From its kickoff TH meeting in Berlin, NH in February, 2007 to the present day, HRC's campaign has been, apparently by design, informed by its sizzle, not its steak, process over policy, script and pandering over leadership. I made this specific point to Gen. Wes Clark during a small gathering of local activists in North Conway, NH in December, 2007 in which he was pitching Senator Clinton's candidacy. He agreed with my observation but defended her "cautious" approach as necessary to avoid providing the "right-wing propaganda machine" with material to attack her.

If you, like New Hampshire's John Sununu, are a Republican senator facing a tough reelection battle in a state that went blue in 2006, you can't like last week's primary results:

The turnout results were dramatic – 50,000 more Granite Staters voted in the Democratic primary than the Republican primary, with nearly 280,000 voting in the Democratic race and only 229,000 turning out for Republicans. This was the first time since the establishment of the modern New Hampshire primary system that more people voted in the Democratic primary than the Republican primary when both were contested. Republicans actually turned out 10,000 fewer voters for their primary than in 2000, the last time there was a contested Republican presidential primary in their state. On the Democratic side, there were 125,000 more voters than in the 2000 primary, and 61,000 more voters than the 2004 primary, which was then a Democratic record, largely due to the fact that there was no Republican contest that year.

New Hampshire independents also showed that they are trending Democratic. According to exit polls, in the Democratic primary, 42% of voters were independents, up 1% from 2000, while in the Republican primary, only 34% of voters were registered independents – a 7% drop from 2000.

John Sununu now faces an electorate that produced 50,000 more votes last night for Democratic candidates than he won in his election in 2002, a stunning deficit that shows the extent of the challenge he faces in November.

We're Democrats, and we're coming for that seat.

Primary year starts off seeming like a fun opportunity. The chance to see all the Democratic candidates in person? To bypass long, cold lines by marching straight up to the press check-in? To interview a couple of the candidates? Sweet!

Little do you know that eventually you'll be on the phone to someone saying "yeah, [candidate's name] has an event a quarter mile from here, but I'm burned out on that stuff, I'd rather work."

The first presidential candidate I wrote about was Mike Gravel. This was back before the debates, when Gravel was doing poorly-attended retail politics in New Hampshire, and I wrote about him mostly to take a shot at John McCain's "maverick" reputation. Next up, Chris Dodd, who unfortunately did not show the fire that would come to characterize his campaign. When John Edwards came to town, I got to interview Elizabeth, but never wrote about John. There were a lot of Edwards events I never wrote about, in fact, perhaps because I liked him and it made it more difficult to think through my reactions publicly. I had similar trouble with Barack Obama, though the third or fourth time I saw him campaign, I figured something out. I had no trouble writing about Dennis Kucinich, and did an interview with Bill Richardson. For some reason I never came up with anything to say about Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton when I went to their events.

The novelty wears off at some point in the middle of the year. You've seen all the candidates, most of them more than once, but it's months until anything will really happen, and on some level you're just marking time, digging for something new to say about them (or taking the blogger's prerogative and not posting about an event if there's nothing new to say - I do not envy newspaper reporters who have to write about the same old stump speech day after day). But then, the end of the year comes. The primary is just a month or so away and candidates start rolling out their new stump speeches and bringing in celebrity endorsers. Maybe you go see Oprah stump for Obama (I didn't), or Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne for Edwards (I did - they did an event 20 minutes from me) (picture by Blue Hampshire diarist sirius). And then at the end, it's just all-consuming.

I heard a story on NPR the other day that was quite unsettling.  I am having a hard time deciding which was worse - what the voter told the reporter or the fact that NPR chose this voter to report on in a lead story about the NH primary.

Let's see, those that voted for Obama generally have college educations while those that voted for Hillary are high school graduates at best.

At least this was the prevailing profiling that was in the news cycle.

Of course I had to wonder a couple of things. First, who saw this pattern among the democratic voters? The same pundits and soothsayers that predicted Obama's 10%+ lead over Hillary as late as Monday evening?

And then the next thought I had was what is the education level of the republican voters? Were those that voted for McCain as educated as those that voted for Obama, or were they mere simpletons (the media's characterization, not mine) like Hillary's supporters?

I heard no analysis of those who voted for McCain or Romney. Seems to me someone created the whole education bugaboo for reasons other than to explain Hillary's voters.

A little marketing perhaps. Voting for Obama is what smart people do. Are you smart, or do you vote for Hillary?

For the record, I'd vote for Edwards, but by the time I get to vote it'll be all over.

I've been away from DKos for a while.  Life sometimes has a way of getting in the way, you know?  Well, that and taking a little side trip to the Middle East for a few months.  But, boy, what a time to come back!

I have read some of the internet postings regarding possible voting machine fraud in the Obama/Clinton NH race for which I have not reached a conclusion.  However, I did notice an almost equal spread between their vote counts throughout the evening.  Having followed live voting results since the Kennedy/Nixon race in 1960, I am used to witnessing a sea-saw change between the candidates as various precincts which are strong for one candidate or the other randomly report their results. In contrast, I never saw this usual pattern, but rather one of an almost equal spread throughout the night which could result from a programmed mathematical formula.

While I am strongly opposed to electronic voting, I have no evidence of outright fraud.  However, I do feel it rather noteworthy that the normally expected sea/saw pattern did not occur in this election.

I was astounded to hear any number of pundits hold forth on Hillary's tears as a turning point in her NH votes. It "softened" her, made her more "accessible."  

Newsweek intoned:

Hillary's teary moment may very well work in the opposite direction: helping a candidate who is seen as aloof and too tightly scripted appear more vulnerable, more human and more appealing. And those qualities could be big assets as the campaign careens out of New Hampshire, especially as a contrast to the angry scenes of Clinton rebutting Obama and John Edwards in Saturday night's debate.

Oh, please.

Hillary is not my candidate.  Barack is not my candidate.  But I am thrilled with the results last night. The narrative is now: "The Press got it wrong by coronating Obama so soon."

The voters are still deciding this thing.  We learned from 2004 that falling in line this soon is a bad idea.  You end up with the Press' candidate rather one that all the Democrats (and many Indys) choose.  

Voters are coming out in record numbers not because of one candidate.  They are mobilized because we have reached a tipping point.  And this is a historic election. (And not just for the firsts) People are coming out because they want their vote to count.  They know the future of this country is at stake.  They know their very own future and that of their family is at stake.

The NH primary brings even more good news than IA.  In IA the increase in Dem turnout was much greater than the increase in Repub turnout.  But NH tells an even better story.

According to CNN the Democratic candidates had received a total of 135,582 votes with 53% reporting, while the Republican candidates had received a total of 107,579 votes with 50% reporting.

What's interesting about those numbers is that CNN also reports that there are 850,836 registered voters in the state and they are supposed to be 26% Democratic (around 221,217 voters), 30% Republican (around 255,251 voters), and 44% Independent (around 374,368 voters). From some quick math, we can infer that the polls were right:  independents broke heavily democratic.

Boston Globe has very early returns from NH.  With 1% of precinct reporting, Obama and Clinton are tied with 40%, followed by Edwards with 15%.  Richardson has 3% and Kucinich has 1%.

On the Republican side, McCain leads Huckabee 46%-18%.  Paul and Romney are tied at 14%, while 911uliani and Gramps each have 4%.

The numbers aren't all that meaningful yet, but they're something.

UPDATE:  Front page thread now open.  Take the conversation over there.

Dartmouth College may be the only college in New Hampshire that's back from winter break, making it fertile ground for campaigns - Democratic ones, anyway.

Bill Clinton paid the school a visit Monday evening. In front of a capacity crowd (with many more not getting in), he went into full-on wonk mode and answered questions for almost two hours. The Washington Post describes "a steady stream of students," identified by the reporter as Obama supporters, leaving. And it's true, people left during Clinton's appearance, and given that the student vote is expected to be heavily for Obama, many of them would have been Obama supporters. What's also true is that they had stood and waited for a significant amount of time to get in, stood and waited once they got in, and been standing listening to Clinton for still more time, and it was dinnertime. Shoot, I left early because, as much as I hated walking out of the most up-close opportunity I will probably ever have to watch the best president of my lifetime (so far), I was exhausted.

First thing this morning, Barack Obama had a rally in the same space, restricted largely to Dartmouth students. Again it was full (I'm told students started lining up at 6:00). A few students did leave as class times approached, but the most dramatic departure was that of a student who lost consciousness and was carried out on a stretcher. This provided an interesting break in Obama's usual stump speech, and an opportunity to watch him reacting on his feet. He noticed the movement in the crowd and asked if someone had grown faint, signaling to staff to come help. As first aid providers made their way to her, he reassuringly told the crowd that it was nothing to worry about, that it happens frequently and people are usually fine with some water and rest, though often embarrassed. As it came to appear that this case might be more severe and an ambulance was called, he simply stood calmly and attentively. He didn't crack jokes or seek attention for himself.

Obama had been building to the pitch of his stump speech when this interruption occurred, and couldn't just launch back into the enthusiasm of what he had been saying. As he returned to speaking, he kept the basic material of the speech but initially adjusted the emotional tone to a slightly more somber, thoughtful one, before rebuilding. We all know he's a great speaker, but this was a display of another level, the ability not just to deliver a prepared speech well but to change the emotional register of often-used material. And at the end, he wound up right where he should be, rousing the students.

Leaving the building, the GOTV aspect of the rally was in effect, with volunteers holding signs pointing to the nearby polling place and urging students leaving the rally to go vote right then. And they were going. It won't be the only way the Obama campaign (and others) try to turn Dartmouth students out to vote today, but it was an effective start.

This was the question as the posted start time for the Hanover stop of John McCain's "the Mac is back" tour approached: Would McCain circa T Minus 1 outdraw Biden circa T Minus 9 Months?

McCain would be appearing in the Dartmouth College room Biden spoke in last spring, but his staff had used curtains to block off maybe one third of the room for McCain and his audience, and were frantically urging attendees to move toward the small stage that had been set up. In the end, McCain did outdraw Biden somewhat, and one of the curtains was removed. But en route to that moment, the McCain campaign revealed the stagecraft of campaign events more blatantly than I have ever seen, revealing in the process that they wanted the crowd to be uncomfortable if it would look good for the cameras. So people were forced to stand in a room that could have accommodated them in chairs, and harangued to crowd together long before the candidate arrived, and forced to listen to some of the same godawful songs more than once due to McCain's lateness. One man even took a break from urging people toward the stage and tried to lead them in call-and-response cheers. ("Who do we want for straight talk? McCain!" etc - he gave up pretty quickly.)

Despite the view of the McCain supporters standing next to me that, being a military man, he would surely be on time, McCain, wife Cindy, and the governor of Vermont were nearly 40 minutes later than his planned arrival time (as opposed to the posted start time, 15 minutes before that). Delivery of the line "without a doubt, Mac is back" fell to Governor Douglas, who then had to encourage the crowd to applaud policy items such as middle-class tax relief but found applause came easier for the hoary old "straight talker" line. Cindy McCain did the feminized relational work of apologizing for their lateness, and then McCain took the microphone. For like fifteen minutes.

McCain's brief stump speech opened with a few lame jokes before hitting three issues. Climate change came first: McCain walks the tightrope on that touchy-for-Republicans issue by saying that while he is convinced by the science that says climate change is real and human-caused, people who do not believe that should consider that the result of wrongly believing in climate change is leaving a cleaner planet for our children while the result of wrongly dismissing it is damaging their future. He goes on to push nuclear power as a clean alternative, noting that the Navy has used nuclear power on ships for decades without accident, and that the French also use nuclear power. This devolves into a round of scripted France-bashing, leading to the question: Is it a straight trade? As a Republican acknowledging global warming, are you required to push nuclear power and make at least three anti-France jokes to atone?

Next he spoke briefly about government spending, aiming his pitch largely at the young people he imagined would be in the audience at a college (there were a few, but it was a fairly old crowd), and highlighting his appearances at an MTV forum and on the Daily Show. For the older people (or in the belief that college students venerate Reagan? I don't know) he promised to veto every earmark presented to him using a pen given to him by Saint Gipper himself.

Finally, the "transcendental challenge of radical Islam," "perhaps the greatest evil we've ever faced." Straits of Hormuz, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, General Petraeus, I criticized Rumsfeld, surge a success! If we leave Iraq, Al Qaeda will have won and that will not happen while I am president! (But if you happen to be opposed to the war yet willing to consider voting for me, I understand that and will not accuse you of hating the troops.)

One more suck-up to the New Hampshire primary, and he turned and dashed out. The crowd didn't linger, either.

I consider health care to be the #1 concern for the future viability of this nation, though oil wars/energy independence, revamped ag policies top to bottom, economic justice and regulatory housecleaning across the board are all important issues as well.

Under the heading of energy policies, I'm going to have to weigh in on the whole renewed "nuclear option" horsehockey disguising itself as a cure for global warming and a means to energy independence in the 21st century. Nuclear power is a pig not even in its poke anymore - it's fat and ugly, it's voraciously greedy, it's arrogant of its filth, and it can't even fly. Hogzilla Unleashed.

We tried to leash it, honest. Succeeded for more than a quarter of a century, too. But they think we're all dead now, or maybe just so old we've forgotten. We have not.

I know all about Hope. Heck I even have a Signs Of Hope gift shop web site. (Don't Order anything cause the shopping cart is broke and I just want to make a point.)

I believe in hope as I am more optimistic than fatalistic. I've been hoping most of my life for one thing or another to change or get better.

I can't tell you how many times a sweet talking man seduced me by hope for love, always thinking, "This guy is the one."

Dreamers make good lovers but aren't so great at producing real results.

I'm trying to be a classy Obama supporter

It's important to remember that the New Hampshire Democratic Party's 100 Club Dinner is an annual fundraising event. It's attended by people who have paid $100 or more to attend an NHDP fundraiser, and people who have been given tickets by campaigns and the like. In other words, dedicated Democratic activists, the vast majority of whom are committed to a candidate when they walk in.

So responses to the candidate speeches there are indicative of organization as much as of organic support. Which campaign got the most supporters to turn out? Which campaign got signs into its supporters' hands?

Last night, the dominant campaign on both organization and organic enthusiasm was Obama's.

Early in the evening, as various party officials and state politicians spoke, occasionally the room would suddenly be filled with waving Obama signs. It was like nobody else had supporters in the room. When Clinton spoke, you realized she did have supporters there, and quite a lot of them. They cheered enthusiastically and waved the signs they hadn't seen fit to take out at any earlier point.

At that point, advantage Obama campaign. Whether Clinton's supporters were instructed to hold their sign-waving for her appearance, or they just weren't that worked up, it meant that through an hour and a half of speeches, Obama's supporters were the only visible ones.

Clinton gets what I'd say was a strong initial reception. Swampland says she was booed twice during her speech, and someone I know watching C-SPAN heard it at least once. Maybe that's about where the booers were in relation to the mikes, because I didn't hear it. What I did hear was that when she said that the question was who would be the best president, Obama supporters began chanting "Obama" as they waved their signs. Their chant overpowered Clinton supporters, and round O signs clearly outnumbered rectangular Clinton ones.

But when Bill Richardson finishes speaking and the crowd knows that Obama is next on the program, the room just...changes. I was expecting the biggest response of the evening, but one measured on the same scale. This is a whole different scale.

Katharine Q. Seelye at the NYT's Caucus blog:

Spontaneous combustion! We’re here at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s big dinner and out of the masses of 3,000 people, who have been listening politely to Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson, comes a huge surge of people toward the stage for the next speaker — Barack Obama.

An announcer tries to get them back to their seats. "For safety concerns, before we can proceed, please take your seats," says a disembodied voice. A mild buzz kill. The crowd moans but doesn’t really disperse. Then Mr. Obama strides to the podium, the crowd remains packed around the stage and the room is electrified.

"O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma," they roar.

Barack Obama's campaign won the organization battle at the 100 Club. They got signs into his supporters' hands, and must have issued instructions to not save the sign-waving for his speech. So visibility through the night was theirs. But the swell and crackle of energy in the room when he spoke? That was organic, and it was overwhelming. Every time Obama started to lose me with a line I've heard one time too many this long campaign season, the crowd would bring me back in.

On the shuttle back to the parking lot, it's impossible not to notice that Obama's supporters are decades younger than those of other candidates. And I think, Obama may not be my favorite on a policy level, his speeches may often leave me cold, but he could be a transformative candidate and president.

(For more on the 100 Club, see Todd Beeton's posts here and here at MyDD.)