Thoughts On New Hampshire

A collection of online articles I found condemning Hillary and/or praising Obama, for anyone else as distraught as I am about Hillary's pretty vile win last night. Anyone else as disgusted about the amount of mud the Clintons slung at Obama? Especially Bill. He should be ashamed. And could they have fabricated a less realistic image of Hillary's supporters standing behind her last night (honey, you won the white-haired ladies. you didn't win the youth vote, no matter how many times you pretended to get excited when a random 20-something approached your campaign). Here's to hoping her tried and true machinery collapses, and we get some fresh blood. As Joshua Green, one of the foremost political journalists wrote in The Atlantic last year:

It is fair to wonder if Clinton learned the lesson of the health-care disaster too well, whether she has so embraced caution and compromise that she can no longer judge what merits taking political risks. It is hard to sqaure the brashly confident leader of health-care reform- willing to act on her deepest beliefs, intent on changing the political climate and not merely exploiting it- with the senator who recently went along with the vote to make flag-burning a crime- by her own tacit admission, no evidence of bravery in the service of a larger ideal. Instead, her Senate record is an assemblage of many, many small gains. Her real accomplishment in the Senate has been to rehabilitate the image and political career of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Impressive though that has been in its particulars, it makes for a rather thin claim on the presidency. Senator Clinton has plenty to talk about, but she doesn't have much to say.

Some more enjoyable reading below...

"But if Hillary used the antiquated tool of the powerless, tears, to manipulate the voters' perception of her, then she has sold her girlfriends down the river for personal gain. She certainly wouldn't be the "real candidate of change" that she's promising, but simply another old pol. Thanks, Hillary, but we'll just go back to grooming our girls to be the First Woman President of the United States we've been praying for. We've been working on it for well over two centuries and we can work a little longer." -Vicki Iovine

"There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing." -Maureen Dowd, NYT

"But the flash point was -- it's wrong to do the Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Clinton II thing, no matter how gifted and intelligent Ms. Clinton is." -Chris Durang, American Dramatist

"That's it?" - A Jon Stewart Clip

And last, the woman who made Hillary cry in NH was so moved, she voted for Obama!