To Chairman Howard Dean & Superdelegates,

As an "04" National Delegate for Sen. Kerry, Henniker Democratic Chair,
a dedicated Woman for Obama, and Co-Chair of NH Educators for Obama,
I believe that Super Delegates such as Sen. Kerry, Sen. Kennedy and Gov. Patrick
should not have to vote along with the Primary results of MA.
They have all ENDORSED Sen. Obama and should be able to vote for Sen. Obama.
I also feel that votes of FL & MI are not valid, first due to the fact that Hillary was the only name on the MI ballot...
come on...how bias is that?
Second, with the fact that Candidates were not aloud to campaign or even step foot in FL...
You need to re-think this situation out!
Do the elections again, the right way maybe.
Make it "Fair and Balanced" in everyones favor, or don't count it at all.
No way will this be a fair Victory for Hillary,
if she is allowed to keep the delegates from FL & MI
due to the way she won them.
It is up to you to do the right thing!
You are in control and need to make the right decisions for the American people.
"Don't Let Me Down"
Peace, Beatles and Barack,
Brenda MacLellan

Analysis by Peter S. Canellos, Globe Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton's supporters flipped on their TVs on Saturday night, Sunday night, and last night hoping to watch "The Amazing Race" and ended up with "The Biggest Loser."

Day after day, Clinton has endured the kind of defeats that President Bush calls "thumpings." Yesterday, Barack Obama added wins in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia to his sweep of four states and the US Virgin Islands over the weekend.

The Clintonites saw it coming. After last week's Super Tuesday results, they crunched the numbers for various voting blocs and decided that all the states until March 4 -- when Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island go to the polls -- would be tough sledding. And they quickly started talking about having a good March after a bruising February.

But the percussive effect of eight losses in a row, with two more potential blows next week in Wisconsin and Hawaii, could take a toll on the morale of the Clinton campaign team and her voters.

Traditional political analysis, especially in presidential primaries, is that momentum moves the numbers -- that candidates who loses race after race eventually have even their fairly committed supporters take a second look at the opponent.

But the question on the minds of many analysts yesterday was whether the traditional wisdom would hold in a race as untraditional as this one. Some debated whether Obama's victories were a sign of burgeoning support for him -- a political star being born -- or rather a lucky string of contests on very favorable terms: States with either caucus systems, which he dominates, or very large portions of black voters, who have rallied to his side in breathtaking numbers.

William Carrick, a leading Democratic political consultant who is not aligned in the Clinton-Obama race, is one who sees signs of expanding support for Obama.

"Anything over 60 percent is pretty dramatic and that means he's picked up among some voting blocs," said Carrick. "We're seeing a lot of states coming in and the numbers looking alike. The voters may be close to rendering their judgment."

Or maybe not: Even Carrick pointed to the "unusual volatility" in the electorate this year and the possibility of a momentum-changing moment in a debate or campaign appearance.

Nonetheless, exit polls from Virginia suggested that Obama is making inroads into Clinton's base of support: He won the overall women's vote and lost the votes of white women by only 10 percent -- down from 25 percent in last week's Super Tuesday contests.

In addition, his support among black voters continues to grow. After winning 82 percent of black votes in various Super Tuesday states, Obama scored 90 percent in Virginia, according to the CNN exit poll. With African Americans making up 27 percent of the Virginia electorate, Obama's black support made the difference between a neck-and-neck race and a blowout.

Clinton's supporters insist they will make up for the recent string of losses with wins in some very large states ahead, including Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Each of those states has more of the type of voters who've supported Clinton in the past -- lower- and middle-income Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Hispanics in Texas.

But most analysts -- along with many in both the Clinton and Obama camps -- can only wonder whether Obama's momentum will change the outlook.

Donald Kettl, director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, said Obama's twin themes of change and leadership are now moving "beyond strategy, beyond polling, and into gut feelings" of voters.

"With each of these states he wins, he gets closer to frontrunner status," Kettl said, noting that Obama's financial advantage will grow as donors begin to question whether Clinton will win.

Wayne Lesperance, political scientist at New England College in New Hampshire, agrees with Kettl, but also sees some pitfalls for Obama, who will be facing the intense scrutiny of a frontrunner while trying to maintain a slender lead in delegates.

"This is a new role for him," Lesperance said. "The campaign is talking about taking on some new advisers to prepare him for what's to come. I think they expect some real pushback now."

But the pressure on Obama will be more than matched by that on Clinton. Carrick said she needs to perform an "Indiana Jones routine" to extricate herself from a sinking campaign.

Still, her supporters would probably welcome "Indiana Jones" or any other adventure flick over the unpleasant reality shows that have been appearing on the nights of recent elections.

There are a lot of problems with our current political system, for which there is no silver bullet solution. There are, however, many things that could be done to improve the situation. It would be an improvement if we got the media out of the role of running candidate debates, for instance.

There is wide agreement that it would be a huge improvement if we could eliminate, or at least minimize, the influence of big money on both the election of candidates and on their performance in office once elected. We have a number of campaign finance laws on the books right now, but there is disagreement as to their effectiveness, and court challenges to campaign finance law restrictions are a regular part of our political landscape.

Many people feel that rather than tinker with campaign finance laws we should simply begin public financing of elections. Two states, Maine and Arizona, already offer public funding as an option for candidates for legislative and certain statewide offices. They have done so since the 2000 election.

A Government Accounting Office study of the 2000 and 2002 elections in Maine and Arizona was inconclusive as to the effects of public funding of campaigns in those two states. It will be difficult and take time to measure the effects of public funding. How do we determine if the quality – whatever that means – of candidates improve, or if they make better decisions once in office? Not easy to do, but the answers are important and over time they will become evident in both Maine and Arizona.

The movement toward public financing of elections seems to be growing, led in large part by N.H.’s own John Rauh, founder and president of Americans for Campaign Reform. ACR figures that for just $6 per citizen we could have public financing of all federal elections. For more information, visit ACR’s aptly-named website, www.just6dollars.org.

The only fly in the ointment is that very rich candidates can, under Maine and Arizona rules, opt out of public financing. I would favor laws to prohibit that from happening, although it is certain such laws would be challenged on constitutional grounds. I would argue that laws designed to level the playing field between candidates for office are not restrictions of free speech.

Television is one of the mixed blessings of modern society. No one doubts its useful capacity to inform, educate and entertain, but we also know it promotes unhealthy eating, encourages alcohol consumption, depicts way too much of what most of us deem senseless violence, and coarsens society in myriad ways. But worrisome as these issues may be, they pale in comparison to the risk television poses for our democracy.

Television certainly serves to educate and inform the electorate, thereby encouraging voters to vote. It provides them with some of the information they need to make informed decisions. The problem is that the information provided by the major television networks is being filtered in ways designed not for the benefit of our country and its citizens, but for the benefit of those who own and manage the television networks.

The result is that those who set the rules as to who and what will, and will not, receive television coverage have a powerful influence on our thinking. And our thinking, of course, influences our choices when we vote. Broadcast media influences elections.

Two illustrations. Representative Paul was recently excluded from the FOX News debate here in N.H., and last night (1/15) Representative Kucinich was excluded from the MSNBC debate in Nevada. We can all agree that not everybody who files to run for president should be given a place on a national stage, but it shouldn’t be the broadcast companies who make that decision. Like them or not, both Paul and Kucinich have millions of avid followers who were disenfranchised in a significant way when their candidates were excluded from these recent debates.

The presidential campaign “race” is already narrowing due to the results of voters, both in the votes they have cast, and in their willingness to fund the campaigns of individual candidates. The broadcast media companies should let this natural selection process proceed, and should not arbitrarily exclude any candidate who has established that he or she has a sizeable following.

Moreover, the broadcast media has done a generally poor job of selecting the questions and topics presented to the candidates during debates. Many questions have been repeated almost verbatim, debate after debate, other very important issues have rarely been mentioned.

MoveOn.org just pointed out in an e-mail message that “last year, the major TV networks asked presidential candidates 2,679 questions.” (Who adds all this stuff up?) The question is, how many were about global warming? Hint: 165 were asked about illegal immigration, 3 were asked about UFOs. You know where I’m going with this, yes, there were just three questions about global warming, it ranked right there with questions about UFOs.

There has to be a better way. Let’s get the media out of the business of running presidential debates.

I was surprised a few months back when President George W. “The Decider” Bush again changed his rhetoric about what lies ahead in Iraq. Instead of saying that when the Iraqi troops stand up, we’ll stand down, or that when we win in Iraq, the troops will come home, as he has said in the past, he stated that General Petraeus will decide when and how fast our troops will withdraw from Iraq.

I found that to be quite astonishing, given as how throughout his presidency he has sought to burnish his reputation as a decisive commander-in-chief, one who makes the final – if bad -- decisions. Perhaps, at a time when the results of the surge and new military leadership were largely unknown, he was more interested in being able to deflect blame for any failure of the surge to work as expected back on Petraeus, than he was in promoting himself as a decisive decision maker.

Under the normal scheme of things, Petraeus reports to Admiral Fallon, the Central Command unified commander, who reports directly to the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Gates, with a dotted line type of relationship to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen. Secretary Gates reports directly to the President.

It is in this context that I did a double-take when I heard Senator McCain recently say the same thing as Bush, that in his administration Petraeus would make the decisions about troop withdrawals from Iraq. Petraeus’s recommendations should be carefully and fully considered by our commander-in-chief, no matter who he or she might be, but the military chain of command should be honored. Fallon, Mullen and Gates should all weigh in on the issue of troop withdrawals from Iraq. There are many factors outside of Petraeus’s purview that come to bear on a decision affecting troop levels in Iraq.

What was McCain thinking? If some other candidate made the same statement, I would excuse it, but I can’t do so with McCain, the presidential candidate with the greatest military experience and expertise.

Senator Clinton, on the other hand, clearly understands the military chain of command. She says the first thing she will do as president is to direct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop an Iraq withdrawal plan, the implication being she would review that plan, modify it as she felt necessary, then direct the Secretary of Defense to carry it out. That’s the right way of changing military strategy.

Clearly, some voters are rational in their thinking about which presidential candidate deserves their vote. Denise Rock, in her January 11 post, recommended a selection process we would all do well to adopt. I’ve thought a lot about the candidates, but I was not as rigorous in making my choice as she was.

I recently read a post on another blog about a couple who listed the ten factors that most concerned them, ranked the factors with numerical weights, then compared the candidates against their weighted priority list. That sounds both logical and rigorous.

Blithe Damour, in an earlier post, recommended one of the select-a-candidate websites that are designed to help voters make reasoned choices about their candidates. Such tools are imperfect, but they do make us question our decisions. What strikes me about these websites is that they often suggest choices we don’t accept, for one reason or another. I don’t have any reliable statistics, but I keep hearing of instances where Representative Kucinich comes out on top of a Democratic voter’s select-a-candidate list, but the voter opts for another candidate in spite of the computer’s advice.

In this connection, I read a January 11 New York Times story by Eric Konigsberg about former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, who recently endorsed Senator Clinton. He stated he was supporting Clinton, even though he liked Senator Obama as a person he would more like to have “in your living room every day for four years.” Then Kerrey said that after being prodded he took one of the select-a-candidate online quizzes, which suggested that the candidate who most closely matched his views is – you guessed it – Representative Kucinich.

I think the bigger problem is in the choice of questions on the select-a-candidate websites, but I believe there is more to it than that. My point is not that we should all have voted for Kucinich, and certainly not that we should let a website make our decision for us, but that we should, as Denise pointed out, question our own thinking process before casting that ballot.

The piece of information that got me on to this issue again was a poll result I read yesterday (damn the polls!) that showed that Mayor Giuliani had dropped from a 22% favorable rating to 10% in about a month’s time. Does this mean that even if we make an informed decision about who we support, if we don’t see much press on that candidate for thirty days because he or she is not campaigning in the states that are getting the media attention (Iowa and N.H. in this case), that we lose interest in the candidate? Must our decisions be continually reinforced by the media? Can select-a-candidate websites help us make better decisions? Or, in this case, were voters simply swayed by new, more complete information about the candidates?

Going into the NH primary, I was still unsure of who I was voting for. Several candidates from each party appealed to me on various issues. I consider myself a social liberal, but a fiscal conservative. As you can imagine, this poses quite a problem with regards to elections. To make my final decision, I decided to hunker down and do some serious research. I read transcripts of debates, looking at positions statements, and examined the candidates' voting records. The voting records, in particular, were eye-opening. I was surprised to see exactly what each candidate had voted for or against, as well as which bills they remained simply "present" without taking a stand. Many of the records contradicted statements candidates had made.
I would urge every voter to do his or her homework. You might be surprised to find that the person you thought was the best pick is, in fact, someone who, in reality, is not aligned with your values or opinions. There are many websites that let you actually see how candidates line up with you on important issues, such as abortion, taxes, immigration, guns, education, gay marriage, etc. No matter how the election turns out in the end, you can, at least, feel confident that you made an informed decision based on fact, not fiction.

I’ll be closely following the results of the upcoming primaries, but I’m as interested in the system we use to elect presidents as in our final choice for president. If we improve the system, we’ll have better presidents well into the future.

My concern is that for a variety of reasons, and despite a patch here and there, the primary process is becoming more not less broken. One can argue whether Iowa and N.H. should be first in the process, but it’s hard to argue against the merits of Iowa’s and N.H.’s retail politics, politics that allow relatively unknown candidates to make their case directly to concerned and involved voters. Most important, they can do so without a lot of money.

The fly in that ointment is that during this election cycle national campaigning among the well-known candidates began at the same time that retail campaigning began in Iowa and N.H. That drew attention away from Iowa and N.H., but even more important, the nationally broadcast debates and the incessant handicapping of the races on the national stage influenced the process in Iowa and N.H. The question of who is electable, based on the latest national poll, got asked much too often.

I propose three changes. First, the states that follow Iowa and N.H. in the primary process should reverse their moves to have their primaries closely follow Iowa and N.H. Most of these states will see less of the candidates than they otherwise would have, which seems to be the exact opposite of what was intended. If that happened, Iowa and N.H. could move their caucus and primary elections back to more seasonable dates.

One thought is that each state’s primary or caucus should be scheduled based on population, from smallest to largest state. The small states would establish the trends and weed out the weak candidates, the larger states, with their rich delegate counts, would be the king makers

Second, I propose there be no nationally-broadcast debates between the candidates until well into the primary season, to give low-budget, unknown candidates maximum chance to show their wares in the small, early states, before becoming overwhelmed with national attention.

Third, we must have some sort of independent organization that schedules and moderates the debates. The media must be excised from control of the debates.

The pollsters and pundits are still speculating about the various factors that influenced the discrepancy between the projected results and the actual results in the Democratic primary race. I have seen many possible causes advanced, but there is another one that has not been advanced that I think may explain at least a portion of the gap.

One of the things I first noticed when I moved to New Hampshire was that there was a strong tradition of male dominated families, i.e. the patriarchal family was very strong in the state. From my experience as Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Commission for Women, I had learned that with that type of family structure that it wasn’t unusual for the head of the household, the husband, to declare that he was going to vote for candidate X and would expect the other members of his family, a spouse and adult children living at home, to do the same. Even if the wife or other family member wanted to vote for someone else, in order to keep peace in the family, they would give lip service in support of his choice.

With that background for my premise, I would speculate that if they were asked by a pollster whom they supported, they would name candidate X, especially if the head of the family was around or they feared that the information might get back to him. However, in the privacy of the voting booth, they could actually vote for the person of their choice. Now if the heads of enough of these male dominated households said they should support Obama, their family members would tell that to the pollster and inflate his numbers. However, on election day, if their real choice was Hillary, and they voted for her in the privacy of the voting booth instead, you would get a gap of the type that occurred.

I live in New Hampshire and on primary day I carried a sign for Hillary Clinton at the poll. Throughout primary day I sensed that there was something very favorable happening for her. The number of older women voting seemed higher than usual at our polling place. A surprising number of those over 50, most of whom I didn’t know, would give me a thumbs-up sign as they exited the area and usually very inconspicuously at the waist level, rather than the usual shoulder high level. Several came up to me to thank me for being there holding a sign for Hillary. Some of the bolder women would come up and tell me that they voted for Hillary and that they had waited a long time to be able to vote for a woman for President. It was very unusual that people would tell me who they voted for, either directly or indirectly. You could sense the pride and excitement in their action. Many women found their voice in New Hampshire during the presidential primary, not just Hillary Clinton.

The more I read and think about presidential primaries, the clearer it becomes that the entire system is broken and getting worse. The issue of voters in open primary states voting not for the candidate they want to win, but to influence the election in some nefarious way has raised its ugly head again. While I don't know of this being a problem in past N.H. elections, apparently it has been a problem in Michigan in the past, and threatens to be a problem again.

On Thursday, 1/10, Markos Moulitas (Kos) posted a piece on his widely-read blog that urges Democratic voters in Michigan to vote for Governor Romney in the upcoming Republican primary. The idea behind the tactic is to keep Romney in the race, so that the Republican battle for the nomination remains wide open for a longer period of time, draining the Republican candidates of resources they would otherwise direct against the Democratic candidates.

You can find the blog at http://kos.dailykos.com/. Look down the page for a 1/10/08 entry titled, "Let's have some fun in Michigan." The blog describes three cases where this tactic has worked in the past in Michigan.

Will this work? Probably not, Kos is not that widely followed, but who knows? I do know I don't like the idea if even one voter follows Kos's plot.

It's time to close the barn door on open primaries before the horse gets out of the barn, and we're standing around shaking our heads after some election wondering, how could this have happened?

AP and other news sources are reporting that Representative Kucinich has requested a recount. Under N.H. rules, his campaign will have to pay the cost of the recount, except there's no way to calculate the indirect cost of a recount. Lots of people will invest lots for time for which they will receive no or below market rates compensation. The question is, why would he do it, the race wasn't even close for him?

Kucinich cited "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors" about the integrity of Tuesday's election in his recount request. Really? Will he present the evidence?

Speculation has it that the Obama campaign is behind this. I hope we soon find out if that is, or is not, the case. It will be a big black eye for Obama if it turns out he is behind this and is using Kucinich as cover. On the other hand, he shouldn't be cast as the bad guy if it wasn't his, or his campaign's, doing. We need to know the truth behind Kucinich's request.

Bev Harris, writing about recounts on http://www.opednews.com, describes some of the issues involved in N.H. recounts. Most notably, she quotes Nancy Tobi, a N.H. election integrity advocate, who says the big problem is that we have no chain of custody control on the ballots once they have been cast. That is, we don't have a verifiable system of knowing who has had access to them.

This looks to me to be a campaign game and not a real effort to seek the truth. It smells like rotten fish to me.

Now we learn that the nicest person in the whole campaign has dropped out. Governor Richardson withdrew from the race yesterday (Jan. 10). While I'll be the first to say we shouldn't elect someone as president on the basis of how nice he or she is, it does strike me as a bit odd that the three Democratic candidates at the top of my "nice" list have dropped out of contention. That's Senators Biden and Dodd, and Governor Richardson. So much for being nice.

One of the beauties of blogs is that one can spout off on anything, with or without the facts necessary to substantiate their opinions. Doing so without the facts is exactly what I did when I made N.H. out to be an oddball state with its semi-open primary.

Listening to POTUS-08 on my XM-Radio (C-SPAN radio has totally ruined my drive-time music listening), I heard someone talking about South Carolina's OPEN primary. That got me thinking about the issue again. Checking Wikipedia, I discovered that fifteen states have open primaries, where a registered voter can pick the ballot of either party at voting time. Two states are semi-closed, N.H. being one of them, and twenty-three have some form of closed primary. The difference is made up by caucuses of various types.

Having plugged that gap in my knowledge, I looked to see what I could find about South Carolina's open primary. What I found is that some there want to keep it open, and others are lobbying to change it to a closed primary, for reasons similar to those I've posted against the way we do things here in N.H. The interesting thing is that in 1980 Republican-controlled South Carolina adopted its open primary as a way for Republicans to build party membership. For more information, follow this link: http://screpublican.blogspot.com/2006/09/gop-debates-closing-primary.html.

A bit more research uncovered a paper written by two professors from Dartmouth and one from UCLA, titled “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing: Undeclared Voters in New Hampshire’s Open Primary.” It posits that undeclared voters, i.e. Independents, behave and vote pretty much like registered partisan voters, and don’t have as much influence on results as popularly imagined. Said another way, they are not a problem as far as election results are concerned.

That takes a bit of wind out of my sails on my arguments against the way we do things here in N.H. But, just as there are now those in South Carolina who want to shift back to closed primaries there, I continue to believe that the trend in N.H. of increased numbers of undeclared voters is not good for the two-party system.

It is evident to me that our entire presidential election process is under assault by a confluence of forces. Over the longer term, how we conduct our elections will be even more important that who we elect in this election cycle. Open versus closed primaries is just one issue that deserves more thought and discussion.

I'm so glad that NH was as big a "surprise" as Iowa. It demonstrates loudly and clearly that the people speak far more eloquently and accurately than any poll or pundit.

I've been very disheartened by the way the media has controlled this process through exclusion and selective coverage, and by discouraging voters from exercising their true feelings because they employ their Jedi mind control and tell us who we should view as electable and who is not worthy of our time, attention, or ballot choice.

Did anyone else notice that Ron Paul was the only candidate that networks (not C-Span) cut away from during his post-primary speech? These same networks have excluded legitimate presidential candidates from debates and repeatedly denied them the same attention and coverage that the other better funded candidates enjoyed ... despite the fact that those are the very opportunities (as Bill Richardson pointed out) that level the playing field for non-celebrity candidates and offer meaningful exposure to the electorate.

I hope the pollsters and the pundits (and the parties, sorry John) will stop being so controlling and let the people speak ... the candidates and the voters.

Thank you, John, for engaging in real conversation about whether party politics works and the role of independents and the primary process. This is the kind of conversation that needs to continue well beyond this election. As an independent I feel very fortunate to be able to participate in what is closed to many. We need to fix this primary (and campaign) process in so many ways, so more voices and more voters can be heard ... rather than dictated to or denied.

Last night I stood outside a restaurant with group of smokers talking politics. What else? I had voted for Guiliani in the morning and was interested in what the group thought about who they voted for and why. This group consisted of about eight men ranging in age from 40+ to 72. We were all pretty happy that it looked as if Hillary was not going to win. Congratulations to those who proved us wrong. None of the men had voted for Obama and they gave several reasons why. One spoke about his being sworn in as Senator and putting his hand on the Koran. (I went on line today and found out this is untrue). They didn't like his comment about people who wear American flag pins. The strongest reasons were that he is Muslim and they believe that he is a member of a Protestant church only for convenience, and he is black.

There were several Independants in the group who voted Republican for McCain. One Republican voted for Romney. One Republican voted for Thompson. Three Democrats voted for Biden even though they were aware that he had dropped out of the race. They said that they would have to pick a real candidate before November.

One thing that really impressed me was the number of people who voted. Over half a million people took the time to vote. That is great!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to Donna Richards and Jackie C. for their responses to my post about Independent (undeclared) voters. Let me make clear that my principal point is not that Independent voters should be excluded from the primary process, but rather my belief that we would be better off if more of them chose a party and worked to make it more reflective of their own views. I agree with many of the points Donna raised in her rebuttal to my post.

The question, it seems to me, is do we, or do we not, believe in the two-party system? It appears that some 40% of N.H. voters do not. That to me is not a good omen. What if the number grows, as it has been growing, to 60% or more? What would be the implications?

Our high number of Independent voters, who we allow to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primaries, provide just one more argument for those who claim N.H. is not a representative state, and should not retain it's first in the nation privileges.

I left my PC on last night with two of the latest Democratic poll numbers on the screen, one showing Senator Obama ahead of Senator Clinton by 9 points, the other by 13 points. It was an interesting juxaposition as I read the front page of the Concord Monitor this morning, which showed Clinton over Obama by 3 points.

Much as I dislike polls, I confess to watching them and frequently getting sucked into giving them some credence. It's good to know that while we may be influenced by polls, clearly we voters are not being controlled by them.

From my perspective, it's still a wide-open race between Clinton and Obama, and on the Republican side between the top four candidates. Now all we can do is watch, cheer, and send money if we care enough to do that. Except, of course, for those political diehards who will travel to some of the other states to continue working for their candidate of choice.

I just rode the wave back from Concord. I know now at 48 yrs. old tomorrow, that I will never to listen to the polls again. I congratulate now, all the Hillary supporters and wish that Chris Mathews never ever had a voice. If there seems to be a probblem it's not the voters, it's the media. How do you loose a state that you are ahead in the polls by 10+ percent. But not to sound lame, New Hampshire is an interesting place. It was a weird night for me, but I will go to bed thinking about Thomas Dewey. Once again, congrats to all the Hillary supporters.

By Tami Littleton, in Nashua

The road going past my voting precinct was jam-packed on my way to work this morning. (I heard later that McCain and Romney had both stopped by.) It was still a mob scene driving past at 1 pm, and I waited in a considerable line at 3, which is usually quiet. If this race has excited so many citizens to vote, then it’s a success already! Nashua’s polls close at 8pm but I wonder how many will still be in line then??

Meanwhile, my phone rings unceasingly with last minute taped messages from the candidates and ‘Get-Out-The Vote’ calls (“Have you voted yet?” “Do you need a ride?”). In a few hours, it’s all over but the countin’ and cryin’. It’s been a great party, but the peace and quiet will be welcome! But for these next 3 hours, to paraphrase that famous American orator, Mr. T,…..”I pity the fool” with no caller-ID!

Put on another pot of coffee and break out that popcorn – this could be a late night!

It has been fun to be part of the New Hampshire Primary experience. Obama is not a god, but he is someone who captured the spirit of America at it's best. People in Iowa listened to him and voted for him. People in New Hampshire asked him questions and voted for him. Obama won the last Democratic election because of the principles of democracy. I hear the line outside of Nashua is already a mile long to see Senator Obama and I am glad others have become part of this proud New Hampshire tradition. I am heading to Concord to meet with the young and the old Obama campaign workers. Larry the next beer is on me. I hope along with Barack Obama that people continue to use their voice to fight for the change, that many people in this country deserve. It is good for this country that people continue to participate and that their voice will be heard in the halls of Congress.“Obama in 08”. It's fun to get to ride a wave.