Who Helped Hillary Win

For an empirical look at what happened yesterday in New Hampshire, I'll be waiting for the professionals at pollster.com to analyze the data. I trust them the most to accurately examine the exit polls and see if my current view that pollsters underestimated the number of women who voted in the Democratic Primary in their likely voter models holds up.

The question being bandied about is why did so many women who decided in the final couple of days went for Hillary. Lots of media focus on Hillary's choking up answering a question on Monday. The rightwing that just hates Hillary see it as a successful manipulation of emotional female voters. Much of the traditional media seem to see it as her "connecting" with people for the first time and showing her "human side." Either that or women in a moment of female solidarity rallied to the tearful "sister."

I don't think so.

What the traditional media is missing is their own response to Monday's incident and to Hillary's briefly raised voice during the debate on Saturday. In both incidents they attributed it to her failure to "hold it together" and the word "meltdown" keep reappearing. This wasn't just on Fox News who would hate Hillary if she produced a cure for all cancers. This can be seen in print and TV journalists covering and analyzing the campaign. Glen Greenwald has some media snippets that reflect this as do other media focused blogs. The media first declared her too cold and calculating for the voters of Iowa. Then she was the angry spurned woman. Then the overly emotional woman. Yes I put in "woman"in those 2 sentences on purpose. Is this just misogyny? No. Most of it is lots of reporters don't like Hillary. There are too many reporters who are willing to ascribe the worst to anything she does because they don't like her. But she is the only female in the field and no one else has a nutcracker aimed at the humor level of 14-year-old boys.

My current view, completely without data, is that women Democratic voters in New Hampshire saw the media's reaction to Hillary's raised voice during the debate and "the tears" on Monday and got pissed off by it. I think they decided that she wasn't getting a fair shake so they would vote for her not because they don't like Obama, but because they do like Hillary and want to make sure the news media notices. They didn't rally to a friend just because she cried. They rallied to someone they see as being unjustly vilified for honest human reactions by a press corps they don't trust and see treating the first serious female challenger for the presidency unfairly. The news media may have made Hillary a downtrodden outsider for the first time in 16 years.

If I am a Hillary adviser, I'd tell her to run against the news media. Don't run away from them. Run at them. Take their questions but don't be afraid to challenge their assumptions about your actions or answers. Don't be a victim, but the "fighter" you claimed to be last night. The news media is never going to like Hillary so may as well rally supporters to fight the media hordes aligned against her. Go on Chris Matthews and make fun of his obsession with how she looks. Make humor the weapon to mock them and the image of yourself. Oh yeah, hide all those Clintonistas you've had around for 16 years and put out new faces. Those folks piss off Democrats.

If I find more empirical analysis that isn't being widely distrubted, I'll post it. Now I've got to go meet my new public policy class.