Live-blogging the New Hampshire primaries

6:27 PM: Polls close in one hour and twenty-three minutes. Obama was leading by 10% in the pre-primary poll. I suspect he will do even better in the actual polls.

6:54 PM: Wow, Chris Matthews has been totally blasting Hillary.

8:12 PM: McCain is the NBC projected winner. But by how large of a lead will he win by? That's key. The Democratic side seems closer than predicted with 11% reporting.

8:25 PM: I'm going out to get sushi.

9:17 PM: McCain is not doing the greatest job delivering his victory speech. But that's his charm. Regular guy, not a movie star.

It's hard to believe that Hillary is ahead of Obama.

9:27 PM: Pundits on MSNBC are dissing McCain's speech.

10:43 PM: My final comment of the night.

So McCain had a pretty large victory over Romney, and this leaves Romney as a pretty weak candidate because he can only win in states with big Mormon populations like Wyoming, Nevada, or Utah. Because McCain is from Arizona, Romney is not going to win Arizona. Or maybe he can win in a state where his father used to be the governor.

I am still hoping that Giuliani will be able to come back into the campaign. He has the best chance of defeating the Democratic nominee in November, and that's what counts.

Now, on the Democratic side, the big news is Hillary's surprise victory. Apparently women voters weren't turned off by the cry the way I was.

I think she benefited from being white. Obviously a lot of people responding to polls wanted to tell the pollster a politically correct choice, but then when they were in the voting booth they decided they didn't want to vote for the black guy. This wasn't an issue in Iowa because there's no secret ballot voting in caucuses.

Comments

[Zeek]

Romney will drop out of the race soon.

[Peter]

8:25 PM: I'm going out to get sushi.

I wonder what has more nutritional value in sushi: the sushi itself, or the tape worms in it?

[Dan Morgan]

Perhaps Hillary choking up a little on that video won her some points. For a woman that often appears machine-like, many may have finally seen a human side to her.

To me it didn't make her look weak, and perhaps many in New Hampshire agreed.

(Not that I would ever vote for any of the Democrats for president.)

It's hard to believe that Hillary is ahead of Obama.

Not really. It's just that your personal bias towards Hillary made you stop thinking rationally & blow up that crying thing way out of proportion. No one cared except the haters. Something about those Clintons make people lose all sense of reality.

[Jasper]

"I wonder what has more nutritional value in sushi."

Fish oil is good for your brain -- and temperament. Hillary should eat more sushi.

[shortcut]

Good analysis. I too have believed all along that inside the privacy of the voting booth many would be reluctant to vote for an African American. But I also believe that the vast majority of american males would be very reluctant to vote for a female.

[Hope]

But I also believe that the vast majority of american males would be very reluctant to vote for a female.

The exit polls back up what you believe: more women voted for Hillary, and more men voted for Obama.

I'm rather disgusted that so many women voted for Hillary solely based on the fact that she's a woman, but I also think the Democratic party needs to kick itself for putting up both a woman and a minority as the forerunners in this election. If they had endorsed a strong and charismatic ex-military white guy candidate (Wesley Clark comes to mind), he would do much better in the general elections. Realistically though, the media and string pullers were never going to let that happen.

Independents really have very few political places to turn in this country, and the mainstream "liberal" candidates are all just politicians, not actual liberals.

I also believe that the vast majority of american males would be very reluctant to vote for a female.

If men in benighted 3rd world countries with completely retrograde ideas about "a woman's place" can bring themselves to vote en masse for female presidents/prime ministers, as well as men in other advanced democracies like England & Germany, I doubt American men are so different. If Hillary loses big among men, it'll because she's Hillary & they don't like her in particular, not because she has ovaries.

[The Engineer]

I think that Hillary eats a lot of sushi. If you know what I mean.

If Hillary pulled this off because of her little crying incident, Democrats truly are a bunch of pussies.

[roissy]

If men in benighted 3rd world countries with completely retrograde ideas about "a woman's place" can bring themselves to vote en masse for female presidents/prime ministers

actually, because the retrograde misogyny is so entrenched in 3rd world hellholes female heads of state have zero chance of reforming the dominant culture. male voters in those countries know this and feel no qualms about voting for women. they are probably compartmentalizing the act of voting for a woman as separate and distinct from how they and their society will continue to treat women in their lives.

in contrast, a woman elected to president in an advanced feminized nation has a good shot of altering the policy, legal and regulatory environment to be inimical to male interests.

roissy: That doesn't explain England, Ireland, Switzerland, or Germany, all of which have elected female leaders.

[randomizer]

>>If they had endorsed ... [an] ex-military white guy candidate (Wesley Clark comes to mind), he would do much better in the general elections.

B/c that worked out so well for them in '04 -- John Kerry. Although I realize I left out your qualifiers "strong" and "charismatic" -- neither of which apply to Kerry. But any military white guy candidate would have been seen by Democrat primary voters as "John Kerry Part Deux" and they'd be telling themselves "I know how this movie ends."

other advanced democracies like finland & iceland have too, no? european men are less anxious about this sort of thing. and IMO, in the case of england & germany it was a godsend.

i think a qualified woman w/o all the hillary baggage could easily win in the US (although it would probably help if she was a republican, as those are the people least likely to vote for someone based on them being female)

[roissy]

That doesn't explain England, Ireland, Switzerland, or Germany, all of which have elected female leaders.

hey, the first world is full of milquetoast men voting against their own interests.
in fact, the act of voting against your interests could be a good working definition of liberalism.

nevertheless, a maggie thatcher type would do much better among american men than hillary is doing now. that is because men know that unlike thatcher hillary harbors a real misandrist streak. it reveals itself in her grating battelaxe personality and her ideological bent.

even a female democrat (especially a southerner in the ann richards vein) could also do well among american men as i don't believe that most men have a kneejerk "voting for any woman=voting against my interests" attitude. our politics are too individualized/personalized for that. hillary is just a poor test case for the willingness of people to vote for women because she has so much baggage, her own & her husband's. her sex is the least of it.

[mikeca]

Some people have suggested that because Obama was so far ahead in the polls, more independents in NH voted in the Republican primary, which is why McCain did so well.

[trumwill]

Mikeca, That theory would have more traction if votes in the Democratic primary weren't so many more than in the Republican primary.

[Jack]

The Democratic vote was mostly about women not wanting the "men" to declare Hillary's candidacy dead yet. Remember, her win was fairly narrow. She would obviously be a disaster for President.

I will not support a Republican for President who wants to sit down and compromise with Democrats on illegal immigration. This means you, John McCain. For that reason, I hope Giuliani can get some traction. John McCain is no conservative.

All the candidates suck this year. As much as I can't stand Hillary, she may be the least obnoxious overall- and Bill will help guide policy. Imagine how much better the last 8 years would have been (foreign policy especially) had Bill continued to be in charge.

[Dragon Horse]

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/10/kerry-to-endorse-obama/

Obama got Kerry's endorsement, right after getting the Culinary Union of Nevada.

Things are going to get nasty. Hillary is sharpening her fangs as we speak.

A Kerry endorsement? Talk about the kiss of death.

[Loki on the run]

The Democratic vote was mostly about women not wanting the "men" to declare Hillary's candidacy dead yet. Remember, her win was fairly narrow. She would obviously be a disaster for President.

Well, now they are saying that Hillary's team rigged the election in New Hampshire.