Wow. Yeah, she's that good of an actress. Brilliant, really.

She was dead tired from campaigning. According to that rationale, there's nothing she could ever do to make you change your mind. You can't prove a false negative! She's stuck.

Let it go, already. And no, I'm not a Clinton supporter.

Or perhaps she was simply tired and emotionally drained? Jeebus.

her mistiness at the tragic prospect of our country being denied her leadership was probably sincere.

Isn't it almost worse if it wasn't planned?

Your husband going on national TV to lie about his affair? Not a single tear. A whole right wing publishing industry dedicating to attacking you in the sleaziest, most disgusting manner possible? Steely resolve. She was incredibly strong throughout horrible, vile muck of the 1990s -- more than about any pol could have been.

But the possibility of a setback -- just a setback, not a loss-- in an election? Many, many other Democrats have been right there. Have, in fact, LOST the early primaries to come back roaring. NO other Democrat has experienced the hell that was the "vast right wing conspiracy". Given everything else that has happened to Hillary Clinton in the public eye, this is the thing that gets her sobbing? If it was planned, it's brilliant. If it WASN'T planned then it says something a little odd about priorities, doesn't it?

This is a joke, right? You could not possibly be so cynical, so dunderheaded, as to think she contrived this moment. For christ sakes, look at the tape. This was, for good or ill (and most people thought for ill before the vote), a moment when a woman who felt herself under siege showed genuine emotion. Stop with this sort of overly clever analysis.

Whether it was planned or not (and I am glad to see that someone else can objectively suggest that it may have been) is not what infuriated me when I saw it. It is the hypocracy of what she actually said when she was tearing up. When she said it was personal, she was literally plagerizing from John Edwards. And that is not to say that it is only personal for John Edwards and no one else. The point is that when Obama used the theme of hope and Edwards used the theme of passion and it being personal, Hillary criticized them rather coldly as being unrealistic and naive. She took a very negative tone and was in attack mode. Edwards was correct Saturday night in pointing out that she was in attack mode because she was behind. Lo and behold, two days later Hillary tears up and says its personal. Very convenient. I wonder where she heard that before. It's not the words themselves that bother me as an Edwards supporter, it is the hypocrisy and the convenience of it in my eyes. It won her the primary.

A brilliant take-- the best evidence that the moment was planned is that Hillary then segued so effortlessly into her talking points against Obama. She's a seasoned pro and knew that a bad loss in NH would probably have doomed her last chance to become president. I salute her for that and will vote for her in November, if she's the nominee. But believing that she acted spontaneously is clearly the triumph of "hope" over "experience"!

As much as I hate Hillary -- this is one life-long Democrat who will sit out the election rather than vote for her -- I have a hard time believing that was planned.

It WOULD, however, be interesting if someone could track down the woman who asked her the question that set her off. Now, if that question was planted...

I think your tin foil hat is on too tight.

Scratching my head over how this can qualify as news, but Yahoo news is showing that the supposed plant is voted Obama. And if this were scripted, then I think she deserves an Oscar along with Gore. C'mon - faking genuine emotion has never been HRC's strong suit.

How about adding that she had been on the TODAY SHOW that same morning saying that women have all these "emotions" that need to be expressed, and then suddenly, hours later, she expresses them?

Yes it was planned. It's probably also genuine. The two aren't mutually exclusive, as anyone who does extensive public speaking can tell you.

Whether it was actually planned or a momentary lapse based on tiredness is less important than the rest of what Paul says, which is spot on. Women now in their 50s and up, maybe 45 and up, can all remember being bullied by men like Chris Matthews. As an Obama supporter I felt some sympathy for her, and if I had been one of those people still making up my mind, I might have voted for her just to stick it to those media jerkfaces. (And let's not forget Gloria Beoerger and Mo Dowd here either, those Heathers we all hated in high school.)

It detracts not a bit from the voters to say that the media's breathlessly and gleefully declaring Hillary dead may have given her the margin she needed to pull ahead. These very shallow and self-absorbed twits really need to deal with their shallowness, pettiness and biases. And Matthews should be canned.

I'm sure you're right. Of course, the whole Monica Lewinsky thing was planned too. As Chris Matthews said, HRC would never have won a senate seat had not the wives of millions of New York skirt-chasers marched en masse to vote her into office as a poke in the eye to their own straying spouses. Yeah, that's the ticket. Bill & Hill set the whole Lewinsky thing up, plus the crying thing, etc. These incidents were all part of their well-scripted plan to dominate American politics for the now and forever, amen.

You are a moron.

And, by the way, I am an Obama supporter

I think they’re actually right. It was planned.

The human colon is 5-6 feet long. I'd say you needed every last inch to pull this out of your backside.

I'm voting Edwards in the primary but as a woman this whole hypothesis you've spun is ridiculous and unworthy of serious consideration.

It makes no difference whether it was planned or spontaneous. What made it powerful was the reaction of the media/pundits to it. I'm a male, Bill Richardson supporter and when I saw the ABC news story about her "inability to control her emotions" I was absolutely disgusted by the media's patronizing tone. If I was in NH, I might have switched my vote. If I was undecided, I definitely would have switched.

So if the Clinton campaign is so sharp that they knew the "Tweety" effect would kick in, God bless 'em!

Probably all politicians successful at this level know how to use emotion at appropriate times. The point is that Hillary is treated differently on this - when others do it, it is business as usual, but when Hillary does it is something that has to be exhaustively analyzed, and given the bias of the media, interpreted unfavorably.

Dear Paul,

Maureen Dowd hasn't resigned her position at the Times yet. You can stop applying for it.

Best,

CJR

Paul Waldman, the Tears Whisperer.

My God, talk about misogyny, not just about Hillary but about women voters.

Listen, you jerk, women are not such fools as all that -- as Hillary herself very well knows, even if you don't -- to go, "Awwww," and vote for someone because they teared up.

What is happening, and what may have had a significant effect in NH, is that particularly older Dem. women, who generally like Hillary, are fed up to the gills with creeps like you and Matthews and the brutal treatment Hillary has been subjected to and decided that a punch back against that bias was worth throwing-- especially given that most of us think all three top Dem candidates would make pretty terrific presidents.

I'm planning to vote for Edwards, but the more of this garbage I see, the more I'm tempted to vote for my second choice, Hillary, so I can watch all your heads explode.

Arrrrggghhhh.

More mind-reading tripe. Oh, how sick of it I am.

P.S. I support Obama.

P.P.S. Fix your CAPTCHA, *please*.

"I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see us fall backwards."

If the thought of falling backwards (as we are) doesn't make you feel the pain, sonny, you are either stupid or dead.

True, it's the only thing she's said all year that worked for me, but you're just being a pig.

I don't know whether she was for real or not, I haven't the slightest idea. However, the woman who asked the question reported, "10 seconds of Hillary, the caring woman" and then an immediate stiffening back into political posture. I'm afraid that does make it sound a little exaggerated, if not specifically planned and executed.

That's like saying that FDR knew that aircraft carriers would dominate the Pacific War, so he let the Japanese destroy the battleships in Pearl Harbor.

There is literally nothing in Hillary Clinton's 16 years of life on the national stage that would lead anyone to think she is capable of turning into Meryl Streep at a moment's notice.

The only reason this is even discussed is because some people are complete slaves to the narrative that everything Hillary does is scripted, calculated, poll-tested and focus-grouped. It's shameful when progressives buy into that crap.

Wow, what utter cynicism, with an ugly taste of mysogyny. This analysis is entirely backwards-looking, post-facto, and frankly mean-spirited. Specifically:

1. When Clinton was under siege at the White House (whether for the health plan or Bill's mistakes), she simply retreated to the inner compound and didn't make herself available to the press. But she can't take a day off when running for prez. It's far more likely she was simply exhausted and beaten-down.

2. A show of emotion is an extremely tricky thing that could have easily backfired. I bet if even a single tear had run down her face, messing up any makeup, and leading to actual sniffles, there would have been a much more negative reaction. That is a tremendous risk to take, probably much larger than necessary.

3. Thus you're basically saying that Clinton is a natural, superstar actor than can precisely calibrate every twinge of emotion.

4. Even if Clinton and her inner camp decided beforehand that it was best to let loose some emotion, there's nothing to say that such a show of vulnerability wasn't genuine. You're basically saying that not only did they plan it (down to the last cracked strain in her voice), but that because they decided it was ok, her emotions are entirely unreal. That's the kind of insensitive (often male) dismisal that makes most women I know very upset.

By the way, I'm a man and I support Obama.

I partially agreed.

The initial bit of emotion was genuine. But HRC realized in an instance how valuable the moment was. So she milked it.

Is this not obvious to you people?

She utterly shameless. (Is this not obvious to your people?)

"If all went well, this would pull women toward her in two ways – sympathy for the struggles she has undergone and is undergoing, and anger at the men who were now in effect saying that she shouldn’t be president because she’s acting like a woman."

Wow! So undecided women voters either let their bleeding hearts or their vengence get in the way of rational thought. It couldn't be, in your manliest of manly worlds, that these late deciding voters cast their votes based on the issues, could it? No, I didn't think so. If your mother came of age in the 70's, then you should be expecting a call from her, sending you to the corner for time out.

1. My suspicion is it was planned for the reasons stated by Waldman.

2. Nonetheless, Hillary and her supporters are absolutely right that she is being constantly held to sexist double-standards in this campaign, whether it is about showing emotion, the way she dresses, showing cleavage, being "cold and calculating and ambitious", or anything else.

3. NONE OF THIS SHOULD HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PICKING A PRESIDENT. Hillary shouldn't be disqualified because she shows emotion or doesn't show emotion. Hillary should also not get votes just because sexist men are attacking her. As she herself says in the moment she is crying, the election is about far more important things than that.

We really need to get past this idea that these sorts of personality-driven issues should determine who becomes President. We just elected someone who a lot of Americans thought was a really great guy for 2 terms. What we got is the Iraq War. And, not to put to fine a point on it, but Hillary's support for that war is a lot more important than whether she cries or doesn't cry, or what she wears, or any of these other things.

This is a provocative piece; thanks for it. It may be attributing too much instrumentality to a moment defined retrospectively by the media but maybe not since campaigns know that they have to produce the nightly sound bite. The contingency of the moment -- her tiredness, the context and audience -- was genuine but clearly once it happenned the campaign knew exactly what it had unleashed and tied it into a consistent storyline that resonates with many women ("found my voice" etc). The problem is that message plants the Dems on turf which leaves little margin for error in November. She could win it but Obama's plants them on discursive turf which is clearly more favorable to creating a majority (and helping other Dems get elected).

paul, you should put this in tandem with a transcript of comments hillary made earlier that day. earlier, she had made comments where it was clear she was playing the gender card.

put in context, it's obvious she was looking for a 1, 2 punch.

her camp has floated rumors of obama being a drug dealer, engaged in bigoted muslim baiting, sent out mailers that lied about obama's record, etc. etc. but yet media has framed obama as the attacker, suggesting he has been "ganging up" on hillary, when that wasn't the case.

corporate media owes the clintons big time for bill having signed the telecom act.

the woman is running a morally bankrupt campaign.

However, they couldn't have planned the misogyny in the days leading up to Misty. If it was planned, it was within the same day or at most, two days.

I wonder if it could have been a soft or flexible plan. I could imagine a strategy session (or internal monologue)in which Hillary resolved to "show a bit of emotion" when the right opportunity appeared.

Oink, oink!

OF COURSE it was planned. She effortlessly segued from tears into an attack on Obama in the very next sentence! But people only saw the extended clip if they watched it in real time (as I did) or if they saw Keith Olbermann.

Hmm. The ONE time she cries in her entire political career is right before the 5pm final news cycle on the final day of the NH campaign in her darkest hour?

It was she started parroting John Edwards script "it's personal" that made me less than sympathetic. And today she made the top ten list of most corrupt politicians of 2007 on Judicial Watch. Also on the list were Rudy, Reid and senator Craig.