“Dan, I think I jinxed it.”

Those were the opening words from Huda after I answered the phone last night.  Earlier that day we had been discussing politics and primaries, and now she was watching CNN as the results started to come in.

Now, I don’t often espouse my political views.  It seems to cause more trouble than its worth, but basically you could sum up my particular viewpoint on life as: You’re Wrong.  My friends who lean in the liberal direction consider me to be a conservative.  My conservative friends assign me to the loony left.  I don’t seem to have any moderate friends.  Lucky me.  I think that I just like to argue and thus take the opposite opinion of whomever I’m talking to.

In my heart, though, I’m an idealist.  I never could shake the idea that the leaders of our nation should be just that:  leaders.  Great Leaders.  Powerful, charismatic men and women who could reach past the pettiness of every day people and tell us that This Is How It Is.

Of all the candidates that I’ve seen on both sides, the person who has fit that particular description best for me has been Barack Obama.  I can’t get hugely excited about anyone in the Republican field.  Ditto for most of the Democrats.  There are people on both side that could be (or could have been (as some have dropped out)) good Presidents.  But no one inspires me.  Except for Obama.

Huda is also an Obama supporter.  She had delighted herself with the results of Iowa, and conversations had grown giddy in the run up to New Hampshire.   Obama had a mortal lock on the state, it seemed.

I’ll give Hillary this much: she can definitely turn out her supporters.  It’s petty and snide of me, I know, but when I read that one of the keys to her resurgence in the voting was recapturing the woman vote, I have to think to myself:  it’s because she cried.

In any case, Huda called us as the results were coming in.  She felt sure that her last post had jinxed the whole thing for Obama. She couldn’t tear herself away from watching the nearly constant margin of votes between Hillary and Obama.   (Neither could I, but I wasn’t going to tell her that while AM tried to coax Huda away from the computer.)

And now everything’s tallied up and Clinton has the win for NH.  The best I can say is that she barely pulled it off.  Personally I don’t see this as a momentum changer, only a roadblock.  But I’m not the one with deep pockets funding political campaigns, so what do I know?

Anyways, time for work.

Categories: Politics And Issues