Okay, I'll admit up front that I didn't see the Hillary Clinton victory coming. Yes, she was drawing well at her events in New Hampshire, but Barack Obama was also getting big crowds and the polls weren't offering much in the way of solace to Team Clinton.

So while Bill Clinton may have been the "Comeback Kid" in 1992 when he finished second in New Hampshire, he's got nothing on his wife now, as Hillary last night defied the experts and the polls.

Just as I said last week that one could not understate the importance of Obama's win in Iowa, you cannot ignore the message this win in New Hampshire sends to Democrats around the country.

This was not only a victory for Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Machine in New Hampshire, but a victory for the Democratic Establishment.

They turned out their voters in New Hampshire and defeated an upstart candidate running on a message of change by doing what good campaigns do best - running an effective ground game.

In other words, talk is cheap, unless you've got the bodies to back it up ward by ward, precinct by precinct.

Before Iowa, we talked about how often the candidate that has the youth vote falls short when challenging an incumbent. The kids have lots of energy, but it often doesn't translate into victory at the polls.

Obama's win in Iowa defied those norms - but New Hampshire showed it was an exception to the rule.

An Obama win would have all but put him on the road to the Democratic nomination; now we have a real battle. Next stop for the Democrats will be Nevada and South Carolina.

While the Clinton Comeback story was a big win, so too was the outcome of the GOP primary, as John McCain easily turned back former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Six months ago, John McCain was hearing that he should quit the 2008 race. His support for the war in Iraq, his stance on immigration and more had cost him support. He couldn't raise much money.

But McCain soldiered on and last night repeated his amazing victory of 2000 by losing only one of New Hampshire's ten counties.

For Romney, it was another "silver medal" as he likes to say, but it also was the second time in five days that he finished second after being the GOP frontrunner in that state.

For now, this creates a three person GOP race among McCain, Romney and Huckabee. Hoping to join the bunch is Rudy Giuliani, who is banking on a win in Florida on January 29th and then a nationwide duel on February 5th.

In the meantime, it's off to Michigan and South Carolina.

More Questions About The Polls

Why were the pre-primary polls so wrong about the Democratic race in New Hampshire? Where did they go wrong? I'm sure questions will be asked about that.

I probably should have been more cautious about New Hampshire when it came to Clinton and Obama, but my view on the ground didn't seem to challenge the status quo after Iowa.

Every Obama event I went to had big crowds. They turned people away every day.

Some of the Hillary events were bland. There were empty parking spaces outside. Her numbers were dropping in the polls.

I saw the McCain advantage over Romney. But not Hillary's comeback.

I guess that after I was unable to get into Hillary's final rally on Monday night, maybe I should have been more cautious about thinking she was the big underdog.

But everything looks logical "after" it happens.

What's clear now is that we have a race on our hands in both the Democrat and Republican parties for 2008. It is a race that will certainly last through February 5th, when more than 20 states go to the polls.

New Hampshire Primary Day Rhythms

Before the returns started coming in from New Hampshire, Jamie still had some work to do as voters went to the polls.

After days of fast-paced work covering a presidential campaign, the arrival of election day is always a bit of a relief, mainly because it means the calm before the storm - the storm being when the actual results start to come in.

After doing my last live report around 8:15 am, I gathered up my equipment and decided not to chase the candidates around on primary day, but instead to focus on the voters.

Making that easier was that the candidate's schedules for polling place visits didn't jibe well with my own, so I jumped in the car and started driving down the streets here in Concord to look for a polling place.

Less than a mile away, I stumbled upon some signs at the St. John's Catholic Church and hit paydirt. Ward 6 in the city of Concord votes here and it was evidently an important ward, since there was a guy there doing exit polling for the TV networks.

Over the next 45 minutes, I managed to get a series of short interviews with voters that produced some decent stuff. It didn't really tell me anything scientific about the primary itself, but I like to use "voter voices" on the actual election day.

While I was standing outside of the polls talking to people as they came back outside, the elections official in charge of the ward tried to shoo me away, claiming that I needed "official letters" to speak to voters.

I calmly stood my ground, showed him my credentials and said I wasn't going anywhere unless he could show me the exact law that governed my ability to interview voters.

Of course, he didn't return.

I quickly scampered back to my hotel and wrote a bunch of stories for the rest of the day, filed those via the internet and then zipped down to Manchester to join Neal Boortz for the last hour of his talk show.

Manchester was really hopping, as the streets were filled with people waving signs, reporters, camera crews and with local residents, who were taking their kids downtown to see the Media Jungle.

As I got to the Radio Row area, Mitt Romney showed up to do some interviews with the national and local talk shows that were broadcasting from the Radisson, so I grabbed my mic and went over to see what I could get.

Romney's press people (like on most campaigns at this point) are all about 20 years old with absolutely no experience in the media, so they tend to say "NO" to any request to get access to the candidate. I didn't want an interview, I just wanted to record him being interviewed on one of the shows.

Finally, sanity prevailed and I stuck a mic in Romney's face.

The day before at a Romney event, I had been told to wait at the media sign-in table to be escorted to an auditorium at Timberland headquarters.

Standing there already was a young guy, probably a local newspaper reporter, who said he had been waiting a few minutes for an escort.

Watching everyone just walk past us, I finally grabbed a few credentials, stuck one on my shirt and handed him one. "Right this way, sir" I said in an authoritative voice.

He looked somewhat alarmed, but I simply said - just keep walking - and after 30 seconds, there we were in the Romney room.

Just another day in the life of a reporter.

archive index | main