Joe Klein: The Race Goes On; "SNL" changes the zeitgeist, Hillary defines herself as a public figure

[DeepModem Mom]

TIME: Thursday, Mar. 06, 2008
The Race Goes On
By Joe Klein


Hillary Clinton at Herrera's Cafe in Dallas Texas on March 4, 2008
(David Burnett/Contact for TIME)

On the Friday before her resurrection, Hillary Clinton seemed exhausted, played out...and it was easy to assume that she had thrown in the towel, that this was coming to an end.

And then something happened. From a distance it seemed that her charming, self-deprecating appearance on Saturday Night Live — and SNL's reprise of a debate skit in which MSNBC moderators gang up on her — might have changed the zeitgeist. "Do I really laugh like that?" she asked her doppelgänger Amy Poehler, whose Clinton laugh resembles Clinton's laugh only in its awkwardness. Poehler nodded, laughing, and Clinton's "Yeah, well ..." response seemed more spontaneous than anything she had done on the stump in a month of electoral massacres. If nothing else, SNL had tapped into the slow boil that many of Clinton's female supporters had experienced during Obama's February — that feeling of taking a backseat to the egos of others who might not work as hard or know as much as they did. A feminine fury was abroad in the land; on March 4, women represented a staggering 59% and 57% of the Democratic electorates in Ohio and Texas, respectively.

But there were more prosaic, political things working to Clinton's advantage as well. Tiny fissures were beginning to appear in Obama's shining armor....

***

It seemed, for a few days before the New Hampshire primary back in January, that Clinton had belatedly discovered the importance of openness and humanity. There was the press conference she ended by giving MSNBC's Chris Matthews, one of her longtime media tormentors, a pat on the cheek. There were the near-tears. I expected she would continue in that successful vein, but her campaign was immediately hijacked by her husband, who disastrously held center stage for weeks. She clenched up again after that: Bill was all anyone wanted to talk about and she couldn't. Her February nosedive ensued.

Finally, with nothing left to lose, the actual Hillary Clinton came back, in a dizzying array of moods and aspects that seemed to confuse the press. She was gracious toward Obama at the end of the Texas debate. She was furious — "Shame on you, Barack Obama!" — in Ohio. She was sarcastic, mocking Obama's high-flown rhetoric, in Rhode Island. And she was a tough-minded, gritty, independent woman throughout, a woman on her own, as so many working women find themselves these days, cleaning up the messes that their feckless men have made. I cannot emphasize enough how important it was that Bill Clinton was out of the frame. She appeared alone onstage in victory in Ohio — and alone is the only way she can win the nomination, on the slim chance that it is still possible....

***

Even if she fails to win the nomination, as seems likely, she has finally defined herself as a public figure, and an attractive one at that, with a personality independent of her husband's. She isn't as clever as he is, but she's just as tenacious ... and, in an odd way, more vulnerable and more real. Her flashes of anger and sarcasm, her occasional emotional overflows, her willingness to just go on about health insurance — these are all recognizable human qualities that, in the strangest turnabout of this campaign, have made her seem more accessible than her opponent. For the first time, she doesn't seem élite and entitled. For the first time, she's almost one of us.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1719898,00.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. Shorter: Media decided to reinvent her, and punish Obama, just in time.

[LulaMay]

2. "Women defined a staggering 59% & 57% of the Dem electorates in OH & TX respectively

This is why I have posted on this board beofre that it is out of touch with much of America, especially women, Dem women.

The utter hatefulness, anti-woman garbage spewed at Hillary Clinton by a shocking number of people on this board is shameful.

Shameful.

[Captain Hilts]

3. It never ceases to amaze me. nt