clinton is the vicitimised underdog who can't catch a break from the misogynistic patriarchs of the MSM. How stupid do Hillary and Bill (who seems to be the designated surrogate for the red meat attacks) really think we are?
Iain wrote: "Hillary resumes her front runner mantle, and who knows, it may indeed be the spur she needed to find her voice, as she said in her victory speech." Well, not to take anything from her victory but I wouldn't be crowing too loudly about a two point margin.
jr hartley wrote
"One of the polls that gave Obama a 10 point lead was based on only 500 callers - is this good polling? I thought that a minimum of a 1000 is used here."
As a general rule of thumb the error in polls can be calculate as 1/(Sqrt(N)) where N is the number of people polled. So for N=100 the standard error is 10% while for N=1000 it is about 3%. To get an error of 1% you need about 10,000 people in the sample. If different polls are consistently pointing in the same direction even when the difference is not "statistically" significant it is possible to draw conclusions. This falls down if the same people are being polled in different polls.
mhewba said...
"At least if Hilary Clinton does win the nomination, it ensures a Republican victory. I may have to eat my hat on this, but I can't see america voting for her."
You may have to get chomping.
The question is whether the Republicans could be bothered to vote for whoever gets nominated. They all have probably fatal flaws. McCain, for example, has strong defence as his main positive, but is not seen as bothered about securing the borders at home. Refusing to do anything about mass migration into the us is what cost Bush his majority in Congress. That and the Congressional gay sex scandal.
I have just stuck a considerable wedge on McCain being the next President of the USA. 11/2... good odds, methinks.
RS
[9:12] - She won't get in. Americans are, by and large, a politically conservative people. Her healthcare plans, when her husband was president, scared Americans to death. The impact was striking.
Hillary stands for socialist with a capital S and Americans don't like that. I'm disappointed that the Republican field is so uninspiring. This is an election that will be lost, rather than won. They'll vote against Hillary or Hussein and a Rep will be the default winner. I'd like to see Romney because he looks presidential and with the advent of the camera, then the newsreel, then 24-hour television and everyone taking their own videos, like it or not, looks are everything.
Whatever the merits of the American electoral system, which produces some excitement for political followers and media, what amazes me is the sheer cost of it all - it's immense. Such self-indulgence could not be justified in UK (and surely will not be tried here in our straitened circumstances) or indeed should not be so in USA itself. What a waste of effort and particularly of money.
In Australia, it is likely that eventually the Queen will be replaced by a President, not that that is of great consequence. But the so-called republicans there, want their Head of State elected by popular vote, entailing of course all the huge expense in doing so. What nonsense! There are several reasons for that conclusion, and one is that it is an unnecessary additional burden on the poor bloody tax-payer.
Verity wrote:
"camera, then the newsreel, then 24-hour television and everyone taking their own videos, like it or not, looks are everything."
It goes back even further to Hans Holbein's portrait of Anne of Cleves. But even Cromwell couldnt survive that early failure at image spin once the electorate (of 1) got to see the candidate up close and personal.
[1:55] "one is that it is an unnecessary additional burden on the poor bloody tax-payer."
Excuse me? I think you have misunderstood the entire system, although with all the coverage, that is very hard to do.
The clue is in the constant references to the campaigners' "war chests". People give money for their choice to buy advertising and for their travel expenses. It's voluntary. Go back into that socialist dog kennel you are chained to in Britain and try to contemplate freedom.
Nobody is considering the implications of NH and the divided state of both parties on the chances of Bloomberg standing as an independent and what that might mean for the presidential election.
Troll Patrol - I don't know that you're right. There were no news sheets in Anne of Cleves' day. And no means of reproducing an image on a piece of paper.
A very tiny minority of English would ever have seen her image. An image of Cromwell might have been copied by a few artists, by hand, but I doubt whether most people in Britain had any idea what he looked like either.
I believe the genesis of the familiarity we all have with modern day politicians and royalty and the beginning of the celebrity culture was the camera and the printing press.
How many Obama supporters thought he was home and dry?
PS Did they ever get to the bottom of Whitewater?
Bloomberg is only likely to run if he feels he can win, and he's only likely to win if the Republicans and Democrats nominate very partisan candidates, and he can portray himself as a bipartisan moderate. So Hillary being revived (charge to 200 ... CLEAR) is a step towards a Bloomberg run, but John McCain winning NH is a step away.
Verity:
I think it is you who have misunderstood. My reference to the burden on the "poor bloody taxpayer" was in respect of the likely cost of a presidential election in Oz, not the zillions wasted by private donors in US.
What is so socialistic in my complaint anyway?
The question is whether the Republicans could be bothered to vote for whoever gets nominated.
They'll crawl on all fours across broken glass to vote against Hillary, as would many non-Republicans.
Not sure you got that Verity. There were some famous Cromwells before the obvious one. Slipping love?
Yak40 - you got it!
J R Hartley: "Maybe the NH folks just fell for the slushy nonsense from Clinton, I hope that stuff won't ever wash here." Wow! Do you have a short memory? Do you recall a slimeball by the name of Tony Blair of the trembling lip and the catch in the voice? It "washed here" even more effectively than in the US.
The singularly ill-informed Craig Ranapia writes: "when you remove her eight years as an unelected First Lady she's the least 'experienced' candidate),".
No. As has been commented on frequently, Barak Hussein Obama is the least experienced candidate of all of them. Hillary Clinton was elected a state senator in November 2000. By my calculations, this means she has been a senator for seven years.
Barak has been a senator for all of two years and has spent those entire meagre two years working on his plans for running for president. Incidentally, as First Lady is an appointed, not an elective, position, sayiing Hillary was "unelected First Lady" is rather silly.
[4:22] You didn't mention that you were talking about Oz. In any event, taxpayers should not be funding candidates. If they can't get funding themselves, that means not enough people have any confidence in their abilities. There should be absolutely no taxpayer involvement in any election.
Troll Patrol - I've had to pull you up on this before, as have others, but you must not patronise women. Unless you use such impertinently familiar usage as "love" to male posters, I suggest that your needy ego is apparent to all. You must not insult women by assuming a familiarity you have not been granted.
81% percent of the votes were recorded by "Diebold type" machines.
These machines gave a +5% vote for Hillary compared to a -2% vote for Obama when comapred to the hand counted votes.
http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php
Verity said
"Troll Patrol - I've had to pull you up on this before, as have others, but you must not patronise women. Unless you use such impertinently familiar usage as "love" to male posters, I suggest that your needy ego is apparent to all. You must not insult women by assuming a familiarity you have not been granted."
Give me a break luv - my dear old Mum travelled this world in the 1950s and I grew up looking at her slides and it influenced my life. I have enormous respect for women. My besty is a women science prof. in america.
Ask me a question about women in which my response will be sexist. You seem to enjoy this sort of thing Verity. Wonder why?
The singularly ill-informed Craig Ranapia writes: "when you remove her eight years as an unelected First Lady she's the least 'experienced' candidate),".
No. As has been commented on frequently, Barak Hussein Obama is the least experienced candidate of all of them. Hillary Clinton was elected a state senator in November 2000. By my calculations, this means she has been a senator for seven years.
Singularly ill-informed Verity is talking through his/her hat.
Barak Obama spent eight years as a State senator in Illinois, so I stand by my assertion that Clinton is the "least experienced" candidate in the Democratic field when you count up actual elected office. Could you point me towards any public office Mrs Clinton won election to before November 2000?
If 'experience' is your gold standard, Governor Bill Richardson has them both beat with this resume:
House of Representatives (New Mexico 3rd district): January 3, 1983 – February 13, 1997.
US Ambassador to the United Nations: January 21, 1997 – September, 1998
Energy Secretary: August 18, 1998 – January 20, 2001
Governor of New Mexico: January 1, 2003 - present.
Sorry, Verity, but I don't think living with my partner for thirteen years gives me any 'experience' in his line of work, or vice versa.
Verity wrote:
"Troll Patrol - I've had to pull you up on this before, as have others, .....You must not insult women by assuming a familiarity you have not been granted."
you remind me of of my sister who says "Job, its all about you". And your point is exactly what?
First Lady is an appointed, not an elective, position, sayiing Hillary was "unelected First Lady" is rather silly.
No, Verity. Nobody is 'appointed' First Lady - its a term applied to the wife of an elected head of state, and has precisely no constitutional or political status.
And let's get real for a moment. For all I know, Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron would be brilliant Prime Ministers. But I hope they'd have to bring a bit more to the table than a marriage certificate.
No, Troll Patrol, you're a patronising git. Sexists always deny that they're sexists. "Oh, I was just kidding! Can't you take a joke?" How many times have we heard that one, girls? And always, without exception, these patronising inadequates make an issue of how much they love women. Always. There's a weary inevitability about the formula.
No, Troll Patrol, women do not "enjoy this sort of thing". We find people like you nauseating, but if we do not speak up, you people become emboldened to think your behaviour is acceptable. So we have to clip you back every so often.
Craig Ranpia - Wrong again. First Lady is a presidentially appointed position. Normally, it is indeed the president's wife, but that is because the president appoints her and any president who did not appoint his wife would probably not live long enough to enjoy his second breakfast in the White House.
Roosevelt had as his First Lady his daughter, Alice. I believe Martha Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's daughter, was his First Lady.
The president appoints the First Lady and she becomes the official White House hostess and she is also accorded a suite of offices and a staff. It is a formal, appointed position.
(I know absolutely nothing about Cameron's wife or Brown's wife and don't know how they got in on the act.)
Being a state senator is very different from being a senator from a state. Hillary has had seven years as a national senator, operating in Washington, DC. Barak Hussein Obama's had eight years as a provincial senator attending to the governance of his state.
At the best of times, Americans seldom elect a senator to the presidency, but especially not one who's only been in DC for two years and spent most of that time busily mapping out a run for the presidency. I'm trying to remember the last one. Was it John Kennedy?
Verity said
"No, Troll Patrol, women do not "enjoy this sort of thing". We find people like you nauseating, but if we do not speak up, you people become emboldened to think your behaviour is acceptable. So we have to clip you back every so often."
happy to apologise if I said anything remotely like that. Was actually just saying goodbye to a very good looking, smart, girl while trying to untangle Janajec's 1st violin quatro. Its giving me a lot of gip - seems the one on the "Complete Works" doesnt match the one on the "Complete Violin" works. Go figure.
Verity:
Please put me on your list of patronising gits, because I don't know if you're stupid or just being willfully obtuse. I don't find either quality attractive in a woman, or anyone else.
I know some people must have the last word on every subject, and would rather die than accept they've just got something wrong, but do try dear lady.
It is a simple statement of fact that Obama had more 'experience' in elected office than HRC. You may blithely dismiss state government as irrelevant, but anyone will a less superficial knowledge of American history than yourself might beg to differ.
And it would take a rather coarse and vulgar mind to assert that Hillary Rodham Clinton's marriage is in any way a matter of 'Presidential appointment'. Of course, it is generally considered a matter of good form that the POTUS doesn't 'go stag' to formal occasions - though some frequently did for all kinds of reasons -, but "First Lady" is not an elected position, carries no official duties, and brings no salary.
Now, why don't you go away and buy yourself a pretty new hat? You sure spend enough time talking through it.
Verity:
Please put me on your list of patronising gits, because I don't know if you're stupid or just being willfully obtuse. I don't find either quality attractive in a woman, or anyone else.
I know some people must have the last word on every subject, and would rather die than accept they've just got something wrong, but do try dear lady.
It is a simple statement of fact that Obama had more 'experience' in elected office than HRC. You may blithely dismiss state government as irrelevant, but anyone will a less superficial knowledge of American history than yourself might beg to differ. Once more, dear lady, can you point me to any elected public office held by Mrs. Clinton before she became the junior Senator from New York?
And it would take a rather coarse and vulgar mind to assert that Hillary Rodham Clinton's marriage is in any way a matter of 'Presidential appointment'. Of course, it is generally considered a matter of good form that the POTUS doesn't 'go stag' to formal occasions - though some frequently did for all kinds of reasons -, but "First Lady" is not an elected position, carries no official duties, and brings no salary. I fail to see how being married to one President is a qualification to become one yourself. Mrs. Clinton might be better advised to stand on her own record rather than claim credit for her husband's.
Now, why don't you go away and buy yourself a pretty new hat? You sure spend enough time talking through it. And if you find being patronized so objectionable, you might care to tone down the lordly condescension yourself.
give it a rest Verity - you give as good as you get. I have enormous respect for women of your gender (to parphrase Woody Allen).
But in your case I will make an exception.
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