Hilary and McCain win New Hampshire

I would have liked to see the Democrats wrap the contest up quickly. I would have liked to see the Republicans spend the next month or two bloodying each other while whichever Democrat had won Iowa, NH, and Nevada sat pretty. And most of all, I would have liked Obama, who has the best chance of winning the general election, to have been that Democrat. (No, it´s not knee-jerk partisanship. The Democrats take global warming more seriously across-the-board than the Republicans. Of the Republican candidates, only John McCain, and, to a lesser extent, Mike Huckabee, speak about climate change with the urgency that it deserves. The Democrats are also the party in which every major candidate has put forward a universal healthcare plan to fulfill the government´s basic duty to help the helpless.)
Despite Obama´s loss, seeing Iowa´s choice rejected by New Hampshire was nice. Iowa´s caucuses are a joke, if what you´re looking for is democracy. And Iowa´s outsize influence in choosing winners and losers perverts policy in Iowa´s favor - "If they held the first caucuses in Idaho," someone once said, "we'd be subsidizing gasoline made out of potatoes." NH sends a valuable message that Iowa isn´t the decider.
And Hillary is not bad at all. Obama talks about change, but many of the most important changes from the George W Bush years would be returns to the Bill Clinton mode of operation: international cooperation in fighting wars, fewer unnecessary hot-button choices that hurt America´s image in other countries (I speak of keeping Guantanamo open), and spending that doesn´t sprint past the government´s ability to pay for it. Those changes, plus moving full-speed-ahead to limit CO2 emissions and working towards healthcare reform, will leave America much better off. And we could reasonably expect all of the above from Hillary. But only if she won the general election, a big enough "if" for me to throw my support behind Obama (on policy, very similar) instead.

McCain´s win in New Hampshire gives me mixed feelings. He used to be a force for campaign finance reform, although who knows whether that´s still true. Quite recently, he tried to pass immigration reform legislation, but failing might have left him once burned, twice shy, and unwilling to try again. He has been a vehement supporter of the Iraq war from the beginning; the initial support is worrying, but the continued support is obvious, as Iraq is not ready for us to leave. And then, of all the Republicans, he seems most serious about fighting climate change. I´m hesistantly hopeful he´ll be the Republican candidate; I´ll root against him but the prospect of him winning won´t be so bad.