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