Selectively posting articles to back up my position.
Hill's Angels - how angry women of New Hampshire saved Clinton
· Female voters enraged by coverage following Iowa rout
· Loss of composure in diner helped trigger 'perfect storm'
Suzanne Goldenberg in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Saturday January 12, 2008
The Guardian
This is where the revolution began: a cafe decorated with sunflower yellow walls and botanical prints, a default lunch spot on a day for running errands. It was here, over mid-morning coffee with undecided voters, that an exhausted Hillary Clinton came close to tears, and the women of New Hampshire - or at least those old enough to remember the struggles of the 70s or even Anita Hill's Senate testimony on sexual harassment in 1991 - decided it was time to come home.
It was not just pity, though a number of women admitted their eyes misted up at the sight of Clinton close to tears. It was not just annoyance at commentators who called Clinton "shrill", or anger at the hecklers who yelled: "Iron my shirt." Women, even those who have disliked Clinton since she arrived on the national stage in 1992, felt a sense of obligation.
"What can I say? I was a woman in the 70s and here you had a woman who has the opportunity to be the first president of the United States, and I had to decide between her and other Democrats," said Kathy Walsh, a land agent who attended the coffee morning with Clinton. "But it was tough. I just couldn't get beyond all that crap about the Clintons."
The meeting with Clinton last Monday was never meant to be an all-women gathering. Last Sunday evening aides began calling around the lists of voters who had identified themselves as undecided - women and men - to invite them to meet Clinton the next morning at a local cafe.
The voters were told they would be part of a group of 40 or 50 people. But by morning a little more than a dozen had turned up, including at least two women who had not been invited - and one of those was a Republican - and just two men. The guests included business owners, a teacher, a high school graduate working as a nanny and stay-at-home mums.
If Clinton was disappointed in the poor turnout she did not let on. She spent more than an hour answering questions, responding at such length that a number of women confessed they were bored or overwhelmed by information.
Walsh had to be dragged to the event. She is friendly with the co-chair of Clinton's campaign in New Hampshire, the state speaker, Terie Norelli, and had turned down three other opportunities to see Clinton. "I was not voting for Hillary at all. I just wasn't going with that whole Clinton thing." Even now she is adamant that it was not Clinton's tears that turned her - it was her detailed responses to questions.
But it was Clinton's response to the last question from freelance photographer Marianne Pernold Young that provided the electric moment. How did Clinton keep going? "I couldn't do it if I didn't just passionately believe it was the right thing to do," Clinton began telling Young, her voice cracking. "I have so many opportunities from this country and I just don't want to see us fall backwards as a nation. This is very personal for me."
For Sally Bassett, 46 and a stay-at-home mum, the glimpse of raw emotion was the turning point. She had been impressed by Clinton, but she added: "What struck me was that she had such a deep concern about the direction the country was going in. It just struck a chord."
But as a woman who used to work in the largely male field of engineering, she was angered by the atmospherics of the campaign. "I just couldn't believe some of the things that were said and written," she said.
Clinton was getting regularly trashed by the rightwing talk show hosts who dominate the airwaves in New Hampshire, said Arnie Arnesen, a Democratic activist who has her own talk show. That built up resentment among women.
So did churlish comments from Clinton's main rivals. In the last debate before primary day, Obama curtly told Clinton: "You're likable enough." Edwards responded to reports of her emotional moment by talking about the importance of having a strong commander-in-chief.
Then, a few hours after the coffee shop moment, two men at a Clinton rally held up placards reading: "Iron my shirt." Sexism was alive and well, Clinton responded, and the audience erupted in support.
All of that came together in the popular reaction to Clinton's momentary loss of control in the cafe. "When she started reacting like that everyone felt for her. It had been all over the press that morning that she was going to lose to Barack Obama by 12 or 13 points, so I am sure she was having a tough time," said Karen Barndollar, a supporter who happened to be at the cafe. "But no one had ever seen her like that during all the trials and tribulations with her husband before, in public she was always pretty strong. This was unusual and unexpected."
Two of Barndollar's friends, who had planned to vote for Obama, switched their votes. "I felt that Hillary needed a longer chance. I didn't want to see her knocked out of the race in a one-two punch after all of her hard work," Melissa McLeod, a Portsmouth artist, wrote in an email.
"So although I am an Obama fan I thought Hillary needed my vote and I hate the way she gets dumped on for not being feminine, then being too feminine."
Many commentators recognised Clinton's frustration. Gail Collins wrote in the New York Times: "This week, Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who's overdosed on multi-tasking."
Her colleague, Maureen Dowd, wasn't buying it. She was reminded of how Clinton has turned victimhood to her political advantage in the past. "There was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her," she wrote. "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."
Luckily for Clinton, that's not how the women of New Hampshire saw it. Some 57% of Democratic voters were women, and she won 46% of their votes. Obama took 34%. The result was a reversal of the Iowa caucuses five days earlier when women deserted Clinton for Obama - especially those less than 24. She got just 19% of their support. The only Iowan women who stayed loyal were senior citizens; 48% of women above the age of 65 voted for Clinton.
As has been the pattern since the launch of her campaign nearly a year ago, she performed best among women with lower incomes and less education. Half of women earning between $15,000 and $30,000 a year (£8,000- £15,000) voted for her, compared with 29% for Obama. She also did well among single women.
Other factors in her win had little to do with gender. "It really was a perfect storm for Hillary Clinton," said Arnesen. New Hampshire is Clinton country and, unlike in Iowa, her machine was effective. Workers got up at 4am to get people to the polls - two hours before Obama. There are also signs that Obama supporters were complacent. As Barndollar said: "I felt that because of the Iowa result that she had become the underdog. "
After her astonishing victory, Clinton goes on to the next contest in Nevada, a week from today, and then the final showdown of Super Tuesday on February 5. What remains unclear is whether she can move women again as the campaign moves to a national battleground.
The day after New Hampshire, Clinton sent out an email to supporters saying she won because "we connected with the people". Such emotional contact was good, Clinton wrote. But, she went on: "Just as surely, we won because we made more phone calls, knocked on more doors, and put more get-out-the-vote vans on the road. We've got a lot of work to do. "
That brief flash of feeling probably saved Clinton's campaign, but she was not about to put her trust in anything so unreliable as emotion in the rounds ahead.
· Madam President: Is America Ready to Send Hillary Clinton to the White House? by Suzanne Goldenberg is published in the US on Monday. It is also available from guardianbooks.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/hillaryclinton/story/0,,2239617,00.html