Here’s What I Think…

I’m a New Englander.  I was born and raised in Bar Harbor, Maine.  My family has been there for generations.  I had a relative in the Boston Tea Party.  I spent half my life trying to get out of Maine and now I’m spending the other half of my life trying to get back.  I feel a closeness to all the other New England states, New Hampshire, Massachussetts, Connecticutt and Rhode Island.  So it is with great pride that I watched New Hampshire teach a good hard lesson to all the pollsters and pundits last night during the Democratic Primary.  Let me be clear.  I love Obama.  I love Hillary.  I think either one would be a brilliant President.  The bar is pretty low at this point given our current administration so even a moderate Republican like John McCain would be a vast improvement.  But I was taken aback by the viciousness of the press after Obama trounced Clinton in the Iowa Caucus.  There was a disturbing gleefulness about her third place showing there.  The expected bounce Obama enjoyed over the next few days translated into double digit leads in most polls coming into New Hampshire.  Many papers and TV news talking heads were already writing her obituary.  And then, something extraordinary happened.  She won.  Not a landslide.  But enough to be able to declare a resounding victory.  I always thought Obama would win Iowa and Clinton would take New Hampshire.  Now the race is on.  I can’t describe the sheer joy I felt watching the folks at MSNBC, Fox News and CNN stare blank-faced at the camera, unable to explain how Hillary pulled it off.  Some say her emotional moment on Monday, when asked how she carries on through this brutal process and she gave a thoughtful teary-eyed response, showed voters a side of her rarely seen.  Some say it was a purely tactical move on her part to “soften her image.”  That’s ridiculous.  Those same people accuse her of being robotic in her speeches and cold in her demeanor.  Yes, I’ll admit it.  She’s not that great of an actress.  She can’t force warmth on the voters.  And she shouldn’t have to.  Her job is to get the country back on track.  But that’s exactly why she could never create such a sincere and unguarded moment.  I’ll tell you what I think happened in New Hampshire.  New Englanders got fed up with the media telling them the election was over before they even got a chance to cast a vote.  And to quote the right leaning Drudge Report headline today, “Now the fun begins.”  I can’t even predict who is going to win the nomination (it’s even more of a mystery on the Republican side), but I will tell you this.  This has been a great week in American History.  For the first time ever, an African American man won the Iowa Caucus.  And for the first time ever, a woman won the New Hampshire Primary.  And come November, one of them could be the President of the United States.