Hillary Clinton Gets Choked Up While Campaigning in New Hampshire

Posted by Jason Easley on 01.07.2008

Is Hillary cracking up, or displaying some genuine emotion?

In a rare display of emotion, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got choked up at an event in Portsmouth, NH as she talked about her reasons for running for president. "Some of us put ourselves out there and do this, against some pretty difficult odds and we do it each one of us because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not," she said with a quivering voice. As we have witnessed with the fake Hillary laugh, Mrs. Clinton is that good of an actor. Some in the media are already comparing her emotional scene with Edmund Muskie's 1972 emotional outburst, but I don't think that comparison is very fair.

What is obvious is that Hillary Clinton sees her nomination as slipping away, and the stress is getting to her.
Even though the campaign has been saying that they expected a tough fight for the nomination, most people know that this isn't true. Their expectations can be understood by their past behavior. They went on an early fundraising blitz that was designed to scare off any Democratic opposition for the nomination. By mid-summer they had adopted a general election strategy that had her spending most of her time looking presidential, and attacking the GOP. This didn't seem like a campaign that was preparing for a tough primary fight.

Some people will think that Hillary's show of emotion on the campaign trail is bad thing, but I disagree completely. The biggest complaints about Clinton have been that she doesn't speak in terms of details, and she has been a cold fish during the campaign. Without getting into gender roles in politics, I think it was nice to see some real emotion out of her, but this emotional scene was also caused by her own inexperience as a national candidate. No matter what, Hillary Clinton will stay in the race after New Hampshire, and she will win some delegates on February 5. It all just might come too late to halt the momentum of Barack Obama.