The pundits want you to believe it was Hillary's tears that helped her win in New Hampshire.
First of all, there were no tears.
Hillary choked up a bit and sounded a tad emotional as she talked about how desperately she wanted to help the country, but so what? Big deal! Rudy said he cried every time he thought of 9/11 (gag!) and Bush claims he sheds tears over fallen soldiers (which I doubt).
And whether or not Hillary's choke-up moment was scripted or spontaneous, it doesn't matter. That isn't what caused her to inch out Obama. I don't believe for a minute that women voted for her because they felt compassion for her, or men voted for her because they felt protective of her, as men tend to do when women "cry."
She didn't cry!
This is just a stupid analysis. Hillary won because she won. Somehow she reached enough voters, or the polls were dead wrong, or whatever. Elections can be unpredictable, we are finding out.
She didn't win because she choked up on Monday. That's a sexist conclusion any way you look at it.
And Obama didn't lose because of the "Bradley effect," the supposed tendency of white voters to tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate when in the privacy of the voting booth, they won't. That argument is racist as well. Obama ended up only three percentage points behind Clinton. I'm not sure you can even consider that a loss when he was expected to lose big time in New Hampshire only a week ago.
Obama got 103,000 votes to Hillary's 110,000. That's 55,000 more votes than the white male Democrat, John Edwards and 17,000 more than the white male Republican John McCain. Now since it has always been my experience that racism and sexism go hand in hand, I just don't see how a combined vote of 213,000 votes for a woman and an African American amount to the "Bradley effect."
There are two powerful and popular candidates running for the lead on the Democratic side, neither of them white men.
In the Democratic Party, at least, we are past sexism and racism.
With the pundits and the Republicans, it's apparently a different story.
