She still didn't win by much, I still think she is a cold calculating hag, and i still think she would hurt the women's movement more then help... at least she decided to acknowledge the other candidates tonight... but whatever I think the media has the last call, Tim Russert just called it "the greatest upset in political history"...I don't know about that.

Obama was using the "Yes, we can" riff in his 2004 Senate run. Deval Patrick stole it from him through Axelrod, if anything.

I can't deny this is a pretty huge upset.

Ya, I heard the "Yes we can" slogan. Taken (borrowed, whatever) from Deval Patrick's campaign in Massachusetts.

Does this guy come up with any of his own message? And where is the substance?

Yes we can!

Yes we can what?

This is good for the Democratic party.

- It spares us the scorched-earth campaign the Clintons seemed ready to conduct against Obama; now that everything's back to where it started, essentially, Hillary has much less incentive to wage a relentlessly negative campaign.

- It may blunt whatever momentum McCain (who I take to be the strongest Republican candidate in a general) gets out of his victory - Hillary's win is a much bigger story, and presumably will drown out the positive coverage McCain would have been reveling in right now if Obama had won as expected.

- Hopefully, it means the primary system will actually work the way it's supposed to - i.e., a sustained campaign to obtain enough delegates, not a media campaign wherein one or two states vote and then a victor is crowned by Tim Russert.

Oh well, I really wish I could have supported the Democratic nominee. I can not support Hillary. to be honest, her victory has filled me with disgust for this party.
Old women can go to hell. They'd rather live to see a female President than to actually vote for a REAL Democrat.

Jason C., Hillary did run a scorched earth campaign, and that's how she won New Hampshire, in my estimation.

She sent out robocalls last night, saying that Obama was anti-abortion, and that women need to get out and stop him.

Women over 40 turned out in record numbers today, among them are apparently lots of women who get their information from paranoid phone calls made by Democrats who lie about other Democrats.

Hillary did run a scorched earth campaign, and that's how she won New Hampshire, in my estimation.

I have my doubts, but even if she did, we were looking at a massive, high-profile, prolonged, all-out assault on Barack Obama, lasting weeks or months. I think it's best for all concerned, maybe even Obama, that this didn't occur.

An all out assault might be good, actually -- part of the whole candidate vetting process. But what Hillary did was an underhanded, false accusation at the last minute, designed to mobilize low information (or as I like to say, stupid) voters.

It's Cesar Chavez, people, (well, along with Dolores Huerta) -- not Deval Patrick or Obama -- who initially says "Si, se puede!"

An all out assault might be good, actually -- part of the whole candidate vetting process. But what Hillary did was an underhanded, false accusation at the last minute, designed to mobilize low information (or as I like to say, stupid) voters.

Obama is in need of a good "vetting," having won his Senate seat via two forfeit victories. I think Edwards would do a good job of providing this service, since his attacks on Obama would be mostly substantive.

I was worried that the Clintons, on the other hand, were preparing to undertake a long series of underhanded, false accusations. Maybe I'm being unfair, because I don't really know that. But I think it's best for everyone if Obama isn't subjected to a sustained smear campaign.

What Bill Clinton has said in the past few days--he'd always opposed the war, you know. Barack never really did, and we'd have known it if only the media hadn't given him a pass--is unforgivable. He's clearly as dishonest as he ever was.

I guess it probably helps Hillary politically to be able to outsource her lies like that, but I won't be any more likely to vote for her because of it. What's more, we have the rumors that Jeremy mentions above. Does anyone have any evidence on whether his accusations are true or false? I'd love to see it either way.

Finally, I think we should consider the possibility that the reason the polls were so wrong is because alot of people in NH didn't want to tell the pollsters "I don't wanna vote for the black guy."

Finally, I think we should consider the possibility that the reason the polls were so wrong is because alot of people in NH didn't want to tell the pollsters "I don't wanna vote for the black guy."

Hillary made up an enormous amount of ground very, very quickly. It's hard to imagine a supposed Wilder effect could account for all of it. Plus, it's hard to see why the Wilder effect would be so potent in NH while it was absent in Iowa.

But if there IS such a robust Wilder effect, it would cast doubt on Obama's ability to win the general election anyway.

I think the obvious key to Hillary's upset win is the one nobody seems to want to endorse - the "crying" episode helped her a great deal. It made her look human/sympathetic, and very possibly the saturation coverage of it looked like piling on, leading to a bit of a backlash.

Or maybe NH decided it didn't want to be Iowa's echo again.

Please keep the hateful comments about Hillary coming. They are what put her over the top in New Hampshire. Obama's disgusting you are likeable enough quip. Edwards double team in the debate and ridiculous comment about Hillary being emotional. The media's clearly unfair coverage of Hillary. People all over the blogs were pissed and so were the voters of New Hampshire. Bill and Hillary Clinton have served this country well their entire adult lives. They saved the democratic party from oblivion in 92. They stopped the Republicans from gutting medicaid even though Bill had to shut down the Government to do it. They balanced the budget and made people believe in the power of government to be a positive force in their lives. They deserve better than the crap being thrown at them by selfish, immature brats. Tonight I saw the Republican party reward a man who has given great service to his country his entire life, and I saw the Democratic party reward a woman who has scarificed a great deal to serve her nation. It made me proud to be an American. It gave me hope that this country is about more than a flashy speech and a star culture. I am sorry that so many of you have nothing but hate. Hate nad hope may both be four later words that start with h, but they aren't at all alike.

Although actually, now that I think about it, maybe there is a reason the Wilder effect would be present in NH and not Iowa. The effect is supposedly caused by people's reluctance to admit they're not supporting the black guy out of a fear of being seen as a racist.

But in NH the voting is private; no one knows what you do once in the booth. But in Iowa, of course, the caucus process means that everybody knows exactly who you're supporting, so the peer pressure to support the black candidate would still exist.

Even I am getting tired of hearing myself talk, but I do want to just add that after reading Yglesias on this issue, I think he demolishes the theory that Hillary's upset can be chalked up to a Wilder effect.

Bill Clinton's support for the likes of the Iraq Liberation Act also helped to craft the bi-partisan consensus in DC to go to war. His and Hillary's incompetence on healthcare handed Congress to the Republicans for most of the presidency.

Also, I don't know if folks noticed this, but Obama cadged the "Yes, We Can" slogan not only from Hispanic protesters everywhere ("si, se puede!"), but also from David Axelrod's old client, Deval Patrick.

WRONG! O ye of as-yet-unproductive gonads...

Senator Obama has two daughters, the eldest of whom is the same age as my third son, and as someone who until only a few years ago heard the upbeat effervescence of Bob the Builder--Can we fix it? Yes we CAN!--ringing through the hallways of her house from dawn to dusk, I can almost guarantee that the Senator's writer-brain, either consciously or unconsciously, absorbed that simple and effective bit of rugrat motivationalizing for later use.

And as an aside, Si, se puede in Spanish is the third-person present reflexive conjugation--it translates to "Yes, one can", or "Yes, he can". If you wanted to say, as Senator Obama did last night, "Yes, We Can!", you'd say "Si, Nos Podemos!" /multilingual grammar wonkery.

If he stole it, he ought to give it back. Or at least get his pod people to stop the creepy chanting, already.