The Crying Game Pays Off?

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to call a formerly "inevitable" candidate's surprise victory an "upset," but however you describe it, Hillary Clinton's remarkable (apparent) victory in New Hampshire is stunning. In a matter of days, she has gone from front-runner to has-been to front-runner again.

Credit the tears.

According to the AP's New Hampshire exit-polling, "nearly half of women voters favored Clinton, while Obama got only about a third." That's amazing, seeing how women broke strongly for Obama in Iowa, and were breaking for him in New Hampshire, too, according to pre-primary polls. So what happened?

We'll never know for sure, but I suspect the crying game had a lot to do with bringing out the girlfriend vote. That, and John Edwards provided a huge assist by suggesting that Hillary's weepiness meant she wasn't strong enough for the presidency. Suddenly Clinton became a sympathetic figure, the victim of sexist innuendo, and her campaign became a rallying point for women voters.

Which, if you want to be cynical about things, is probably exactly what the focus-group testing said would happen ...