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As an antidote to the much-derided Gloria Steinem editorial in the New York Times, let us propose the following scenario:  A depressed male candidate for president breaks down on camera and, close to tears, talks about how personal this race is for him and he can't understand why people don't like him more. Would this play in New Hampshire, or anywhere else?  (CNN would cut from this vignette to a screenshot of Osama bin Laden snickering and making crybaby gestures in his Waziristan redoubt.)

But for Hillary, it worked like a dream, didn't it? A woman who has had her eyeshadow poll-tested finally put the script away and sounded human, vulnerable, needy.  My God, did she remind me of my beloved mama tonight.

"Women were the key" is the refrain right now on CNN (are they ever right about anything? Carl Berstein, your inferiority complex is showing again), and maybe that's so. Obama may have a sauve style and smoky voice, but if the ladies prefer to stick with their own kind, who can blame them?  

Here's my theory:  Hillary's basically an Angela Merkel-type center-left pragmatist who's deeply hawkish at heart. What unites her with John McCain? They both advocated strongly for the war in Iraq, and only Hillary — adjusting for that war's increasing unpopularity — changed her tune. I'd trust either of them as commanders-in-chief to bring the fight to the forces of jihad and ragtag totalitarianism. What are the odds that Hillary will not to take credit, as one of the most vocal Congressional war authorizers, if the surge continues to work and Iraq becomes, if not quite a model democracy in the Middle East, then at least a darker shade of Turkey in the space of the coming administration?  Get her in the White House and the talons will come out. Did you hear what she said about Vladimir Putin the other day?

Also, like Joseph Lieberman, she is still loathed by the DailyKos/MoveOn.org contingent of the antiwar left, and yet commands respect among the more conventional Democratic constituents. For all John Edwards's ain't-that-America pro-union bluster, organized labor turned out heavily in New Hampshire for Clinton. How about that.

At the very minimum, a nice consequence of how this weird election had transpired so far is that Clinton no longer carries that irritating air of entitlement she once did. She realizes she has to earn it now, and she seemed genuinely ecstatic and humble in her fine victory speech this evening. (Obama sounded unchastened and smug, like King Solomon with a sprained ankle.)

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