Month: January 2008

I Fucking Love Rachel Maddow

Let me start by replaying my comment from the other thread:

If it’s true that the “tears” speech helped Clinton (and I’m not totally certain), then that would be tremendous news, because it would be a pushback on the media’s horrific treatment of her. If the media can’t break a candidate, that’s a good thing for democracy.

Rachel Maddow just relayed to Chris Matthews’ face that many in the blogosphere (she cited Talking Points Memo specifically) are blaming HIM and his misogyny as the reason undecideds broke late for Clinton. Matthews laughed it off, but there was some real bitterness there.

This is glorious. If the media can understand that their catty, elitist, high school Heathers-like mentality will ultimately backfire, maybe they’ll shut their mouths for a second and rethink their job description.

… just to respond to the comments a bit: look, there are a lot of possible indicators here. Hillary dropped a mailer essentially saying that Obama wasn’t reliable on keeping abortion legal the weekend before the primary (a largely evidence-free charge), which could explain the women’s vote. There’s the lingering Bradley effect. There’s the fact that Hillary had Michael Whouley doing his field (he’s the guy who pulled John Kerry out of the fire in Iowa). It could simply be that we’re pretty much tied, and Obama represents a state from the Midwest and Clinton represents one from the Northeast. But it’s undeniable that what was happening to Clinton, from all the media and not just Tweety-bird, was pretty reprehensible, and to the extent that they were upbraided tonight, that they were stopped in their tracks from writing epitaphs prematurely, I’m happy. Here’s Tom Brokaw:

BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this.

But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.

Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding, in many cases, as we learned in New Hampshire when they went into the polling booth today or in the last three days. They were making decisions very late.

The voters may well have said “Shut the hell up and stop stampeding this process.” I hope that Iowa and New Hampshire now cancel each other out, and that we move into the other states tuning out the superficialities and focused on the actual issues that ought to matter.

A boy can dream, no?

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Catch the Wave

by digby

Judging from the demeanors of the gasbags and not so subtle hints, I would guess the Obama win is a bit smaller than the polls projected. So, it’s probably not over yet. And they’ve already called the race for McCain, which means we are about to experience a McCain-Huck throwdown in South Carolina. Vastly entertaining.

But most importantly, it look like huge record turnout which is 2-1 Democratic. This isn’t about Indies or republicans, it’s about people registering and identifying themselves as Democrats.

So far, it’s looking like a blue tsunami in the primaries and that, my friends, is very, very, very good news.

Update: I’m hearing that Obama won men by 20 and lost women by 4. I don’t know what that means in terms of the final numbers.

And Matthews is making excuses for Giuliani’s truly embarrassing showing saying “at least he beat Ron Paul.” John McCain is from Arizona. Giuliani is from neighboring New York. Big problemas.

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The Winner of the 2008 Election…

by dday

…must be we the people.

People are justifiably excited by the high turnout in New Hampshire, following the record turnout in Iowa, which portends a record turnout nationwide. People are excited about the prospect of a candidate who represents a generational shift and can attract new voters to the process.

(I’m not discounting the fact that the New Hampshire results will not determine the race; they likely will not. I do think that Armstrong and fladem are completely discounting the fact that Edwards is poised to stay in the race until the convention, and a series of third-place finishes will Clinton potentially skips Nevada and South Carolina to retool, will have a cumulative effect. Also, going relentlessly negative is a dumb strategy in my view. Clinton actually has a decent enough message, good enough to win, but looking petty and blaming the media will derail it. This is also extremely damaging for the Democratic Party heading into what will be an important and tough general election, and it’s beyond me why any candidate would even consider going nuclear, being so cynical against a
candidate running on hope. It just reinforces Obama’s argument.)

But I’ve come to the conclusion that the Democratic candidate, should they get into the White House, is less material than how he or she harnesses this growing movement toward progressive solutions to the challenges we face. I think any of the top three could be up to this task. It’s up to them, however, to tap into this movement. Let’s be very clear. Iowa has an open primary in the sense that they have same-day registration. Not one independent or Republican voted for Barack Obama in Iowa; they all had to sign up as Democrats. A lot of young voters don’t have a political party but self-identify ideologically with progressives. This is not a bipartisan or post-partisan movement. This is a movement that invests a lot of power in one man to push a progressive agenda. Barack Obama himself is starting to acknowledge this, which is a relief to many who thought he wasn’t giving the progressive movement the ability to help him set his agenda.

Obama’s speech underwent another subtle shift, too. There was much more emphasis placed on the word “progressive,” a much more explicit recognition of Obama’s potential meaning to a particular ideological movement. He spoke of “Independents who recognize that the current course we’re on is not working, and are ready to form a coalition with Democrats for progressive change,” chided the observers who said there was no way all these diverse individuals would turn out “for a progressive Democrat.” I’ve not heard that word so oft-repeated at his rallies before. Indeed, the whole speech seemed the product of Obama’s thinking about how he could use his political potency to shift the center in America to the left. “We will send a message,” he said, “that we will not only end the war in Iraq, not only bring our troops home, but we will change the mindset that got us into that war in the first place.” In some ways, it’s that grandeur of ambition that separates Obama from Clinton. Even before he said so explicitly, many progressives I know spoke of his ability not to change policies, but to change minds — to do for progressivism what Reagan did for conservatism. Clinton, they agreed, was competent and well-meaning, but lacked that potential.

This is indeed a positive step. Those erstwhile independents and Republicans who signed up as Democrats to vote for Obama in Iowa need to be captured, they need to remain in the fold. And it’s clear to me that the only way that happens is if they are empowered to become a part of this government, to become engaged in a very direct sense. I’ve worried before about how this new coalition, which has invested so much in this one man, would react if he meets up with the Republican machine and stumbles:

But the key moment for a possible Obama Presidency comes when that first piece of his agenda is blocked by a recalcitrant Republican minority that will have their heels dug in, or (worse) by Bush Dogs who still glory in knifing a progressive agenda. We are called “cynics” by believing the stated goals of a 40-year conservative movement, to destroy government, to make it so that progress can never happen, to stymie any and all efforts in that direction. There is absolutely no reason to think that they will not continue in this manner. It’s the only thing they’re successful at, and their message discipline and ability to stick together is near-legendary. The media isn’t likely to make them pay a price for it, either.

So what happens then?

The right is already smugly saying that they may be worried about Obama politically, but not from a legislative standpoint.

“He believes he’s a game-changer, but I don’t believe the game has changed,” said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, dismissing Obama’s transformational pledges as naive. “It’s captivating. It’s intoxicating, but it’s not going to last.” […]

“It’s clear he is a phenomenon,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a conservative scrapper who revels in Washington’s partisan warfare. “He will use style and grace to achieve liberal goals, which is absolutely politically brilliant but intellectually dishonest.” […]

“Any new president is going to have a honeymoon period, and with his communication skills and the foundation that he appears to be wanting to lay — ‘Look, I’m above partisanship; I want to be everybody’s president’ — I’m concerned he could push through some policy things that I fundamentally disagree with,” said Rep. Jim McCrery (La.), the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.

The Big Money boys and the special interests will will spend tens of millions this year to try and destroy a progressive populist message once and for all, too. If they succeed, risk-averse political consultants will steer their candidates away from this rhetoric and back to the DLC mushy middle. Notice the use of attack imagery here.

Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.

“We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,” chamber President Tom Donohue said […]

Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.

Although Donohue shied away from precise figures, he indicated that his organization would spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it spent in the last presidential cycle. That approaches the spending levels planned by the largest labor unions.

Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a very “grassroots” organization, too.

This is not insurmountable. But it’s clear that political skills and smooth talk is not going to mean a thing to the roadblocks to progress in the Republican Party. They have a long track record of obstructionism, they’re seasoned and ready, and they seem to relish that position. And that’s if we can manage to get a win in November.

The only way to pull this off is to not only ask for support, but to enlist those people in a greater purpose. What these big crowds show is that people are dying for greater civic participation. They see a Republican Party blocking progress and they want to do something to change that. There are tangible steps that go beyond electoral politics, that honestly are more like community organizing, that will be crucial to a Democratic President having any shot to get that agenda enacted.

This cannot be something that stops on Election Day. We have to make the change; no politician is going to do it for us. James Wolcott is absolutely right.

Is a new, improved, rejuvenated form of identity politics really going to make a dent against entrenched power?–against the horrors of factory farms, logging and mining corporations that are ravaging our environment, defense contractors, etc? All this talk of “beautiful spirit” has the narcissistic aroma of organic shampoos. I’m happy Obama is drawing young voters and that they’re Democratic voters but it isn’t very edifying watching the besotted bask in their own sunshine. It’s also dangerously naive to think that if the right hero comes along, all differences can be resolved and old grievances laid to rest. So many of those touting Obama talk of his unifying appeal, as if he possessed special healing powers, with the partisan bipartisans (the sort of people trying to get Bloomberg to run) claiming that deep-down Americans “want the same things.”

No, they don’t. People want different things, or place different priorities on the things they want. Hell, the shareholders in my co-op can’t agree on the same thing when it comes to building repairs, and we think a superdose of charisma is going to seal the ideological cracks of a country of 300 million?

I think any of our candidates can be up to this task, ready to fight back, prepared to take this energy and engage it. But they have to understand it. We’re in for a major battle and it’s going to take more than one man or woman to wage it.

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Give Peace A Chance

by digby

Roy Edroso points to an hilarious Wall Street Journal editorial which says that all this hope that Obama is offering is unnecessary because in a country where poor people can be fat and Ann Coulter can snag herself a Democrat for a boyfriend, there are no differences among us after all. Kumbaaya, my brothas.

Here’s Roy:

I guess Obama’s the frontrunner now, because (though the dopes at National Review are still tearing at Hillary’s carcass) the Wall Street Journal is giving him a hard time, on the grounds that “the division Mr. Obama promises to end has largely been put to rest”:

A nation in which the poor are defined by an income level that in most countries would make them prosperous is a nation that has all but forgotten the true meaning of poverty. A nation in which obesity is largely a problem of the poor (and anorexia of the upper-middle class) does not understand the word “hunger.” A nation in which the most celebrated recent cases of racism, at Duke University or in Jena, La., are wholly or mostly contrived is not a racist nation. A nation in which our “division” is defined by the vitriol of Ann Coulter or James Carville is not a truly divided one–at least while Mr. Carville is married to Republican operative Mary Matalin and Ms. Coulter is romantically linked with New York City Democrat Andrew Stein.

Well, Stein and Coulter have broken up, so maybe America’s sorta divided after all. (And you thought Parade fucked up!) But I see their point: welfare queens are pretending to be lynched and stuffing themselves with Devil Dogs while supermodels vomit — we’re in great shape. read on…

It’s an interesting approach. The United Bloomers discover polarization one day and the next the WSJ declares that peace is at hand. By next week I fully expect to hear that the Democratic elites have been running our country into the ground long enough and it’s time for the Republicans to take their country back.

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What’s The Plan Stan?

by digby

I just heard Barnicle and some other gasbags talking about the level of intensity on the Republican side in New Hampshire on the immigration issue. The entrance polls in Iowa back up the fact that they now believe it’s the most important issue, over terrorism and taxes, even.

Just for some conversation on this day of waiting, how intense do you think this is going to get? And how should the Democrats deal with it?

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Don’t Eat The Bloomer Acid

by digby

D-Day has some memories of Wankstock that will bring a tear to your eye. I’m so sorry I missed the Janis Joplin performance:

“People have stopped working together, government is dysfunctional, there’s no collaborating and congeniality,” Bloomberg said to applause from the crowd.

Golly, what song was he singing when this was going on? He was supporting every lunatic proposal of George W. Bush and his Republican minions.

Apparently government isn’t dysfunctional when it’s working like a GOP dictatorship. It’s only when it’s threatened by the grubby outsiders that “something must be done.” Big men.

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Courting Republicans

by digby

While we’re waiting to find out what happens in New Hampshire today, we might want to think about something equally (if not more) profound that will happen tomorrow in Washington DC:

The most revealing indicator of the state of our democracy is not to be found in the snowdrifts of New Hampshire but in the marbled chamber of the U.S. Supreme Court. Soon enough we will discover whether the court under Chief Justice John Roberts will become a partisan tool in the national Republican drive to place constraints on voting that are targeted at those who tend to support Democrats.

Not since the Supreme Court stopped the Florida presidential election recount in 2000 has a voting case been so significant, or so overflowing with partisan bile.

On Wednesday, the justices will hear a challenge to Indiana’s strict law requiring photo identification in order for a voter to cast a ballot at the polls. The state claims the law is necessary to stop voter fraud. Yet no one—not Indiana officials, not the U.S. Justice Department, which has taken the state’s side in the dispute, nor any commission—has come up with a single case in the state’s history in which an imposter showed up and cast a vote.

Never mind. In 2005, Republicans who controlled the Indiana Legislature and the governor’s mansion imposed the toughest photo identification requirement in the nation. Not coincidentally, studies have repeatedly shown that those least likely to possess photo identification—most commonly a driver’s license—are African-Americans, the poor, the elderly and the disabled. In short, they are more likely to vote Democratic. Challengers to the law have identified at least two Indiana voters who have infirmities that make it impossible for them to drive, according to The New York Times. They were prevented from casting ballots and having them counted after years of voting without difficulty.

Though the state set up a way for those without a license to obtain a photo ID, the process is complex, and eligible voters still can be denied. If, for example, a woman produces a birth certificate bearing her maiden name, rather than the married name under which she is registered to vote, she isn’t entitled to the identification. About 60 percent of those who have tried to get alternative IDs have been turned down, according to briefs filed with the Supreme Court.

To make their case before a court that is supposed to decide matters based on the facts and the law, Indiana and its supporters, including the Justice Department, invoke a compendium of allegations of this type of voter fraud or that. Facts seem to be notable for their absence.

I wrote more about this at the Big Cona couple of weeks ago. This is a big deal.

The Republicans are already doing everything they can to suppress the minority vote in the fall, and that means not just African Americans but Hispanics as well. This case will open the door for people like Mrs Huckabee to run roughshod over voters next fall:

October 19, 2004
MORE ON JANET HUCKABEE: NOT A GOOD PERSON?

NOT TO MIMIC LYNNE CHENEY TOO MUCH, BUT IS JANET HUCKABEE a “good woman”?

This just over the wire from someone who observed Huckabee’s behavior yesterday. I have confirmed that this individual was in a position to observe the Arkansas first lady as she did her ‘civic duty,’ but I need to keep the individual’s identity concealed to protect her/him from the wrath of the Arkansas First Lady’s office.

Steve,

Her rudeness, combined with her position of prominence, infuriated many of the minority voters who voted that day.

Intimidation may or may not have been her intent, but intimidation definitely has been the EFFECT in the neighborhood and throughout Little Rock. Complaints from voters who haven’t even voted yet have been rolling in. I mean, imagine a minority voter who might be concerned about voting and initimidation to begin with, and then to go in the precinct to find the Republican Governor’s wife working as a poll worker and telling you incorrect information about the law, and in a rude manner.

H/T to BB

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Memories of Wankstock

by dday

I’m kicking myself for only catching about 10 minutes of the Wankstock conference on C-SPAN. I was disappointed to see Bob Graham there; I always thought he was better than that. And the deep, thought-provoking discussions I saw consisted mainly of jokes about Oklahoma Sooner football. The only issue anybody brought up was Republican former Congressman Jim Leach’s call essentially for public financing of elections, which was met with a decent round of applause. I guess Bloomberg’s billion dollars doesn’t count.

The more representative quotes were pabulum like this:

“People have stopped working together, government is dysfunctional, there’s no collaborating and congeniality,” Bloomberg said to applause from the crowd.

This is particularly amusing in light of that floated Bloomberg-Hagel ticket. They agree on absolutely nothing. Bloomberg is fairly Democratic domestically and a neocon on foreign policy, while Hagel is a hardline conservative on everything BUT foreign policy, where he rejects neoconservatism forcefully. Those are actual policy differences. The idea that you can “work together” on those doesn’t make any sense.

But apparently, the rise of Barack Obama dampened the spirits of the attendees, kind of like a bad trip.

The event was organized by former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, with former Senator David L. Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma. In the days leading up the event here, just outside Oklahoma City, Mr. Boren suggested that he would encourage Mr. Bloomberg to run if the major party nominees failed to heed the call for bipartisanship.

But several leading participants took pains to say that they had no intention of abandoning their own parties in the election. Some even cast Mr. Obama’s success as evidence that the nation was yearning for the type of leadership they were offering.

“I believe he is demonstrating, in the support he is getting, that the American people share this concern about excessive partisanship,” said Bob Graham, a Democratic former senator from Florida, who said he would support a Democrat for president.

Gary Hart, a Democrat from Colorado who also served in the Senate, said he intended to endorse one of the Democratic presidential candidates in the next 48 hours, though he declined to identify the candidate.

“I am a Democrat, and I will endorse a Democratic president,” he said. “There are no independent candidates. I won’t endorse a Republican.”

Seems to me like these tools are declaring victory (for now). Obama says a few words on bipartisanship, and the Wise Old Man appear satisfied. They’re claiming that everyone is following their dictates.

Of course, that’s not true. But it’s far easier to influence the debate from the outside, to narrow the options for a progressive agenda. They can go ahead and claim some sort of betrayal the first time Obama offers something that doesn’t fall in the narrow lines of the status quo. They’ll kneecap him as sure as they kneecapped Bill Clinton.

You could hear Sam Nunn, the Jerry Garcia of Wankstock, if you will, just deflated today on an interview with Andrea Mitchell. He kept talking about “the fundamental issues” without really explaining what those issues are (except an allusion to entitlement reform, which means Social Security privatization, of course). Yesterday at Wankstock, he closed it out with an electric guitar version of the Star-Spangled Banner this quote:

“A minister once said to me, if you call yourself a leader, but nobody’s following you, you’re just takin’ a walk.”

Wankstock: just takin’ a walk.

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“Electoral Perversity”

by digby

For those who are looking for something besides the usual primary blather, I want to recommend this excellent series that BagNewsNotes is running this week. Michael Shaw has commissioned award winning photographer Alan Chin to photograph the primaries through a non-MSM prism. The shots are incredible — and tell a bunch of very different stories than the one we are hearing.

Chin’s observations are also pungent and revealing:

Notice Lieberman also toting a microphone. Although the press seemed to ignore it, the event in Derry was as much a joint appearance. Chin notes that Lieberman held the floor almost as long as McCain. Alan adds: ” Lieberman stands at McCain’s side like some ghost of electoral perversity. Imagine the thought of the vice presidential loser of one political party repeating the feat for the other party?

I can see it, unfortunately.

Obama will be featured next, which should be very interesting. The crowds are reportedly gigantic.

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Golden Girl In Boots

by digby

Molly Ivors worked Maureen Dowd over as she deserved for her rude condescension toward the so-called “Golden Girls” who support Hillary. (Be sure to click through for the graphic.)

Dowd is warming up to to Senator Obama, at least for the moment, which is good news for the him and the Democrats. But it won’t last. She’s got her insults all set to go when the worm turns (especially if the Manly Maverick gets the nod.) There is nothing more the Queen of Mean likes to do more than build people up so she can viciously tear them down. As bartcop has famously said for years: Maureen Dowd, she hates everybody.

On a related note, I agree with Kevin Drum about this, both his irritation and his optimism. (John Cole as well.) I get constantly lambasted as a Hillary shill/hack/DLC scumbag, which I’m not, because I’ve written a lot about the media’s truly shameful coverage of her over the past few months. (I also defended Edwards and Obama, but because the nature of the attacks against Hillary were often so sexist — and there were so many more of them — it’s unbalanced.)

I know defending her upsets some people because they dislike her so much. But I guarantee that this is going to happen to others who they don’t believe deserve it. There are many more egregious political characters in the past couple of decades who have been treated with far more respect and decency by the press than Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Howard Dean and John Kerry among others (and undoubtedly Barack Obama, when they decide they need to give their corporate masters some love.) It’s a much bigger problem than the Clintons or the Democratic establishment and I hope that when the smoke has cleared from this primary and we all step back and take a good hard look at what the kewl kidz did this time out, we can discuss this reasonably.

The right wing noise machine and the media have created a situation where progressives and Democratic standard bearers eventually become so tainted by character attacks and “where there’s smoke there’s fire” innuendo that they have a hard time functioning effectively. There’s a history of this going back for quite some time.

Here’s a little something to ponder on the subject before you tear me apart on this:

John Bullock:

Much work on political persuasion maintains that people are influenced by information that they believe and not by information that they don’t. By this view, false beliefs have no power if they are known to be false. This helps to explain frequent efforts to change voters’ attitudes by exposing them to relevant facts. But findings from social psychology suggest that this view requires modification: sometimes, false beliefs influence people’s attitudes even after they are understood to be false. In a trio of experiments, I demonstrate that the effect is present in people’s thinking about politics and amplified by party identification. I conclude by elaborating the consequences for theories of belief updating and strategic political communication.

Ezra Klein explains:

So let’s be clear on how this works: Bob the Republican gets an e-mail saying Barack Obama is a Muslim, spent his early years in madrassas, and had been cynically implying a Christian faith in order facilitate his campaign. Bob takes from this that Obama is untrustworthy, possibly disloyal, and probably a bit dangerous. Then, Bob’s watching the news, and they cut to a segment on this smear, showing it to be a heap of falsehoods and racist insinuations. Bob stops believing in the smear, but is still left with the vestigial impression that Obama is untrustworthy, etc. The damage remains, even as the causal facts are erased.

All of us are subject to this phenomenon even if we are disposed to think well of someone to begin with. I know that I have developed certain irrational feelings of loathing about people who could at least be expected to draw forth neutral feelings as a basic ally. But you hear these things, over and over, and it takes its toll. You tire of having to defend them, lose respect for the person as a constant victim and even if you don’t know specifically why it’s happened you just recoil from the whole thing after a while.

I’m not saying that’s why all of you Hillary opponents have such strong feelings about her, but reading around the blogosphere and watching television, I’m convinced it’s true for a fair number of people. That rightwing “strand of energy” has been focused like a laser for 15 years on hating her and it has taken a toll. The level of visceral loathing for her among some people is not the result of her record or her stump speech. It just isn’t.

This is, sadly, the best argument against her candidacy for me. (I think all of the top three Democrats are equally qualified and would make good presidents. Again, I know that many people have perfectly legitimate reasons for opposing her, and I am not trying to pick a fight on that.)But I do believe there is so much internalized rightwing hate and a rather shocking reservoir of sexism in enough people to make it difficult to elect her in the general. I wasn’t sure before the primaries, but I’m pretty sure now. And I suppose that’s what primaries are for, aren’t they? (If she manages to battle back, then maybe I’ll be convinced otherwise.)

This pattern of systematic character destruction (and sexism) is not just bad for Senator Clinton, it’s bad for all progressives, who are always the victims of the professional rightwing smear institutions and the puerile press corps that can’t get enough of this stuff. We need to figure out a way to change this or we are going to be seeing more of our progressive politicians — many of whom you may like better than Hillary Clinton — turned into vessels of irrational loathing over time.

The smartest thing Al Gore ever did was get out of presidential politics and work global warming from outside. They had destroyed him as a traditional politician and he knew it.

Update: Matt Stoller, Jane Hamsher, Steve Benen and D-Day below have posts about the revolting pile-on today about her choking up. It’s making me sick to my stomach.

Update II: On the other hand, she’s not just a weepy hysteric, also a lot like Bush, getting angry at anyone who crosses her:

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAFFERTY: Ouch. Remind you of anybody?

We’ve had seven years of a president who gets angry any time somebody disagrees with him or has the temerity to suggest that he might not have all the answers. And that little outburst you just saw from Saturday night’s debate is probably not going to help Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, where 45 percent of the voters are Independent.

ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper, on his blog, after witnessing that debate, said that Hillary got angry “… not about an issue so much, as about the fact that Obama is beating her.”

So here’s the question. Will Hillary Clinton’s angry response at the debate on Saturday hurt her chances in New Hampshire tomorrow?

And here I’d thought her big problem was that she was a cold, calculating automaton.

This is nice. And unsurprising.

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