A Market Researcher's Take On Why Hillary Won By A Little Yesterday

[MannyGoldstein]

I was talking earlier to the smartest market researcher I know: he deals with determining the best ways to get large numbers of people to buy a given product (sort of like being a political consultant, but with stuff instead of people). He also has a PhD in psychology.

Anyway, he says it was the cry that did it - that anyone smart who was advising the Clintons would have figured out that the ripest group to attract was women voters, and crying/welling up/whatever is an extremely effective thing for making women sympathetic/empathetic.

He's quite certain it was planned.

[katandmoon]

1. And after watching it several times I'm quite certain

It wasn't planned.

[pnwmom]

13. Me, too. And the woman who asked the question is saying she voted for Obama.

So much for all the talk that she was a HRC plant.

Welcome to DU!

[calimary]

21. Welcome to DU! I agree completely. Especially if you take it in context.

When you remember that:
1) she was coming off the Iowa caucuses and a stunning and unexpected (absolutely, to her) third-place finish,
2) the polls were starting to tell a double-digit lead story about her main opponent, Barack Obama, whose position of advantage, we were told, was only getting wider and deeper,
3) the debate that same weekend featured an exchange involving her being perceived as not likeable (remember Obama's quip - "you're likeable enough, Hillary" - which COULD be taken as faint praise/subtle slap in the face if you're already a little over-sensitive). Remember her response? "It hurts my feelings."
4) HORRIBLE headlines in the major newspapers. HORRIBLE. Just ghastly. Complete with unflattering photos and shrieking, jumbo-sized headlines - about her being panicked and "so yesterday" and her campaign insidders demoralized and the machinery pretty much on life-support, and lots of stories in the press and online about empty seats at her rallies,
5) nearly EVERYONE in punditry pronouncing her only a single primary away from being finished as a candidate,
6) ALL this playing out in public - while she's trying to keep up a strong, measured, poised, unphased front,
7) turmoil involving Bill - and how he vented in public. He's usually able to let all of this roll straight down and off his back. All of this was clearly getting to him, too. And I'm sure they both bring it home. You'd have to be superhuman not to.
AND what might be the most important or the greatest underlying factor:
8) ACUTE SLEEP DEPRIVATION. Everybody hit their airplanes immediately after Iowa, flying straight to New Hampshire, some of them arriving at 5am and having to go directly to some campaign event. NOBODY'S in full control or steady enough to take more punches - especially when they seem extra mean-spirited.

ANYBODY would have crumbled to one extent or other.

It sure didn't look feigned to me. Especially after repeated viewings. It looked like the one time she's actually dropped her guard a little, and the aura of certainty and strength and steady-handedness that she's been trying to project as a possible future commander-in-chief grew a little weaker for a moment.

I think it was real. Nobody can take that kind of punishment, at that level and volume, and UNRELENTING, without a single stumble. They've done everything except waterboarding her.

[bunnies]

2. Of course it was.

I dont know if it was planned... but its definitely a huge factor in how she won. Without a doubt.

[Ediacara]

3. So the woman who voted for Obama was actually a Clinton plant?

[wyldwolf]

22. now now, don't confuse them

[Cha]

25. No because she didn't

vote for clinton.. she voted for Obama because she noticed how quickly hillary went from tears to steely smears.

[Anouka]

35. I keep hearing she worked for the Clintons in the 90s

I don't know what's going on with her, either.



As for what the OP says, that's a horribly jaded and cynical thing to say about women. It's sexist. HOWEVER, women inside of and outside of New Hampshire didn't help their case when they actually mentioned the crying and Obama's 'you're likeable enough' as actually helping them decide for Hillary over Obama or Edwards.

So this becomes a case of sexism holding truth.

It's pathetic... because it worked. Not because it didn't.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

37. Wasn't the question the woman posed about Hillary's hairdo?

I think her questions was "how do you do it", referring to Hillary's hair care on the hectic campaign trail. And somehow the response ended up talking about how personally important the election was to Hillary.

I'm not accusing Hillary of anything. I don't think her tears were contrived. I don't think anyone would have that good a crystal ball to think that a few seen or unseen tears would even get reported the way they were and end up perhaps swaying a few thousand votes that determined a very contested and close election.

I'm just saying that for those who do buy in to the conspiracy to manufacture tears to win some kind of last minute sympathy vote, which seems very far-fetched to me, it wouldn't necessarily have required a plant, especially if you consider the question and the off-subject response.

[Flabbergasted]

4. I think so too especially considering how the media went crazy over it.

I mean everyone knew about it.

I'm going to go short of saying it's obvious but....

[Honeycombe8]

5. He's wrong. But he's male, so we knew he'd be wrong about that...

Here's the reason (tell your male friend this for future reference):

America is a patriarchal society. All people, including women (ESPECIALLY women) look to men to be the leaders. They eschew the female weakness indicators in their leaders.

It is women, not men, who are hardest on other women in the business world. It was women, not men, who were most against the Equal Pay Act. Women were also against their own gender getting the vote.

It was quite likely that an emotional moment (remember, she didn't cry like Romney had) would have had the REVERSE effect among women.

Finally...it wasn't the emotional moment that gave her votes. It was the harshness of the criticism of it by the media and male pundits.

I AM AN OBAMA SUPPORTER. This crap needs to stop. It's getting insulting. In the future, we should have only women posting about this subject. The men just don't seem to have a clue.

(Let me add about the authenticity...I could tell it was real. I have had almost identical emotional moments myself. To try to "act" it would probably have resulted in an over-acting. It was as real as the ones I've had.)

Where are the posts criticizing ROMNEY FOR CRYING FOUR TIMES?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. In my experience,

men are the ones who succumb to a woman's tears, not other women.

[Honeycombe8]

8. This is true. The men just don't have a clue about this subject.

Men are fairly easy to manipulate with tears. (Ask women...most will tell you that's true...although most women would not, or could not, do that.)

Other women don't fall easily for another woman's tears. That would NOT have been a smart plan. But it wasn't a plan.

[sandnsea]

17. I am a woman and that was a phony pile

So obviously women don't have the monopoly on guaging authenticity.

Nobody is criticizing her crying. They're criticizing the phoniness, and the absolute bullshit lie that anybody beat her up for it.

And the clips of Romney cryig aren't out there because he's the corporate media favorite.

Maybe women voted for Hillary because they want a woman President.

[thoughtcrime1984]

36. Yep, phony, triangulating, posturing bullshit

I do not like her because of phony she is and always has been. That is just my opinion, but bombs away.

[Honeycombe8]

38. If you didn't notice that she didn't cry, then I think your judgment is invalid.

There is no evidence whatsoever that it was phony. There was a very real mist in her eyes. Unlike people I've seen pretending to cry....there are no tears.

Even most actors find it difficult to have their eyes well up with tears on cue.

Get a grip. She is part of a well-oiled machine, and virtually everything is planned. But this was a few seconds when it caught up with her because of the grueling schedule, her fatigue, etc., etc.

Add this to the male candidates who have cried or otherwise been emotional on the campaign trail, and, well...it's not an uncommon occurrence. Romney, Bush Jr., Pat Buchanan are examples of candidates who have teared up on the trail.

If you want to alienate another woman, you cry or otherwise act namby pamby....men are prone to fall for it. But the harshest critics of women are other women. It would have been STUPID to think that an "act" like that, anyway, would possibly get votes from women, since it was likely that just the opposite would happen. The Clintons are many things when campaigning....but stupid ain't one of 'em.

[THUNDER HANDS]

6. I don't think it was planned

but I *do* think her voice and the way it cracked reminded me a lot of her husband when he used to get emotional and bite his lip.

[hedgehog]

12. It would be interesting if someone could locate and post a video of that......

[Uncle Joe]

9. Whether Clinton's emotional moment was planned or not, corporate media coverage of it sure was.

I don't recall them covering Edwards emotional moment during the debate when he discussed his motivation for taking on corporate corruption as being personal, but Hillary's personal moment a day or two later was telecast simultaneously on all three networks at the beginning of the evening news as if they were one network, I kept surfing between the stations and didn't miss a word. Then the News Hour with Jim Lehrer led off with it as well.

[pnwmom]

14. Yeah, and they were all asking if this was the END for her. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

19. I viewed that whole episode as them propping her up.

I posted on another thread where the O.P. was speculating they had abandoned her when it happened, that to the contrary, this was them bailing her out.

Edited for link to my post at the time.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2628324&mesg_id=2628772

"Where I differ with your opinion is that I believe they did it to prop Hillary's faltering campaign up and attempt to neutralize Edward's momentum after that debate."

[K Gardner]

18. Its still ON.. still. I swear I think I'll still be seeing this replayed before every primary.

Unless she has a fresh "moment". Now that we know what works and all. And the media knows too.

[OhioChick]

10. I Agree. n/t

[jefferson_dem]

11. It was pure stagecraft. No doubt about it.

Kudos to Hillary for pulling it off.

[pnwmom]

15. I don't think it was planned, and the woman obviously was no plant.

First she said how much she loved Hillary, then she said that she voted for Obama.

But Hillary did handle it well.

[jefferson_dem]

20. I am not suggesting that the questioner was a plant or that it was scripted *exactly* for Hillary...

But there's no doubt in my mind that they had planned to seize on an opportunity for an emotional / reflective "moment" in order to "humanize" Hillary to the voters.

[OHdem10]

16. He is helping DC try to get the egg off their face.

NO ONE READ the part of the Poll that plainly stated 40% (forty-percent_
of the people entered the polls undecided. That is almost half of the
people voting.

No one has mentioned the fact that some of colleges were on break
and therefore they did not vote. These people had been included
in potential voters.

[juajen]

23. Well, colleges were on break in Iowa also; so, what gives?

N/T

[Auntie Bush]

24. Planned? Is Hillary a mind-reader? The woman who asked the question

was undecided but later voted for Obama. Now how could they have planned that?
It was spontaneous or she deserves an Oscar. Even Julia Robert's couldn't have teared up that quickly.

[Sparkly]

26. That's what I was thinking -- she must be quite an actress.

And all the silly women who voted for her are easily fooled. :eyes:

I just love all this "analysis" -- I mean, guesswork.

[Uncle Joe]

27. Anyone can be easily fooled by the corporate media, men or women.

70+% of the American People believed at one time that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, because the corporate media told us so.

[Sparkly]

28. And you assume that your view is the correct one because.....? nt

[Uncle Joe]

29. Because I don't trust the corporate media anymore and I'm speaking as

a former news hound, if that's the view you're speaking of?

[Sparkly]

30. Me neither, but I saw them as working against HRC, not for her.

So why do you assume your interpretation is the correct one?

[Uncle Joe]

31. To me they've been promoting Clinton while ignoring others, not just Edwards

for well over a year if not longer, possibly since she won her election to the Senate. I couldn't get over the fact that many of them did everything they could in waging their eight year witch hunt against the Clintons to get them out of the White House, to which Bill Clinton finally gave them the integrity ammunition on a silver platter now all they can speak of is putting them back in.

I finally came to the conclusion that their real target was never the Clintons so much as it was Al Gore. Simply put, they didn't want the primary political champion of the Internet in the White House.

[Sparkly]

32. I guess it's an example of how two people can see the same thing in opposite ways.

I've seen them doing nothing but attack her -- even as they "built her up" (saying the Clinton Machine made her the inevitable nominee) their hostility was clear, and it was obvious to me they were building her up to tear her down.

I saw some early nonsense about Obama, too -- mischaracterizations of his words (sex ed for kindergarteners, for example) and about Biden. But no big hits against Edwards that I recall. If anything, I'd agree they've basically ignored him a lot.

[StatGirl]

34. If she's such a great actress . . .

. . . why is her speech delivery so uninspiring?

It was real. It made me like her more as a person (as did that picture of her looking cold and exhausted in Iowa). And, if you actually listen to her *words*, she was showing that she really does understand how bad things have gotten. I liked her for that, too.

If only her policies were in line with what I believe, I'd support her more enthusiastically than I've ever supported any politician. I would love to see a woman President. But the only viable candidate who gets what's really wrong with this country is Edwards, so he's my guy. We need a new FDR, not a new Bill Clinton.

[Essene]

33. I think it was a factor, but that the pollsters just had it wrong

She won heavily among the core democrat base and that translated into undecided voters too.

I do not believe the NH undecided types or independents were swayed by here tears...


I think she was doing better than the pollsters and pundits realized, all along. I think her last few days of performance brought those votes in. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY< i think after the Iowa buzz around Obama... folks in NH just went with the experience argument.

Keep in mind the other independence went with Mccain.

Same argument.