Manchester

High temperature today in Manchester, New Hampshire was 61 degrees Fahrenheit, 16 C

Meanwhile, Manchester, England is 37F (3C) with chance of rain.
Whodathunkit?

Yeah, but average highs in Manchester, NH are like 31 degrees F in January!

LOL- Being from California (and currently residing there), I've detached myself from thoughts of areas with 'normal' seasons.
Snow is something you visit.
The color of winter is green.

I'm spoiled.

Obviously, Mother Nature is a Hillary supporter. Hillary does well among female voters.

Unless you're in Los Angeles, in which case, the color of winter is still brown, just like all the other seasons.

I'm just a bit stunned that not one report I have seen on the New Hampshire primaries mentioned the unseasonably warm weather. The whole glycerin tears psychodrama aside, it was seen that both Clinton<-->Obama and McCain<-->Romney were somewhat aligned along age/generational lines.

I remember that when I actual did some political footwork -- back when I was young, was dumb, and actually cared -- getting the elderly vote out on a cold election day was pivotal and the weather mattered a lot.

But what do I know? I predicted McCain's demise months ago. Who would know that the Surge would make Iraq seem like a great new idea? Hey, what's 4-5K KIA between friends?

Especially with respect to New Hampshire, I do wonder what the Democratic spread would look like if McCain had left the field to Romney and Huckleberry.

Whatever.

I'm just a bit stunned the UK broadcasters are covering the US Presidential primaries so much. It seems to have taken over all of the news coverage.

And sadly, as I haven't yet installed an empeg in my new car I HAD to listen to the radio on the drive to Glasgow today. Akkkkk.

Blimming politics

Hey, they are choosing the new leader of the free world you know

Or alternatively one of the least free bits of the world

YMMV

Woohoo, England wins something!

I concur. I probably average about 1 hour of BBC per day and I was amazed. Not like it doesn't matter to the world at large, but...

I dunno, I could never understand why so many people enjoy watching Big Brother -- but, seeing as many unquestionably do, I don't think it's a big surprise that everyone's watching what's essentially a multi-billion-dollar-budget eleven-month non-stop Big Daddy of all Big Brothers, in which the winner gets to rule the world.

I'm sure it didn't use to matter so much, or at least British people thought it didn't. If you'd asked me in the Reagan or Clinton eras which political party the President belonged to, I'm not sure I'd have known. The US is still the only foreign country where I could even name the two main political parties, let alone reliably remember which is which (especially as the colours are the wrong way round ), and let alone have an opinion on which one I'd vote for.

Peter

And, just like Big Brother and other reality shows, the events are heavily influenced by those who put on the show. The pundits and prognosticators spew their narratives about "who's winning" and "who's losing" with almost no discussion of what actually differentiates the candidates policy-wise. HRC's upset win in New Hampshire shows that polling sometimes fails, and that media personalities should really focus on something other than the horse race aspect of politics.

The byzantine, drawn-out primary calendar makes the whole exercise even worse. The ability of individual states (and, in fact, each of the parties within those states) to decide when their primary is held undermines our democracy, and gives both parties as much chance as possible to push through their preferred candidates instead of giving the power to the voters on election day. Many primary votes are cast after the party's nominee is already decided by earlier primaries, and the parties can do a lot more electioneering in the early states than they'd be able to do if there was a single national primary day.

All that said, I'm happy with the Hillary and McCain wins, not because I like either candidate (I don't) but because I want the process to continue into the later states and not already be decided after only 2% of the primary voters have spoken.

It's not just there, a pen pal in New Zealand, mentioned it was being monitored there as well.

And after any decent candidates have run out of money and dropped out

Who are you kidding? Decent candidates have never had the money, let alone pre-requisite power and prestige, to get started in the first place.

Bill Bradley.
QED

My response was glib, but I do think Bradley exemplifies an early candidate with some "decent" attributes. I don't know much about them, but wondered if Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd fell into this category as well.

I pretty much agree completely with Tony's lament about the fubar US primary system -- I think the only way to fix it would be to have a single, national primary day -- but I am much less sanguine about the benefit of the current Democratic race continuing into later states.

I don't actually know that much about Obama and I really wonder if anybody does. But he seems like a possibly decent chap (I'd vote for Michelle in 2016!) and what I do know is that he isn't Hillary. So if the polls had held true and he completely squashed Clinton in New Hampshire, that would have been (on balance and in this specific case) OK with me.

Weather