Primary Day Dawns in New Hampshire

It is the day of the primaries in New Hampshire.

Considering that it is the eighth day of January, the weather isn't shaping up to be a problem for those who want to cast their ballots. Forecasts say it will be cloudy but dry in the Granite State, with temperatures primarily in the 50s. The secretary of state's office projects a turnout of about half a million people, which is about half of the state's population.

In the hamlets of Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, the traditional midnight ballots were cast last night. Barack Obama and John McCain were the winners in both places.

Neither Dixville Notch nor Hart's Location has been a reliable gauge for how New Hampshire primaries turned out in the past, but experts have been predicting that both men would win in New Hampshire so those places may prove to be more dependable predictors this time.

And the latest polls I've seen confirm those conclusions. They show Obama leading Clinton on the Democratic side and McCain leading Mitt Romney on the Republican side in New Hampshire. Several polls were released Monday, and the margins vary, but the bottom lines seem to remain about the same.

Rasmussen, for example, says Obama has 37% and Clinton has 30% -- very similar to the outcome in Iowa. Reuters says the margin is wider, with Obama at 42% and Clinton at 29%. The margin is slightly closer, 40% to 31%, in American Research Group's survey.

Among Republicans, McCain has a very slim lead, 32% to 31%, over Romney in the latest Rasmussen poll. Based on that survey, we may have to wait awhile before learning who won the Republican primary tonight.

But American Research Group says McCain's advantage over Romney is larger -- 31% to 24%. And Reuters sees an even larger margin of 36% to 27%.

Romney may take some solace today from the fact that the collaborative poll conducted by WHDH TV in Boston and Suffolk University shows him leading McCain, 30% to 26%.

The WHDH/Suffolk poll has no similar consolation for Clinton. Obama leads that survey, 39% to 34%.

The question on the Democratic side seems to be this: Will Hillary Clinton lose to Obama by a wider margin in New Hampshire than she did in Iowa? And, if she does, what kind of ramifications will there be in terms of her message and her staff?

The votes haven't been tallied yet, but the finger pointing and excuses have already begun on the Democratic side. Jackie Calmes, in the Wall Street Journal, writes that "[s]ome Clinton associates have begun lobbying for her early exit if she loses the primary by a big margin, as polls suggest she could."

The New York Times says the Clinton campaign has been showing signs of stress leading up to the primary and suggests that, depending on the outcome, "[k]ey campaign officials may be replaced. She may start calling herself the underdog. Donors would receive pleas that it is do-or-die time."

And legendary feminist Gloria Steinem complains in The New York Times that "[g]ender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House."

Steinem points out, and correctly, that blacks were (technically) given the right to vote more than half a century before women in this country. But she doesn't acknowledge how much more successfully women have sought higher office in America than blacks.

In the U.S. Senate, for example, more than a dozen members are women, including Hillary Clinton. Only one member -- Obama -- is black. Women hold both Senate seats from three states -- California, Maine and Washington.

"[W]hat worries me is that [Obama] is seen as unifying by his race while [Clinton] is seen as divisive by her sex," Steinem writes.

And among the reasons that Steinem lists for supporting Clinton is "an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House."

I'm still waiting for someone to provide details about this "on-the-job training" that Clinton received when her husband was the president and she was the first lady. How did it differ from the experience that Nancy Reagan or Mamie Eisenhower or Eleanor Roosevelt gained as first ladies when their husbands were elected and re-elected president?

In fact, in Mrs. Roosevelt's case, she was first lady for 12 years. And that tenure included two of the greatest crises this country has ever faced -- the Great Depression and World War II.

In today's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne tells readers that "Hillary Clinton may have unintentionally written the obituary for the Iowa and New Hampshire phase of her presidential campaign, and perhaps her candidacy, when she told voters on Sunday: 'You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.'

"Clinton has not heeded her own lesson," Dionne writes. "She is campaigning in prose and has left the poetry to Barack Obama. She has answers to hard policy questions but he has the one answer that voters are hungering for: He offers himself as the vehicle for creating a new political movement that will break the country out of a sour, reactionary political era."

We'll find out tonight if New Hampshire voters, like those in Iowa, respond to Obama's message.

For Mike Huckabee, the winner of the Republican Iowa caucus, victory does not seem to be likely in New Hampshire. Experts predict he will finish third, but he's receiving a "bounce" from Iowa in the polls in South Carolina, according to Survey USA, which says he is the only Republican with momentum in that state.

That should take some of the sting out of whatever fate has in store for him in New Hampshire today.

The post-mortems on New Hampshire will begin tonight and will continue, probably, until Michigan's voters go to the polls next Tuesday. This ride is just getting started.