Why Hillary Won

[mallorys_camera]

Ben is as obsessive about politics as I am about The National Enquirer. So after we tralled Panda Express – their tofu eggplant? crack cocaine! – we watched MSNBC all night.

Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire.

And this was really gratifying to me. Not because I like Hillary – I don't – but because I really, really hate Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews is MSNBC's resident election pundit, and he loathes Hillary with a hatred that's pure and true, and so spent most of the evening entertainingly gnashing his teeth over the shocking disparity between the polls and the primary results.

"One of the biggest political upsets in history!" Chris Matthews kept declaring – he really needed a better makeup artist: the pancake foundation on his face didn't quite match the color of the pancake foundation on his jowls.

In history, Chris? Oh, come on.

Nevertheless it did start me thinking about polls.

I don't like them.

What polls inevitably tell me is that nobody else likes the people I like. If I vote for them, not only is it a wasted ballot, it's a wasted half hour driving to the polling site, parking my car, figuring out how to use the strange little machines behind the curtain and scarfing down stale cookies.

So I might as well not vote.

And I'm ashamed to say on more than one occasion, I haven't voted.

I figure Hillary won for the following reasons:

1. She cried. Not once, but twice. On national TV!

2. The under-30 vote is notoriously fickle. They talk the good talk. But when push comes to shove – if MTV is rerunning their favorite episode of Real World, say, or they're picking and choosing among a thousand illegal music downloads for the definitive PMS compilation CD, they'll stay in that moment. They won't go out and vote. Under thirties are a huge part of Obama's constituency.

3. Intelligent people hate polls. And by God, at some point, they rise as one, they say, "Hell, no! I'm not an inanimate particle! You can't plot my behavior!" And they go out and do exactly the opposite of what's been predicted.

My own favorite Dem remains Bill Richardson who doesn't have the hellbound snowball's chance and will no doubt shortly be withdrawing.

My second favorite is John Edwards although the Big Question hovers here: does he or doesn't he? We're talking Botox, my friends. The guy is – what? Fifty-four? And he looks 35. I kept scrutinizing him during his concession speech – he did wrinkle his forehead. Once. So maybe he doesn't. Maybe.

Edwards doesn't have a chance either. I imagine when he drops out, his supporters go to Obama.

I was very offended by the speculation that the reason Obama lost in New Hampshire is because he's black, and New Hampshire Democrats are closet racists. While this may be true of members of my own Boomer generation, I don't think it has any relevance for generations who come after us. To people my son Max's age, race is simply a flavor, irrelevant so far as social status is concerned.

Personally, I don't care for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. If it comes down to a choice between those two in California, I'm not sure which one I'd pick. Obama keeps carping on Hillary for having voted in favor of the Iraq War. But the only reason Obama didn't vote in favor of the Iraq War is that he hadn't been elected yet. Neither of them has the administrative experience I would like to see in a POTUS. So we shall see.

I'd vote for Bloomberg in a heartbeat.

Comments

[cat-herder.livejournal.com]

Oh, honey. People under 30 can be just as racist as their porkpie-hat wearing grandpas. New Englanders can be insular and race is a biggie in a lot of pockets of New England, especially in the distressed factory towns and formerly, but still distressed factory towns.

I'm tired of polls. It obscures the issues. I'd like to find a spreadsheet or bullet points for each candidate, so I can get an idea.

However, I was almost tempted to register Repugnican just so I could throw a vote to someone who is untenable, just to fragment them up a bunch. Its boiling down to a country run by evangelicals versus a country run by garden variety politicians and wonks.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are racists among the under thirties, but I'm gonna stand by my generalization. It's based as much upon observation of working class types under thirty who come into my store as it is upon observations of my kid's admittedly non-statistically significant posse of friends.

Hey! That can be a project we can do together if you like: putting together a candidate by candidate spreadsheet on the issues! We can put it up on the Slow Burn website -- buy some hot sauce, read some political propraganda!

[fireflylive.livejournal.com]

3. Intelligent people hate polls. And by God, at some point, they rise as one, they say, "Hell, no! I'm not an inanimate particle! You can't plot my behavior!" And they go out and do exactly the opposite of what's been predicted.


I agree with you here - it's certainly my reaction!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Polls introduce this strange Schrodinger theory angle into politics, don't they? When you know you're being analyzed, your behavior changes.

I'm surprised no one's studied this effect.

[justpat.livejournal.com]

You know how Fred Willard always plays these batshit insane tv hosts or commentators in Christopher Guest's mockumentaries? Well, on Tuesday night Chris Matthews was Fred Willard.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yes!