Something Happening Here
Written en route from New Hampshire to Nevada
On Monday afternoon in Manchester, New Hampshire, I called my Executive Producer in New York and said that we needed to pencil in more time than we had allotted for Andrea Mitchell's report on the Clinton Campaign. It needed to be enlarged to include a 48 second soundbite of Hillary Clinton at a roundtable, answering a question about the campaign. She was tired, and she was emotional. She did what any of us would have, and have done at times: she briefly lost control of her emotions. At that very moment, while he was miles away and unaware of it, Barack Obama started to lose control of what we'd been told was a commanding lead in New Hampshire.
I am a son of New England — my father is from Framingham, Mass., my parents met in college in Maine, and over a lifetime of immersion I came to know the psyche well. The core of the older, native New Hampshire population (albeit in a State that is rapidly changing) is still made up of the sons and daughters of the original Puritans. They take civic responsibility seriously, they take care of those who need it and they take pride in "process". In modern political terms, they generally don't like negativity, they reward the downtrodden, they earnestly deliberate over their choice of candidate and they venerate the sturdy among us. In short, they are good people to have in your corner. Hillary Clinton was bloodied in New Hampshire. The people of New Hampshire saw it and didn't like it. They saw assumptions forming and didn't like them. Some felt they were being told what to think: the race was decided, Hillary was desperate and inauthentic. Worst of all — and this was made very clear to me by more than one person: when some in the media quietly doubted that Hillary Clinton's emotions at that roundtable were real (there was quiet snickering about an "acting job" born of an urgent need to seem normal) it was proof to them that cynicism had taken hold of the politics/media realm — and they simply refused to believe that.
Had Bill Clinton not famously coined the title "The Comeback Kid" for himself, his wife would have rightfully claimed it for herself in New Hampshire. That the same State rewarded these two imperfect politicians, in the same way, years apart, is remarkable.
Also remarkable was the apparent transformation of the candidate. The Senator who failed to gain the full support of women voters in Iowa was saved by them in New Hampshire. The woman who gave a victory speech after losing in Iowa — admitted in her New Hampshire victory speech that what she'd really lost...was her own voice.
There will be numerous deconstructions over the days to come. Theories about how African American candidates for office have confounded pollsters (see: Bradley, Wilder, Gant, Jackson) will receive a thorough airing, and deservedly so. We in the media will beat ourselves bloody (and deservedly so) for reaching conclusions before the voters have spoken. A further prediction? Give us a few weeks — we will promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling, predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat.
It should be noted that virtually everyone got it wrong. The only point of agreement among all the competing campaigns in New Hampshire was that Barack Obama was headed for a double-digit victory, as they told anyone who'd listen. I have an email from a Clinton fundraiser who denounced Hillary as a lost cause and threw his support to Obama...while the polls were still open on Tuesday. A veteran Clinton loyalist spoke of the campaign in New Hampshire in the past tense on the morning of the election, saying the Senator from New York had run smack into "an ideal...a movement," called Barack Obama. There was no defeating an ideal, said this completely defeated politico. Not this year, not in New Hampshire.
In his beautiful, soaring concession speech, Obama mentioned the town of Lebanon for a reason, and listening to him, I knew why. I was with him in Lebanon the day before -- and what we saw there was something of a defining moment in the campaign — it surprised him, his staff members, the Secret Service on board the campaign bus...even the bus driver. We turned the corner toward the event and saw hundreds of people lined up through the streets of the town just to see him, to feel his aura and to later say that they'd done it — they'd been there. There were hundreds more than the venue could hold, and they stood there anyway, and kept coming. Obama, overwhelmed by the overflow crowd, insisted on an outdoor speech before his indoor speech. This much is important, and should be said: any journalist covering any candidate that day, in that town, would have come away as I did after seeing those people, saying something akin to the old song lyric, "something's happening here." A colleague of mine contends Obama got caught up in the history he was making. I don't think that's quite fair. The candidate didn't change his message as much as Iowa changed the way we heard it.
That day, I saw people embrace Barack Obama the way people embrace loved ones returning from foreign battlefields. I saw people with small children, brought along simply so their parents could years later tell them, to the point of predictable annoyance, "you were there...". Losing in New Hampshire may well make Barack Obama a better candidate. While it's the kind of thing that is always said at times like these by those of us whose names have never appeared on a ballot, I think it might just be true in this case.
On the eve of the primary, I attended the last big rally of the Clinton New Hampshire campaign. While large and boisterous enough to distract attention from the decidedly inelegant venue (the indoor tennis courts at the Executive Health and Fitness Center in the shadow of the Manchester airport control tower) it was packed and it was emotional. Our producer spotted tears in Chelsea's eyes. Campaign workers were trying to seem upbeat. A British journalist called the press credential hanging around his neck "a ticket to the last supper." Senator Clinton gave her stump speech, only infused with more emotion: shades of anger, melancholy, frustration and wistfulness. She made a forceful and direct appeal for support, at one point aimed specifically at the women in the audience. Her husband nodded and clapped supportively behind her and shook every hand in the rope line afterwards. I stood several feet away, watching the familiar ballet of incoming hands and thinking of the two years I spent covering his Presidency, and how much has changed since then. He's still in the family retail business, where the basic transaction remains the same.
New Hampshire voters, masters of retail politics and educated consumers all, saw what their Iowa counterparts had done days earlier, and chose not to follow the same path. They instead gave their approval to a former POW, and a former First Lady. Poles apart in many ways, now joined together in the history of this strange process.
As politicians, John McCain and Hillary Clinton have a lot of mutual respect for each other. They have traveled to Iraq together during a dangerous time in the conflict, and they lived to tell about it. Now they can say the same thing about New Hampshire.
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If you want a gut-buster, a good satire of Hillary, go to www.motherjones.com and check out Mark Fiore's animation. It's a riot!
I support Clinton, but I think there should be a recount. The numbers were too far off. Can someone investigate that please?
Welcome to HuffPost, Mr. Williams!
Hillary Clinton and the Tammy Faye Presidency.
Amazing.
I'll tell you what happened Brian...you, Tim Russert and the rest of NBC news was HUMILIATED.
Just hours after Brian's "Kiss Ass" interview with Obama, Hillary spanked him in NH. All week long Brian and Timmy were pronouncing the death of Hillary Clinton. In addition, you had that hack Andrea Mitchell, slobbering about a "Panic in Hillary's campaign"...OOPS.
Now we get to watch Willaims, Russert and Mitchell, back-track, hem, haw, and look like dunces. It's great to watch, and it proves that the media doesn't decide who wins our elections, the citizens do. Maybe now Brian and Timmy, will try and practice a little thing called "balanced journalisim"...but I won't hold my breath.
It it a rollercoaster election-- and we should let no one spoil it-- we need to keep Obama and Clinton viable-- the spoilers might be coming in to give us yet 4 more repub years--we have to fight like Bobby Kennedy did -- with a true democratic spirit-- let's redefine populism-- because the spoilers want to make it another corporate greed election...
Nice Article.
We human beings like explanations. We want to know why the market went down, each and every day it goes down. And usually no one really knows, but a reason will be reported.
Hillary won. I suspect that many people who voted for her did not see her cry and may not even have known she cried. I suspect the real reason she won is LOTS of reasons from get out the vote efforts, her well known name, her husbands popularity, her own popularity, etc.
I find it hard to believe that the voters of New Hampshire are so sappy that all a candidate has to do is cry to get their vote. But the incident may have changed a few minds, so add it to the list of reasons why Hillary won.
But did you ever consider the possibility that she lost more votes than she gained by going emotional at that moment? No one knows.
Comeback? Where did Hillary go? Contrary to the media's wishes, you can't wave a wand and make the front runner in the campaign disappear. This isn't American Idol. We aren't choosing next year's disposable Pop Star. Think Fantasia.
She cried and she won. What is the message??? How will that resonate throughout a general election against the Republicans??? How, if by some chance she actually won the general election - will that resonate throughout the world that our president got elected because she cried. How f'ing pathetic. That's why she can't win.
That will be written in history books. Think about it. If there are enough rationale people in this country she will be done as a candidate - as well she should be.
Yeah, something happened here all right, like election fraud:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/archives/cat_vote_fraud.html
The TV Network news anchors are significantly a different breed than the news channel ones. The network anchor's mandate is to put the news in the blender so it becomes easy to digest for the average person.
The news channel people also cook the news so we have to chew on a bit. For raw first-hand and incredibly good news and analysis on the tube there is only C-SPAN. Everything else pales by comparison.
I find the network newsmen condescending attitude very off putting. Their whole demeanor is one of "Well, I am smarter than you and here I am trying to get you uninformed sap to understand some of the current issues. You are a moron so you better listen carefully to what I say."
These folks do this act day in and out and tend to believe their own fable about themselves. They should never appear on a serious or semi-serious venues like this forum because they reveal their lack of substance make the rest of us depressed about who America is listening to.
This article is a prime example of such an expression by a network anchorman making one ponder "what is the point of 'Something happening here.'?" I wish BW didn't believe his own act on NBC and did some serious journalism on the side that focused more on substance than style. This way, he wouldn't just be a product of the TV ratings machine that is unfortunately running our lives.
Brian Williams,
I live in Washington state. A little north of Seattle. It's a great place to live. There's a lake across the street. It's green all year round. Clean air. Peaceful. I work remote from home as a video game programmer. Barely a little more than 30 hours a week. It's a wonderful life here.
But my wife and I have been seriously considering trading all of that for moving to Iowa or New Hampshire so OUR voice in this election could be heard. Why can't you and the rest of the News Media stop telling us who the winners are before 95% of the country has even gotten to vote.
I am sure that you hear this all the time, but I'm saying it again. I want my vote to count.
God Bless New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton won and now the election goes on without a front runner. Maybe, this election, the votes of the MAJORITY of this country will actually matter.
It should be noted that the media is as responsible for where this country is today as anyone. FOX and the rest of the 'MSM' bombarded us with Clinton bashing in the 90's over what? Marriage infidelity? Certainly not good behavior, but nothing compared to outing an active CIA agent in a time of war and lying about it. Or lying about reasons for war. (And some sources - Frontline, Knight Ridder, and many "Liberal" web sources did get the story right before the invasion)
Where has the media been the last 7 years? Much of us out here understand conservatives are loud & obnoxious much of the time, but we need our media to stand up and report fully, honestly and as accurately as possible. We don't need another round of Democrat bashing from the corporate media. Many of us are turning off the tv now and coming to places like The Huffington Post for our information. We're tired of the talking heads on television telling us what to think.
That may be a large part of the turnaround for Hillary this time. I wouldn't vote for her personally but I can't blame some of the people that wanted to send a message to the media as much as anything else during this primary.
I believe there is something happening in America today. But I’ve been thinking about what exactly it is. What is its nature?
Our nation is in pain, the pain of 9/11 and all the exploitation that came afterward.
Now, as if regenerating, our nation is coming together and trying to heal itself.
Mr. Williams, this is a very nice piece. To me it points out pretty clearly that people could use a little more reporting and a lot less punditry and polling around these things.
Thank you for an enjoyable and informative read.
Well, lets just hope people come to their senses after this long nightmare with the repugs and vote for a democratic nominee, preferably Hillary. I cannot even watch McCain, he looks terrible and is evil besides. Hillary will not be overwelmed with anything. I hate to say it but I really believe that the female gender is the stronger, smarter, more compassionate of the two. Its time for a woman president.
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