When Drudge broke out the siren this afternoon to say that NH was having record turnout and even running out of ballots, the conventional wisdom said that is bad news for Hillary Clinton. The turnout meant that Obama was bringing out new voters, inspired by his change rhetoric.
I bought it. I thought Hillary would get smoked tonight. Instead, she’ll be crying tears of joy. I still think Obama wins the nomination, but it won’t be a steam roll. Biggest mystery left tonight is how annoying Bill is going to be.
Fox News just called it for McCain on the Republican side. Not surprising given recent polls, but in the big picture, wow. This was not even a remote possibility a few months ago.
Overall, good news for political junkies, everybody’s still in it and competitive.
UPDATE: The world’s greatest live blogger, Vodkapundit,
I’m telling you, you’ve got to run a steak through the heart, separate the head from the body, burn the remains and scatter the ashes in heavy winds if you want to put a Clinton down for good.
He, like me, saw things differently this afternoon.
UPDATE 2: Juan Williams on Fox just credited the strong Democratic Party machine in NH for Hillary’s performace. The “organization”. Having worked for some of them, I can tell you that is true.
UPDATE 3: Huckabee is a likeabe person, if you can get past the sanctimony. Not my cup of tea. I’d vote for Obama over him.
UPDATE 4: Ouch, on Fox, Romney’s chief spokesman was cut off mid-sentence for McCain’s acceptance speech.
UPDATE 5: McCain’s reading his acceptance speech and it doesn’t come across well, especially in the wake of Huck and Mitt’s performances. This harkens the age issue. Now he seems like he’s getting angry with the crowd for interrupting him with applause lines.
UPDATE 6: Here’s Andrew Sullivan’s take,
“There’s one other possible explanation for the apparent Clinton revival in the last few days. Maybe Democrats decided that a sudden blowout for Obama wasn’t good for their party. Maybe they wanted to see Obama fight some more, to keep the contest more competitive, to give their candidates more testing for the fall. Maybe they just wanted to say: “Wait. A tidal wave is no way to select a candidate. We need to see both of them fight on under the kind of pressure they will face in the fall.”
UPDATE 7: Uh, Kos agrees with me on McCain’s speech,
Here’s a thread to talk about how horrible McCain’s speech was. Jesus, is it possible to have less energy than that? It might not be “Dean Scream”-esque, but it was bad.