TIME: How Hillary Turned it Around

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Forum Name General Discussion: Politics
Topic subject How Hillary Turned it Around
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4011756#4011756
4011756, How Hillary Turned it Around
Posted by DeepModem Mom on Wed Jan-09-08 12:19 PM

TIME: How Hillary Turned it Around
By KAREN TUMULTY/MANCHESTER
Wednesday, Jan. 09, 2008


Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reacts at her Democratic primary election night victory rally in Manchester, N.H., January 8, 2008.
(Elise Amendola/AP)

....How, exactly, that unlikely something happened was the result of a combination of forces that the campaign itself is only beginning to untangle. Part of it was the boring stuff — the dull, unglamorous work put in by a disciplined ground operation organized by veteran operative Nick Clemons. Late in the game, the campaign also brought in Michael Whouley, who had helped deliver the state for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

A lot of it, though, came from Clinton herself. In the tumultuous days before the primary, she showed sides of herself both tougher and softer than previously known. Clinton lashed out at Barack Obama and John Edwards in Saturday night's debate, visibly angry in a way voters had not seen before. But on Monday, she teared up when asked her how she was coping with the campaign — displaying the kind of emotion that people would associate far more with Bill Clinton than with his wife. Said one prominent Democratic strategist not affiliated with the campaign: "Yesterday helped her a lot with women."

Indeed, it did — especially with unmarried women, a key component of the Democratic base. One campaign adviser noted that where Obama won that demographic by 13 percentage points in Iowa, Clinton carried it by 17 points in New Hampshire — a 30 point shift over in the course of five days. (It also couldn't have hurt that a great number of men from the pundit-ocracy spent the hours before the primary gleefully anticipating a Clinton catastrophe.)...

***

The road ahead is still long and challenging for Clinton. The race she once expected to finish cleanly and quickly is now shaping up as an exercise in harvesting convention delegates one grueling state at a time. The rules under which delegates are allocated — divided proportionally in each state, rather than the winner-take-all system that the Republicans use in many states — makes it hard for any Democrat to deliver a knockout blow in just a few contests. But her victory in New Hampshire has staved off a mass defection of fundraisers and prominent endorsing Democrats, as well as the more than 150 "superdelegates" — elected officials, party leaders and others who are delegates by virtue of the positions they hold — who had pledged their support.

But at least for one night, Hillary Clinton and those around her aren't playing defense. They've got their second chance.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1701640,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner