It was the women.....they came back.....aroused and angry.... they worked their sisters.....and they are here to stay....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/09/ST2008010903877.html?hpid=topnewsClinton's Campaign in N.H. Touched Chord With Women
By Jonathan Weisman and Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 10, 2008; A01
To the pollsters and pundits, even the campaigns themselves, Hillary Rodham Clinton's victory Tuesday was a shocker -- "probably the most surprising political event that any of us can remember in a long time," said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), a backer of Clinton rival Barack Obama -- and the result of a sudden, unexplained outpouring of female voters.
But New Hampshire proved to be a sleight of hand. While Obama was drawing huge crowds at exultant campaign rallies, an aggressive and old-fashioned ground game, focused almost singularly on ensuring that the gender gap Clinton had lost in Iowa was put in motion by her campaign and its allied women's groups.
In the four days between the two elections, her campaign and its allies were knocking on doors, working dozens of phone banks and aggressively hitting Obama with new attack lines -- implying in direct-mail fliers, for example, that the staunchly pro-abortion-rights Obama was less than committed to that issue and hinting that he favors raising taxes on the middle class.
Despite the polls favoring the senator from Illinois, it worked.
"Everyone's talking about the polls, but I was almost not believing the polls," said Mindy Kacavas, a stay-at-home mom in Manchester and an obliging but accidental participant in Clinton's New Hampshire blitz.
Just before Christmas, Kacavas was contacted by a political photographer friend of hers, asking if she'd pose for some pictures to help Clinton. The photo shoot was largely forgotten until a few days ago, when a flier arrived at her home from a political organization Kacavas had never heard of, with a photo of her emblazoned on the cover and a quote she never uttered: "When I think about Hillary Clinton, I think intelligent, decisive, and a true understanding of the problems facing America."
"I couldn't have said it better," she said yesterday with a laugh.
The mailing came from Women Vote, one of the largest organizations dedicated to electing Democratic women. The independent political arm of Emily's List had spent $500,000 in Iowa, educating women on the caucus process, trying to bring out a record female turnout, only to see its efforts swamped by Obama's appeal to young voters and independents.
In New Hampshire, the group went back to basics with a $200,000, lower-tech effort. It divided women into two camps: one with a history of voting in the primaries, another with newly minted registrations. Fliers went into the mail not with the fresh, smiling faces that were used in the Iowa campaign but with Granite State women, in Christmas sweaters, down parkas and sensible jackets, their faces set in earnest, speaking to their own kind. And Women Vote began calling 54,000 New Hampshire women in what Maren Hesla, the group's director, called "peer to peer" communication.
The election was "rigged"? No, it looks like Iowa was rigged by an arcane and flawed caucus system. New Hampshire was a standard but enlivened get-out-the-girly-vote super-bowl attempt to win an election.
It worked!