The Trail of Tears

In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary, much is being made of her "crying" incident on Monday.

Thirty-six years ago, the debate over whether he cried apparently doomed Ed Muskie's bid in the New Hampshire primary -- and ultimately derailed what was expected to be a fairly easy run to the nomination.

But in 2008, the debate over whether she was about to burst into tears on Monday apparently "humanized" Clinton and gave her campaign new life.

It's all the subject of Maureen Dowd's column in today's edition of The New York Times.

And Dowd makes an interesting point.

"[T]here was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up," Dowd writes. "What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing."

Or, as Dowd quoted a New Hampshire voter as saying, "When you think you’re not going to make it, it’s heart-wrenching when you want something so much.”

Clinton clearly wanted to win in New Hampshire. And she clearly needed to win the primary to keep her presidential hopes afloat.

The impact of Monday's incident wasn't lost on Karen Tumulty, who writes in Time magazine that "[A] prominent Democratic strategist not affiliated with the campaign [said]: 'Yesterday helped her a lot with women.'

Tumulty also goes on to point out that the incident helped Clinton "especially with unmarried women, a key component of the Democratic base. One campaign adviser noted that, where [Barack] Obama won that demographic by 13 percentage points in Iowa, Clinton carried it by 17 points in New Hampshire—a 30-point shift ..."

Nor was it lost on Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who writes, "[T]he 2008 New Hampshire primary will be remembered for Hillary Clinton choking up when describing her everyday struggles. (The original question was about how she got through every morning when things were so tough)."

But Alter finds other ways to explain what happened in New Hampshire, even if, as he concedes, "I don't have a clear explanation for how Hillary Clinton defied the polls and prognosticators to win ..."

Alter suggests, for example, that the campaign experienced "The Reese Witherspoon effect."

"It's like the movie 'Election,' where Reese Witherspoon's character ... is an ambitious and too-perfect high school senior who has the election stolen from her after she was expected to win against a cool if inexperienced jock," Alter writes. "By the end of the movie, she ends up on top."

Will Reese/Hillary prevail in this version?

That leads Alter to another intriguing point. "In a workplace context, Obama may have reminded women of under-qualified hotshots who come along and get the big job with less experience because they're cooler and have more rapport with the boss and are, after all, men. They rallied to one of their own, just as the Clinton campaign hoped all along."

But if that scenario is correct, Alter has a warning for jubilant Clinton supporters: "In terms of electability, this bodes ill for Hillary. Democrats don't need more women in November. They need men -- a constituency that favors Obama."

The shortage of male voters among Democrats has been well documented in many quarters. And the Democratic nominee will need to draw more men to his/her side in order to win the election.

But the defection to the GOP has been among white males more than black or Hispanic males. And it is far from clear -- at this stage of the campaign, anyway -- whether Clinton or Obama would be in a better position to lure enough of those voters to the Democratic side to win the election.

As for myself, it has me yearning for a time when Americans will decide elections based on the candidates' views on the issues, and issues and events will not be seen through the narrow prisms of gender or race. That may be happening in some races in some places, but it doesn't seem to be happening in this race.

Not yet, anyway.