Never underestimate the Clintons

The women of New Hampshire saved her. Hillary Clinton, confounding premature expectations of her political demise, won the Democratic primary by a narrow two per cent, 39-37. The prime reasons for her victory over Barack Obama were a) women and b) the lower profile in New Hampshire of the war in Iraq.

In Iowa last week, Obama won the women's vote by more than five percentage points over Clinton. In New Hampshire, Hillary got 47 per cent of the women's vote, 34 per cent going for Obama. After looking at the devastating numbers in Iowa, the Clinton campaign had rushed out mailers stressing Obama's supposed softness on the abortion issue.

Hillary Clinton's moment of tearful victimhood with New Hampshire women was clearly effective, too, as was the footage of a post-debate session where the Democratic and Republican male candidates fraternised jovially, uncertain how to deal with the only woman in the locker room.

As the Democrat in the race who most fiercely and unapologetically defends her support for the attack on Iraq in 2003, Hillary Clinton's win last night in New Hampshire was paralleled on the Republican side by John McCain's victory. He beat Mitt Romney 37-32. In her victory speech Hillary Clinton said she wants "to end the war - the right way." McCain, with the same pause, said he wants "to bring them home - with honour."

The Clintons had learned quickly from the Iowa disaster. Hillary Clinton, as she stated in her victory speech in Manchester last night, "found my own voice", a disclosure perfectly in tune with the confessional dramatics of Oprah Winfrey and Dr Phil. The Clintons learned, too, how to calibrate an assault on Obama. That was Bill Clinton's role. His carefully prepared outburst the day before the primary, assailing Obama for lies and malicious slanders on his own character, was an eerie reprise of his furious outbursts during the Lewinsky affair.

As in Jacobean tragedies, the time is coming for the stage hands to haul the dead and dying off the stage. Gone: Fred Thompson (one per cent of the vote in New Hampshire, after an incredible amount of press); Mike Gravel, 396 votes; Dennis Kucinich, 3,800 votes, the same number of UFOs Shirley MacLaine sees on a clear night; Bill Richardson, 12,845 votes, or five per cent.

Giuliani? It doesn't look good for him. This is the north-east, his quarter of the Homeland. He got 19,500 votes, or nine per cent, only just ahead of ahead of Ron Paul who got around 18,000 votes. As for Mitt Romney, he's a north-eastern governor: if he can't score in New Hampshire, where else, aside from Utah?

Among the corpses to be dragged off should be those of the pundits and the pollsters, not excluding James Zogby, often on the money. He called it right in Iowa. In New Hampshire he was exactly right on Richardson and Edwards but had Obama at 42 and Hillary at 29, a huge polling gaffe. Were the New Hampshire voters simply not divulging their true feelings? The 'closest' of all the polls on the Democratic side was the Suffolk/WHDH survey, and its last poll had Obama up by five points, still wildly wrong. That same poll had Romney winning by five points.

Ron Paul has to decide. Thus far he has won support in Iowa and New Hampshire thanks to the fact that they are both open states that allow independents to vote for a Democrat or a Republican. Most future primaries don't allow this option. Paul has about $20m raised from the most enthusiastic supporters yet visible in Election 2008 – anti-war, pro-Bill of Rights. He should immediately run as an Independent candidate or on the Libertarian ticket, the latter being the easier option.

Message to the young supporters of Obama: politics is not one quick dash, you have to stay and work. The Clintons have been at the game for 30 years. They don't give up. They've come back from the dead many, many times. ·