Hillary's campaign was 'resurrected' by her win in NH. She won by less than eight thousand votes. That means that if four thousand people had voted for Obama instead of Hillary, he would have won and then I guess her campaign would have gone rapidly downhill (so everyone was saying).
We're all used to the ridiculousness of the Iowa caucases and the NH primaries playing their much much larger-than-deserved roles, but I guess I don't generally pay attention to the actual vote counts in the primaries. If we take as a given that the Democratic candidate will win the general election (it's not a given, but it is by far the Democrat's election to lose) then whoever wins the nomination will be the next President. So, that means that the decisions of four thousand voters in the tiny homogenous state of NH (my homestate as it happpens - "Live Free or Die!") have led to a situation where the Presidency is still a tossup between Hillary and Obama instead of Obama almost definitely winning the nomination. Which is pretty ridiculous.
What do we conclude from this? Either (1) much more of what happens in the world is due to chance than we like to think or (2) it doesn't really matter who is elected either way. I'm somewhere in the middle I guess...I tend to think that electoral poiltics doesn't really matter that much, but then at the same time it's hard not to think that the world would be a significantly different place today if Al Gore was just wrapping up his second term.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at January 10, 2008 06:04 PM