Hillary in NH

Wow, Hillary wins the NH primary. Pretty amazing, and a damn exciting political story. I'd love to be covering it!

We're still in Guam, which broadcasts the US network nightly news nearly 24 hours late, and we heard all the reporters on CBS News talking about what might happen "if Hillary Clinton loses NH" without any reference to what might happen if she wins.

My back-of-the-envelope analysis:

1. HRC won the women's vote in NH after losing women to Obama in Iowa. Why? Because NH (and Northeast) women are less traditional than Iowa women and more comfortable with professional, well-educated women like HRC.

This is good for HRC in the short term in delegate-rich primary states like FL, NJ, NY and CA, but speaks to continued weakness with women voters in a general election - if she gets that far.

2. The youth vote still isn't reliable. Great, they turned out for Obama in Iowa because they had to be in a certain place at a certain time for the caucus - sort of like an appointment for a final exam - while lots of working people and single moms were effectively shut out of the caucus process because they don't have evening free time. (the NYT recently had an editorial criticizing the Iowa caucuses but now I can't find it to link to it.)

3. My gut feeling is that Obama wins the nomination because so many people dislike HRC. But victories by insurgent candidates are very rare and HRC is the Dem Establishment candidate. Think Mondale vs. Hart in 1984 and Gore vs. Bill Bradley in 2000 or Dean vs. anyone in 2004.

Still, Obama has plenty of money, terrific self-control (so far) and much better publicity than they did - and he's not a weird loner - which evens his chances considerably.