“As a woman I know it’s hard to get out of the house and get ready…”

Judith Warner - Domestic Disturbances

How absurd. How depressing and disheartening and just plain dumb this whole business is.

The lesson from the coffee shop interlude – if that interlude is indeed mainly the thing that led the 37 percent of voters who were undecided or lukewarm about their choices in the final days of the campaign to ultimately go for Hillary – ought to be summed up in a new slogan. “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” was the famed James Carville adage that kept candidate Clinton on message in 1992. “It’s Not About You, Honey,” could be the new slogan for Clinton redux. It’s all about how you make voters feel.

Feeling – not thinking – becomes all-important when you have a field of candidates who aren’t really all that different from one another politically. It’s particularly important for not-so-political voters; the ones who, for example, aren’t super worked up about Hillary’s Iraq vote, or the lack of universal coverage in Obama’s health plan, or the finer points of Edwards’ billion-point plan to Build One America. I’m not sure if these really are the voters who created the upset in the New Hampshire primary — after all, according to exit polls, the lion’s share of the people who said they made up their minds prior to this past month voted for Hillary — but they’re certainly the ones who stole the headlines. And in a general election, it’s the undecided voters who, in the end, make all the difference.