"Dewey wins" in New Hamphsire

Dear reader,

Yep, I foolishly bought into the polls last week, which unanimously predicted that McCain & Obama would be victorious in New Hampshire. And as for Hillary getting beaten? "It's not a matter of 'if'," was the common refrain of pundits everywhere, "but a matter of 'by how much.'"

Accordingly, I sent out a cartoon called "Nice Guys" to your newspaper, reflecting those polls and that punditry.

No excuse. I knew I was sticking my neck out. But I saw it as an opportunity for your hometown paper to scoop the Big Dailies on national news... a very rare occurrence, given the nature of weekly publishing.

And it seemed like such a sure thing!

Nevertheless, in the process I totally underestimated the power of Hillary's tears (or some such yet-to-be identified phenomenon) that would catapult her over all the pollster certainty to victory.

I'm reminded of the New York Times headline from 1948 that read "DEWEY WINS" -- and, at this moment, I'm reliving the agonies of the editor who ordered that headline....

Humbled-ly yours,

Barry the Cartoonist

(Editor's note: Don't worry about it Barry, I did the same thing. I wrote my column at about 7 a.m. Tuesday morning, based on the polls and the voting in Dixville Notch, the small town that is the furthest east in the country -- it's actually in the Atlantic Time Zone -- whose tiny voting population all show up at midnight to vote and which has tended over the years to mirror the vote in the rest of the state, and for that matter, the nation. There's a lot of humble pie being served this week.)