New Hampshire Post-Mortem: Hillary, a Corpse on Life Support + Trump's Apotheosis

While the United States might not be a closed society in the classic George Orwell 1984 police state sense, it is one where its inhabitants are subject to a great deal of centrally managed thought control. Every country propagandizes its own population. But the U.S. has long prided itself on its free press, enshrined as it is in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

This morning drove home to me the extent to which we do not have a free press. Waking up I went online to see what the vote totals were in New Hampshire. On the home page to the nation's newspaper, The New York Times, there was a modest headline "Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Win in New Hampshire," with most of its related coverage devoted to Trump's victory. Nowhere can the reader easily find the normally ubiquitous color chart graphic of the vote total.

I cooked a pot of whole wheat pasta at 3:45 AM to kill time until I could amble downstairs to the front stoop where the national edition of The New York Times usually arrives by 4:15 AM. I wanted to see if the lack of statistical information about the New Hampshire results was replicated in the home edition of the paper. Sure enough it was.

Out of curiosity I took a brief spin around the World Wide Web. I couldn't find my way past the Wall Street Journal's paywall, but the Washington Post has the vote totals on its home page. Also, if you Google "New Hampshire results," you'll find them. You just wont find them readily available in "the newspaper of record."

Here they are: Bernie Sanders 60.0%, Hillary Clinton 38.3%. Trump won by 20 points too:
Donald Trump 35.2%, John Kasich 15.8, Ted Cruz 11.6%, Jeb Bush 11.1%, Marco Rubio 10.5%.

The Times, having recently endorsed Hillary, is of course doing everything it can to keep Sanders from enjoying a deserved bounce for his commanding victory in a state that has always been kind to the Clintons. As Patrick Healy summarizes online this morning in "New Hampshire Takeaways: Trust, Experience and Message Count":

New Hampshire Abandoned the Clintons

It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the New Hampshire loss for Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. The state was a political bellwether for Mr. Clinton, putting him on the path toward the Democratic nomination in 1992 and backing him in the general elections that year and in 1996.

Voters again came through in a big way in 2008, when Mrs. Clinton won here and revived her candidacy after losing the Iowa caucuses to Barack Obama and John Edwards. But on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton lost New Hampshire’s big cities: Concord, Manchester and Nashua. She lost most of the small towns. She lost in the north country and the seacoast, along the western border and through the White Mountains.

She lost many major demographic groups, performing best among the older and wealthier, and among people who care about experience and electability in November. But these voters were small in number compared with Mr. Sanders’s legions. Mrs. Clinton won 112,404 votes in New Hampshire in 2008 in a tough race against Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards; on Tuesday, she won about 89,000 to Mr. Sanders’s 139,000.

It should be apparent now that Hillary is a corpse animated by the millions in corporate donations and filthy lucre from the sheikhs of al-Saud. If she somehow manages to win the primary she will do so by tapping deep pools of public ignorance. And while normally it is never wise to underestimate the limited vision of the average voter, 2016 represents something different. Hillary is losing not only among the white working class, but women as well. So she can't even buttress her campaign with the the two pillars of her failed 2008 run. Let's go back to Healy:

Working-Class White Voters Are Up for Grabs

In the 2008 Democratic primaries, Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Obama in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states partly because of solid support from working-class white voters. But Mr. Sanders prevailed with these voters in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Sixty-eight percent of white noncollege graduates supported him, as did 65 percent of people from families earning less than $50,000. On the Republican side, the same groups of voters broke strongly for Mr. Trump. 

Mrs. Clinton says she thinks she can still win back these voters with her policy proposals for paid family leave and for capping prescription drug costs for some Americans, but so far she has not performed well with less affluent voters in New Hampshire or Iowa.

Democratic Women Aren’t Rallying Behind Clinton

Something went wrong between Mrs. Clinton and the women of New Hampshire. Mr. Sanders won 55 percent of their votes compared with Mrs. Clinton’s 44 percent, with married women and especially unmarried women breaking his way, according to exit polls. 

Those results rocked the Clinton campaign, given that Mrs. Clinton is running to become the first female president and enjoyed the support of many of the most powerful women in the state, including its governor and its Democratic senator. Moreover, women provided the margin of victory for Mrs. Clinton in her 2008 primary victory here. 

Clinton advisers are confident that her support will rebound with women in Nevada, South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states that vote on March 1. But some of Mrs. Clinton’s friends are nervous: They did not expect her to lose New Hampshire so badly, and for women to be such a big factor in her defeat.

Clinton is in real trouble. Hence the morning after blackout of her 20-point loss in the newspaper of record.

Another warning sign for Hillary is found in John Broder's "Primary Exit Polls Show Terror Fears Aided Trump and Young Voters Helped Sanders":

Mrs. Clinton topped Mr. Sanders by a wide margin among voters who said the next president should generally continue President Obama’s policies. But they accounted for only about four in 10 Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire — far fewer than in Iowa. Instead, just as many voters said the next president should change to more liberal policies — and eight in 10 of these voters backed Mr. Sanders. Almost two-thirds of Democratic voters said they support replacing the current health care system with a single taxpayer-funded plan for all Americans.

My way of thinking is that Obama is not all that popular among the Democratic base. Since Hillary has hitched her campaign wagon to him, it appears to be a losing strategy.

Needless to say Hillary's backers are starting to freak out. Team Clinton very well might lose Nevada, having beat Obama there in 2008. But Team Clinton is assuring its supporters that all will be right come Super Tuesday, possibly a sacrifice of campaign staff will be performed to appease the distraught.

As for Trump, Healy says:

Trump Voters Are Real

Mr. Trump led in many Iowa polls before the Feb. 1 caucuses, but he came in second place when it came time for the actual voting. That result raised questions about whether all the people crowding into Trump rallies were true-blue supporters or celebrity worshipers. 

But on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump’s supporters proved that they were committed and enthusiastic enough to turn out for their candidate. He won among first-time voters in a Republican primary, as expected. But he also won among Republicans, independents and people who have voted in past party primaries. 

He did especially well with voters who preferred candidates who “tell it like it is.” But he lost to Mr. Kasich, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Mr. Bush among voters who wanted a candidate who “shares my values.” In the end, Mr. Trump won 30 to 40 percent of the vote among many demographic groups, showing that he can win primaries and caucuses when a large Republican field splits the vote.

Trump is popular in the South. Cruz has a lot of PAC money supporting him. Unless Establishment donors give up their "hot chick" obsession with Marco Rubio and coalesce behind Kasich, Trump and Cruz are going to continue to lead the field.

As for the Democratics, let's look and see what happens at the Nevada caucuses come February 20. Rank'n'file labor activists are overwhelming behind Bernie.