How Hillary Turned it Around

[DeepModem Mom]

TIME: How Hillary Turned it Around
By KAREN TUMULTY/MANCHESTER
Wednesday, Jan. 09, 2008


Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reacts at her Democratic primary election night victory rally in Manchester, N.H., January 8, 2008.
(Elise Amendola/AP)

....How, exactly, that unlikely something happened was the result of a combination of forces that the campaign itself is only beginning to untangle. Part of it was the boring stuff — the dull, unglamorous work put in by a disciplined ground operation organized by veteran operative Nick Clemons. Late in the game, the campaign also brought in Michael Whouley, who had helped deliver the state for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

A lot of it, though, came from Clinton herself. In the tumultuous days before the primary, she showed sides of herself both tougher and softer than previously known. Clinton lashed out at Barack Obama and John Edwards in Saturday night's debate, visibly angry in a way voters had not seen before. But on Monday, she teared up when asked her how she was coping with the campaign — displaying the kind of emotion that people would associate far more with Bill Clinton than with his wife. Said one prominent Democratic strategist not affiliated with the campaign: "Yesterday helped her a lot with women."

Indeed, it did — especially with unmarried women, a key component of the Democratic base. One campaign adviser noted that where Obama won that demographic by 13 percentage points in Iowa, Clinton carried it by 17 points in New Hampshire — a 30 point shift over in the course of five days. (It also couldn't have hurt that a great number of men from the pundit-ocracy spent the hours before the primary gleefully anticipating a Clinton catastrophe.)...

***

The road ahead is still long and challenging for Clinton. The race she once expected to finish cleanly and quickly is now shaping up as an exercise in harvesting convention delegates one grueling state at a time. The rules under which delegates are allocated — divided proportionally in each state, rather than the winner-take-all system that the Republicans use in many states — makes it hard for any Democrat to deliver a knockout blow in just a few contests. But her victory in New Hampshire has staved off a mass defection of fundraisers and prominent endorsing Democrats, as well as the more than 150 "superdelegates" — elected officials, party leaders and others who are delegates by virtue of the positions they hold — who had pledged their support.

But at least for one night, Hillary Clinton and those around her aren't playing defense. They've got their second chance.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1701640,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

[Dawgs]

1. Who wrote this, Bill?

[K Gardner]

2. Sides previously not known.. bingo.

[Lerkfish]

3. first, entitlement, then, playing the victim, now reinventing herself.

all of these shifting reinventions do little to inspire confidence.
IMHO, Her campaign is ineffectual and she should hire other advisors.

[still_one]

4. She didn't turn anything around. Most people, including myself didn't realize 17% undecided

[momster]

5. She Only Won By Two

measly little points. Why are they coronating her...again? Can't the press figure out that, no matter how many times they call it for this one or that one, the people of this country aren't making up their minds irrevocably yet? If she loses by two points in the next one, is she finished? Nope. Nor will anyone among the top three be finished even if she wins again. The press jockeys wants to declare an end to the race after the first twenty feet...enough already.

[onehandle]

6. Actually she won by twelve points or more. In the media's eyes.

The media is making up for their 10+ point loss they parroted for the last few days.

Not saying this is right...

[momster]

8. Yeah, Media Math

as taught by Professor Rove.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. I'd hate to think that crying

helped - or hurt. Maybe I'm in the minority, but what I look at in a candidate is their stand on issues.

[calimary]

9. My husband refers to "Weeping Willary" this morning.

Ah, me...

And a girlfriend called me this morning to complain how everyone says she was crying - "and she wasn't. She got choked up." Well, there IS a difference - in emotional displays AND perception.

I remember when Pat Schroeder did indeed flat-out cry when she announced her campaign was ending, after never really getting off the ground. I was starting at the AP back then, and I was working in Washington at their broadcast HQ. And every time that video clip played on the monitors around the newsroom, one of the guys would start in, at the top of his lungs, with an annoying, warbling "WAAAAAAAAAAHHH". EVERY time. Frankly, that snark-attack got a lot older, a lot faster, than the original clip of the actual weeping incident.

Oh well, whatcha gonna do?