That question was posed by John Aravosis, a polling analyst writing for Americablog.com, as the final question in the final paragraph:

Look at the distance the polls moved from the end of November to today. Hillary went from 40% to 27% today. But far more important, Obama went from maybe 28% to 55% today. That's an insane rise. Hell, look at the polls from the past few days - Obama never got above the mid 40s. Yet today he got 55%. Something happened. But what?

This question has been bandied about on all the Sunday talk shows, on op-ed pages, and on blogs to explain Obama's blow-out victory in South Carolina after a punishing week of Clinton double-teaming and poll-tested pundits writing his obituary--or, at the very least, conceding him a pyhhric victory as the "black candidate," unable to hold the white vote. 

(Which is funny, considering that six months ago those same pontificators were questioning whether he was "black enough" to win black votes, and hailing Bill Clinton's huge pull with black voters.  By last week, they were standing aside while Clinton disparagingly compared Obama to Jesse Jackson--code words to the bigots of the world who lump Jackson together with Al Sharpton as the worst spokesmen African Americans could ever have, with virtually no crossover appeal to whites.)

Something happened, all right.  But what?

Yeah, I'm going with the title of Time magazine's cover story a couple weeks ago, after New Hampshire:  It's the Voters, Stupid. 

The voters keep upending polls and slinging aside conventional wisdom--in large part because of a massive revolt against The Mainstream Media.

Hillary took New Hampshire for one reason I see very few of these mostly-male jackasses getting:  the Sistuh-Vote.

Women who had no intention of voting for Hillary watched the mostly-male jackasses like Chris Matthews and Bill Krystol howling and yowling about everything from the way she sits (Rush Limbaugh nastily pointed out that, at the debate, she was "the only one on stage who couldn't cross her legs"--which meant, I suppose, that either her dick was too big or maybe she couldn't relax like the cool boys.  But as any woman over 40 knows who spent any time in either an all-girls school or the South, a lady is taught to sit WITH HER ANKLES CROSSED, for obvious reasons.  Check out any on-stage photo of Nancy Reagan or Laura Bush and you'll see them sitting with their ankles crossed.)--to her "witch cackle" laugh, to her supposedly phony tears, to her nagging voice--("Every time she talks, I hear TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE," said one.)--to the state of her marriage to the calculation of her positions and on and on and on.

So loud and hateful did the chorus get, that even women who didn't much care for Hillary were moved to remember incidents in their own lives where they had to put up with that kind of crap, either at work or at home, and they pretty much collectively thought, You know what?  Screw you, boys.

They still haven't quite figured it out, even though Media Matters and thousands of viewers forced an insincere apology from Matthews. 

So then along came South Carolina, and Yoda the Top Dawg Democrat was let off his leash big-time, attacking Obama on things he didn't say as well as things he did.  At the debate, when Obama tried to defend himself, Hillary was landing punches both above and below the belt, then accusing him of "going negative and abandoning the politics of hope" when he spoke out in self-defense. 

The combined effect was like if, say, Mohammed Ali had faced off with both George Foreman AND Sonny Liston in one boxing ring, with no rules, and no referee.  His rope-a-dope might not have lasted as long if he'd had to fight off two opponents in the same round with no bell to give him a rest.

The voters went to the polls with that in their heads, and they were thinking, Fight fair or get out of the ring.

And they were also thinking, Just because you've got a bully pulpit on TV or the radio, it doesn't mean that you know everything.

For Barack Obama to get as many white male votes as both Clinton and Edwards, in a state that still flies the Confederate flag, should put the lie to the idea that he is merely a black candidate with a black base--which he had already proved in Iowa, a state that is 97% white.

It's more than that, though, and we all know it is.

If the Clintons wanted to remind voters of the 90's this past week, then they certainly did, only not in the way they might have intended.  As I have stated before, I've supported them both in the past, and I do think he was an outstanding president. 

But to bring the Clintons back to the White House will also bring back everything they brought with them before:  discord, division, distractions--molten, irrational hatred from so many people, but also, one big fight after another when accusations are made and they go into bunker-mode to refute and defend against them. 

From the "bimbo eruptions" of the '92 campaign all the way to Travelgate and Whitewater and Paula Jones--every time the right wing threw a new accusation at them, it was HILLARY who hunkered down to fight.  It was Hillary who withheld documents that had been requested an unneccessarily long time, for instance.  And it was Hillary who insisted that Bill not settle with Paula Jones, but instead, to fight.

We all know how that turned out. 

That's just a quick mention of one or two scandals and arguments, and yes, it was ridiculously unfair and yes, it was motivated by some kind of insane desire to get them out of the White House, but the point is that it existed, and will again. 

Do we really want to go through all that again?

All it takes is one broad selling her "story" to a tabloid about how she and Bill got it on at the Clinton library to start the whole damn thing over again.  It does not have to be true.  It just has to exist.  And it will.

There are more complicated things going on here, too.  As a feminist, I resent that the first truly viable female candidate for president has to hide behind her big strong husband to do her dirty work for her.  The fact that she rose to power on his coat-tails doesn't bother me quite as much, because most women of our generation either had to do something along those lines or had to be mentored by a strong male to rise to the highest levels of power.  It's just the way things were in the 70's and 80's for those of us trying to move up in male-dominated fields. 

But now that she has the power and position, then every time he dominates press coverage, it diminishes her.

And he WILL dominate press coverage, because that is his disease.  He can't help it.  He's an addict.  He ruined "their" first presidency--as George Stephanopoulous put it in his autobiography, and believe me, he will ruin this one as well.

Another complicated factor is the slim margin Democrats have in Congress, the margin that is too slim to end a war, for instance.  Many of that narrow majority came from red states.  They know that if they have to be "married" to Hillary on the ballot in November, it could cost them their seats.  Which would mean another Republican majority fighting a Clinton presidency.  Believe me, by the end of the first four years, voters would be so sick of the Clintons they'd put ANY Republican in the White House.

IF she could win it at all.  And that brings me to the scariest proposition:  John McCain.  He is the most electible Republican.  Yes, conservatives hate him, but that only endears him to moderates and Independents.  If Hillary smacks down Obama because of all her "experience," then when she goes up against McCain, that will be a laughable argument.  He has waaaay more experience than she does, and it was not done vicariously, through his spouse.

A dispirited, discouraged Republican party would be ELECTRIFIED to slap down Hillary, even if they had to vote for someone they didn't really like.  Add to that the man-crush the media has on him: Big strong war hero!  Straight-talker!  Maverick!--then any dirty tricks they'd pull on him would likely backfire.

And John McCain wants to stay in Iraq for one hundred years.  Just today, in fact, he was talking about "other wars" we'll have to be embroiled in, as if Iraq and Afghanistan aren't enough. 

This is scary, folks.

Conservative columnist George Will said something surprising today on Stephanopoulos.  He said that for real change to truly take place in Washington, there has to be a MANDATE, a landslide victory.  He pointed out the civil rights change of 1964, following Johnson's landslide victory, and mentioned several others.  He said that even if Hillary should squeak out a victory, it will be, at best, yet another fifty-plus-one majority--hardly a mandate.  Which means she would have that much more of a struggle trying to effect any kind of change. 

He hinted, as have at least a dozen other conservative commentators I have read, that Obama has the potential to pull out a true landslide victory.  Republicans and conservatives I have spoken to in this red state have all told me that they would not mind an Obama presidency.  And with that kind of good will, he really could transform not just Washington, but this country.

Worldwide, he's getting a similar reaction on op-ed pages from London to Germany.

Here in this country, primary voters have a lot of thinking to do, and they are taking it seriously.  Voter turn-outs for Democrats have broken all the records, as well as all the expectations.

In his victory speech, Obama said something that resonated with me.  I'm paraphrasing from memory, but it was something to the effect that "this election isn't about black or white, or red state or blue state, or young or old, or Democrat or Republican; this election is about the past or the future."

There's a lot that's comforting about going back to the 90's with the Clintons.  But I think that by the end of this campaign, voters are going to be reminded of just what that truly means--not just the warm-fuzzy soft-focus memory-lane version--but the hard-core reality-check version, when we're all reminded about just how exhausting it was.

As one blogpost I read on Huffingtonpost.com said--and I can't find it now, so apologies to the author for no link--America, we still have time.

There is time to keep sending messages, through the primary ballot box, to the Clintons and the Democratic party machine that backs them, that we don't want to go back to the 90's.  As Barack Obama says, That was 16 years ago.  It's 2008, now.

We want to go forward.