You're Not Wrong, Walter, You're Just Illiterate

Quite the barnburner last night in the Granite State.

Hillary Clinton went from being clinically dead (at least according to known feminist Chris Matthews) at 6pm to the "frontrunner for the Democratic nomination" by Midnight.

That actually happened. And while I believe all of those far-off prognostications about as far I can throw Hillary Clinton, we have been taught in American politics these days to expect the expected, that pollsters have gotten so good at what they do that they could never be wrong and that whatever they feed the mainstream media must be correct, because they got it right once or twice before. And the media, largely lacking the ability to use critical thinking and decipher what polls actually mean, report polling numbers as facts and then get pissed off when that's not the whole story, and legions of them look foolish on national television.

But the problem with both of those memes is that even a casual observer of the American political process would have known by 8:15 last night that something wasn't right. Actually, scratch that, anyone with an eighth grade education (or your typical New Hampshire primary voter) who can use a calculator would tell you that 40+30+15=85. By the best estimates, 15% of voters were undecided when they walked into the polls last night, and that's if you only look at the numbers. (And don't bother telling me "Oh you forgot about Kucinich." I didn't forget about Kucinich, we just all wish he forgot about us. Lunatic. Honest to God, he already talks about aliens, if he starts talking nude conspiracies, he and Lyndon Larouche are going to run on the Looney Tune ticket.)

This situation also reminds us why tracking polls are crack for the weak. When there are only about 100 hours from the results being announced in Iowa until people started voting in New Hampshire, no pollster worth his weight whatever they were feeding the media all day yesterday would tell you that all bets were off. And then, when you factor in at least two huge events happening in an 18-hour span (the debate and Hillary's odd, salty discharge moment [non-sexual division]) history will take over.

See, people in New Hampshire are regarded as "private" people. They may actually just be "ridiculous" people but any way you slice it, they openly lie to pollsters in a vain attempt to try and get them off their backs. We go through this every four years: New Hampshireites (New Hampshirians?) are oversaturated with campaign materiel, candidates, pollsters, pundits and toast and egg breakfasts at diners, and they get hostile, wanting everyone to leave town, and thinking they never will. So they lie. They lie to staffers. They lie to pollsters. They lie to whoever will listen to their insane rants about their "problems" (Word to the wise, the only problems you have in New Hampshire are not enough NASCAR and too much snow and it was 65 degrees yesterday and the race is probably coming up, so shove it). They claim, despondently, that they just want to be left in peace. Then they vote and we all figure out that they were lying all along and we leave and talk about them for about 24 more hours and then we move on to the other 48 states and the real issues facing the nation.

And then, two years from now, New Hampshire will demand to know where we all have gone and invite all the politicians and pundits and pollsters and gentrified media types back for toast and eggs and demand that we fawn over these hardworking Americans facing down their withering past in a new American century. And for some reason, we oblige them.

And we are left with one simple, incontrovertible fact: That as the sun rises through the snowdrifts of Dover and Portsmouth on primary day and sets over the desolate hellscape of Keene on the evening of primary day, two-thirds of New Hampshire voters, whether they tell you or not, whether they know better or not, whether they care or not, will go to the polls (after eating their toast and eggs, of course) and stand in a booth, furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand and THAT IS WHEN THEY MAKE A DECISION.

These are people that make swing voters look like decisive party boosters. These are people who sling coffee and eat toast and eggs and yearn for simpler time when their lack of understanding and cultural diversity seemed to fit in Wonder Bread America.

These people are New Hampshire, for better or worse. And someday, people in politics will understand them. And run far, far away.

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And yes, thank you, it is good to be back.