How Hillary Learned to Trust Herself

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The specter of Lyndon Johnson, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and all the other dull, disastrous, detail-oriented Democratic politicians of the recent past had haunted her campaign from the start. Earlier that day she had even attacked Obama using Mondale's famous line about Gary Hart, "Where's the beef?" But now she seemed to be shedding her private dismay that she could never be a charismatic politician like Obama or Kennedy, or her husband, and embracing her inner Johnson — at least the can-do policy-wonk version of that notoriously strange President. But she would be Johnson with a twist, with passion and with a specific constituency in mind: all those women who had to juggle jobs, children, careless, selfish men, and menopause — and, all too often, divorce. The working women of America, like the woman who had asked the simple, touching question in Portsmouth that had started her tears flowing: "How do you do it? Who does your hair?"

Those women responded by coming out for her in droves in New Hampshire. They represent a very moving counterforce to the legions of young people Obama has activated across the country. Both Clinton and Obama have a solid base now — and both have a similar problem: trying to reach past that base, especially to the working-class (white) men who may well decide the general election in states like Ohio. Clinton's "beef" may prove the more sturdy product in a party that thinks, as labor leader Andrew Stern once said, that electing a President is College Bowl, but it's really American Idol. Obama may be inspirational, but Clinton is now inspired. "I listened to you," she said at the beginning of her spare, elegant acceptance speech. "And in the process, I found my own voice."

If she is smart — smarter about herself than she has been in the past — she will continue to run her campaign in the open, as she did the last few days in New Hampshire, answering questions from the press and public, allowing her humor (and a bit of anger) to shine. She will, finally, trust her own instincts and stop relying so much on polls and market testing. A big election like this one is won on macrovision, not the microtrends that her strategist Mark Penn keeps touting. And in facing an idealistic opponent, she will remember that she, not her husband, was the one who came up with the famous line "I still believe in a place called Hope."

But we in the press have to be smarter too. We were wildly stupid in the days before the New Hampshire primary, citing Clinton meltdown after Clinton meltdown — the tears, the flash of anger in the debate — that never really happened. We really need to calm down, become more spin-resistant, even if our sleep-deprived sources tend to overreact to every slip and poll dip in the campaign. If we are lucky, this will be a long and complicated race — which is exactly what this country deserves right now — and we need to watch it with our very best, most patient eyes, just as the public seems to be doing.