The Cry Card

The show of tears by Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire will be remembered for decades to come as the determining moment that saved her primary campaign for president. The conventional wisdom is that woman came out in droves and voted for her out of sympathy and put her over the top against the insurging Barak Obama. Some observations on that moment. 1. Was it fake? It may have not been but Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. makes the observation that no tears were shed during the Oklahoma bombing, 9/11, her husbands cheating, war in Iraq or Katrina. Why now with a seemingly innocuous question of "how you holding up?"? 2.To further the point, it worked which adds to the calculating nature of the Clinton mystique. 3.The crying moment came when she talked about how she didn't want to see the country "go backwards" and that she cared sooo much. Surly going backwards is an abstract idea about, what? Deficit spending, funding education, solving health care? Hardly nothing to get choked up about especially when you compare them to real tragedies that afflicted her and the country which not just hurt American pocket books but cost thousands of lives plus the public humiliation of her family.

But it may not have been. To this it can be said that the difference between this moment and other more dire events is that this affected her. After all it was a question about her and when it comes to Hillary Clinton she is suppose to win, it's her turn to be president, its suppose to be a democrat year, she was the front runner with little serious competition and after losing Iowa and being very much behind in New Hampshire it looked like it was all over. Sure her words initially were about the country and her concerns but what do we expect her to say? After the litany about going backwards she charged into the other candidates lack of experience. To be really cynical about the matter it could be said that what was really on her mind is that she wasn't getting what she wanted and that it was all no fair, why, these other guys don't deserve it, dam it why not me. So other historic considerations aside this time it was about her and her alone. Why shed tears for others when something really bad is happening such as the loss of power.