New Hampshire Postmortem

Hillary stuns the political world and Team Mitt absorbs a tough loss in New Hampshire.

With ballots counted in two states, I don’t think we’ve assimilated the fact that Mitt Romney was never going to resurrect the Bush coalition. In Iowa, his demographic was country clubbers; in New Hampshire, where he didn’t have Huck to seriously contend with, he was the candidate of secular Republicans, non-gun owners, and (most stunningly) there was no real independent skew to McCain. Romney’s voters looked like the kind you could expect for a moderate-to-conservative blue state governor. It’s difficult to see where Romney’s change of heart on key issues won him any votes at all, and had he stayed closer to where he was to begin with, he might have been able to avoid the flip-flopper tag and generate some momentum to expand that center-right base. You could almost see him doing what Rudy tried to do but couldn’t.

The final returns will show Romney losing by 5 points, a respectable margin that allows him to go on. As in Iowa, he was unfairly hurt by an unnecessarily early call and being forced to go on TV when the margin was much greater, searing the 37-28 margin into the minds of many.

As for John McCain, he now leaps to the front of a wounded, broken field. Only in comparison to the others does his path to the nomination seem clear — but now he has to live up to the hype in Michigan, artfully dodge South Carolina, and capitalize on Rudy’s fade in Florida. Though his margin from 2000 was much diminished, he won the grudging respect of enough conservatives in New Hampshire tonight to become more than the one hit indie wonder from ‘00. A lot of this had to do with successfully branding Romney as a flip-flopper and rendering him unacceptable to authenticity-minded conservatives. I wonder how much this will play in states where the McCain-Romney fight has not been as all consuming as NH.

Turning to the Democrats, it looks like we won’t get our postmodern Cinderella story. Twenty four hours ago I sketched out a Clinton comeback scenario, but I don’t think I saw it coming this soon. (Note to self: go out on a limb more with predictions.)

I still can’t fully wrap my arms around it, but these are some rough thoughts:

Women. Clinton won women by 12 points tonight, with a 23 point gender gap. The gender gap in Iowa was a mere 7 points. Had Clinton taken women by 9 we’d still be talking about President Obama. Had the gender gap been what it was in Iowa, we’d have had our Obama landslide. While people point to the “crying,” I think it was the combination of the following:

• The pitch-perfect “You’re hurting my feelings” answer from the debate.

• The crying.
• The guys chanting sexist slogans. At her rally on the final day of the New Hampshire campaign. With her political career on the line. Yes, I am going there. (If this was them, it was brilliant.)

While people will still point to the faux tears, they forget that this is increasingly common behavior for politicians. This is not 1972 anymore.

Hillary turned out her base. The reason Clinton won? Michael Whouley. Michael Whouley. Michael Whouley.

Not only did Clinton turn out women, but she finally tapped into the vote-rich potential of her “Downscale Dems.”

Hillary won the cities and large suburbs big. She took Manchester 45-31, Nashua 45-33, and Derry 45-31. She swept the populated areas just north of the Massachusetts border, outperforming Al Gore in these areas.

If your concerns were ethereal, centered around abstract concepts like “hope” and “change,” you voted for Obama. If your concerns were concrete, centered around the economy and health care, you voted for Clinton. Concrete always beats abstract. The exit polls bear this out:

• Clinton took those most worried by the economy by 8 points. Obama won among those less worried by 4 points.

• Thinking globally, Obama narrowly carried voters concerned about climate change, while Clinton narrowly carried those who wanted to delay action over the longer term.
• Clinton won those with no college education by a whopping 18 points — 48-30. College educated voters broke for Obama by 39-36.

We always knew Obama’s voters were latte-sippers, and we all seemed stunned when he was poised to defy the legacy of futility of Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, and Howard Dean. Gravity kicked in just as soon as the Obama camp started putting out its “wait till Hanover comes in” spin.

I think a lesson for the 2012 or 2016 version of Obama is to still use the aspirational language of hope but to learn to talk about the economy, education, and health care in concrete terms. New Hampshire shows that it’s not all about the concept of “change,” but how it relates to specific policies on the ground. In a sense, the exits point a way out of the losing change-vs-experience debate for Hillary: talking about change on specific topics that matter to working families, change on health care, change in the economy, etc. This election was the theory of change (Obama) vs. the reality of change (Clinton). The adults finally showed up.

The universe expanded. I think Clinton’s state campaign manager turned out to be prescient in this quote:

“In New Hampshire, it’s a little bit easier to predict turnout” than in Iowa, said Nick Clemons, Clinton’s state director here. “I’m very confident we’ve modeled correctly.”

He turned out to be right. Iowa is about party activists, and is more swingy and enthusiasm based. This is why Obama won, and why Democratic turnout was 2x Republican turnout where it was not quite 3-2 in New Hampshire. In a sense, it is harder to do GOTV in Iowa because you don’t really have the opportunity to get casual voters to caucus like you can get them to a primary.

Finally, the leaking of Carville and Begala to Major Garrett was the icing on the cake. I don’t know if Clinton’s team expected to win, but they knew they had to inoculate against a blowout. Concerned or not, the way to do it was to perpetuate the notion of a major staff shakeout in the offing, with the possibility of skipping Nevada and South Carolina floated. This is literally all the media talked about in the long runup to the voting. With each passing hour, that gambit is looking more and more like the pre-game spin it probably was.

Tagged: 2008 hillary clinton new hampshire strategy

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