Woman Brought Clinton to Tears and Then Voted for Obama

The moment when Hillary Clinton showed emotion in New Hampshire very well might be the moment which turned around her double digit deficit in the tracking polls. To some, this was the moment in which Clinton look more human than she ever has. Some have speculated that the moment was fake. Personally I don’t think that this one moment was significant enough to determine how one should vote, but it certainly appears to have helped Clinton. Maureen Dowd even wonders whether Hillery can “cry her way back to the White House.”

It appears that the woman who made Hillary cry agrees that this was not enough to determine how to vote. She wound up voting for Obama:

Marianne Pernold Young, 64, a freelance photographer from Portsmouth, N.H., told ABC News that while she was moved by Clinton’s emotional moment, she was turned off by how quickly the New York senator regained her “political posture.”

“I went to see Hillary. I was undecided and I was moved by her response to me,” Pernold Young said in a telephone interview with ABC News. “We saw 10 seconds of Hillary, the caring woman.”

“But then when she turned away from me, I noticed that she stiffened up and took on that political posture again,” she said. “And the woman that I noticed for 10 seconds was gone.

If Clinton’s comeback was really due to this episode, I was already wondering how long she could capitalize on it before voters found more important items to consider. If Young’s account is publicized as much as the initial event, this bounce might not last very long.

6 Comments

  1. 1
    Paul says:

    Thats awesome – I wonder what traits she actually thought were worth voting for. There’s a good ratings system over at fittobepres.com and I wish I could see her picks.

  2. 2
    Raelene says:

    What would she do if a nuclear bomb was dropped on us? Cry?
    Come on! We don’t need a president like that! Male or female!
    Obama 08′ supporter 100%

  3. 3
    Ron Chusid says:

    I also prefer Obama over Clinton, but for reasons other than this. I see no reason to assume that because she got emotional in a situation such as this that she would cry in the case of a real crisis.

  4. 4
    Raelene says:

    I understand your point but as a potential leader of a powerful nation such as ours; you cannot show emotions like she did. We are humans and we all have emotions but I honestly think she got the way she did because she felt like she was losing and that was the only way she knew how to get sympathy votes.

  5. 5
    Deborah says:

    I am still trying to figure out how an episode which garnered universally terrible publicity right before a vote was supposed to be a calculated move. Every commentary I saw talked about a campaign unraveling. It is only after her success that all of a sudden this is just a ploy. There was a lot of comment on blog sites about how prepared she was in the debate and how unfounded the attacks from Edwards and Obama were which probably had more to do with her success. If there were people for whom the tears made a difference, that is too bad, but it certainly is not her fault. To the woman who asked the question, Hillary was on camera. Are you saying she only deserved your vote if she fell apart instead of regaining composure? Whatever happened to looking at a candidate’s record and qualifications?

  6. 6
    Ron Chusid says:

    Those who wrote about it as a negative at first got it all wrong. In looking at the tape I immediately saw that there was nothing damaging to Clinton and feared that it would help her tremendously. I don’t think it should have played a part, positive or negative, but I suspect it was responsible for many of the last minute votes she picked up.

    Agree that it might not mean anything that she quickly regained her political posture. One interpretation is that she realized she was on camera and quickly pulled herself together. Another interpretation is this was an act which she had planned for when the right question came up. There’s no way to know, and hopefully this incident is soon forgotten and it won’t matter. Regardless of the interpretation, it certainly is interesting that the woman who say first hand voted for Obama.

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