What New Hampshire Means

Here’s my take.  The big winners in New Hampshire last night – Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and John Kasich.  The big losers –Hillary Clinton, and Marco Rubio.

1 and Marco Rubio

Donald Trump got the victory he had hoped for in Iowa, but had come up short.  He doubled the votes of his next closest Republican rival, Ohio Governor John Kasich.  And he’s headed next to South Carolina, which should be very favorable territory for him.  Can he be stopped?  Maybe not.

That brings me to another of the three big winners last night, John Kasich.  Governor Kasich spent more time campaigning in New Hampshire than any other candidate, 64 days.  He did town hall after town hall after town hall, and really took the time to meet with voters.  Arguably he’s run the most positive campaign of any Republican candidate.  The question will be whether he spent so much time and resources in New Hampshire, that he’s got catching-up to do in the upcoming states.  However, this could well be offset by the momentum he’ll get from his strong showing in New Hampshire.  Only time will tell.

2 will tell

The big Republican loser in New Hampshire was Marco Rubio.  The Florida Senator had gotten a tremendous boost out of his stronger than expected showing in Iowa just last week.  It seemed that he was picking up steam in New Hampshire, and possibly looking at a second or third place finish there.  Then Saturday night, there was a debate.  Shouldn’t have been a big deal for Senator Rubio.  After all, in all the previous debates in this election cycle, he’d performed very well.  In fact, many would argue that he had outperformed all the other candidates, in every debate.  But not this one.  Rubio’s identical robotic response to Chris Christie’s cross-examination was painful to watch.  Rubio did fine in the rest of the debate, but the damage was done.  Thousands of planes land at major airports every day and it’s not a story.  But when one crashes, it’s front page.  The only thing the media reported about Marco Rubio from Saturday night through yesterday’s primary was his stumble.  And he stumbled in the polls.  Whether he can recover from this remains to be seen.

3 to be seen

Now for the Democrats.  New Hampshire was a disaster for Hillary.  Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, beat her by over 20 points.  Yes he’s the Senator from the next-door state of Vermont, but he crushed her.  It wasn’t even close.  The question is, will Bernie Sanders get enough of a bump from his New Hampshire victory, to gain him a fighting chance in what should be a much more Clinton-friendly state, South Carolina.  The Clintons have always done very well among Democratic African American voters, and the makeup of South Carolina is far different from that of Vermont.  We’ll see.

4 we'll see

One more thing.  There’d been a lot of speculation by the political pundits, that one thing the New Hampshire primary would do, was whittle the Republican candidates down to no more than three viable candidates from here on.  However, because of the close bunching of Kasich, Cruz, Bush, Rubio, and maybe Christie, I would expect most of these candidates to continue to battle it out in South Carolina, and depending on the results there, maybe beyond.

5 maybe beyond 6 maybe beyond

And that’s good for Donald Trump.  Because unless one, or at the most two, candidates take him on head to head, Trump appears to be in the driver’s seat.  And that’s HUGE!

Like this post? Share with your friends:

You Might Also Be Interested In

Join the Campaign

Thank you for your support