Barack’s wave crashed in Hillary’s ‘perfect storm’

Does Hillary keep drawing all those women to the polls?

They outvoted men 57 percent to 43 percent in New Hampshire.

Does she keep them fired up through South Carolina, and beyond?

After Monday’s predictions turned out so horribly wrong, pundits are cautious. But courageous Arnie Arnesen, longtime New Hampshire politician and talk host on WCCM 1110-AM, called what happened Tuesday “a perfect storm” for Hillary Clinton.

The ingredients:

Polls predicting a big Obama win. So some Obama voters, assured of victory, either stayed home or opted to help John McCain, whom they perceived to be in a tighter race.

Obama’s lackluster debate performance Saturday, when a strong Hillary joked likability questions hurt her “feelings.”

The Deval Patrick factor: Both men did the soaring rhetoric and hope campaign. Deval hasn’t yet produced much. Would Obama struggle too?

The legendary Clinton machine. Obama’s side, perhaps a bit cocky, wasn’t out and about until about 6 Tuesday morning. Hillary’s crowd? Up at 4 a.m. That “makes a difference,” Arnesen said.

The Big Backlash. The radio station pranksters who held up a sign and screamed “iron my shirt” at Hillary on Monday. Her getting trashed for welling up on the eve of the primary. Her getting trashed by a media suddenly swooning over Obama and by talk radio show hosts, like my own 96.9 WTKK colleague Jay Severin, who’s made about a zillion references to the size of Hillary’s derriere.

I cannot think of something more likely to enrage and unite women - particularly post-50 women who are Hillary’s biggest supporters - than ridiculing another woman’s appearance. There are few more glaring double standards in America than that between older men (distinguished, wise, powerful, even handsome) and older women (haggard, bitter, powerless, sexless and all but invisible on our most important medium, TV).

Mix this brew. Suddenly voting for Hillary can become payback for every sexist or demeaning experience, every “get me a cup of coffee, will ya’, hon?”

Judy Goggin, 62, of Jamaica Plain said it bothered her to see Hillary picked on. Four retired Brookline schoolteachers, all Hillary voters, dubbed themselves “the golden girls.” Former principal Carol Schraft said Gloria Steinem’s article in that morning’s New York Times [NYT] had been their “read-aloud” on their drive to Hillary’s party election night. Steinem argued that gender has never been taken as seriously in America as race - though it should be - and that “there is still no right way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you know what.”

Carol Rafferty, 48, of Nashua, said attacks on Hillary made up her mind - to vote for her over Obama. “I was really ticked,” she said.

So will women like Rafferty remain “ticked” through Super Duper Tuesday on Feb. 5?

God, I hope not. Then Hillary wins.

By the way, if you missed it, here’s the update from the woman whose question caused Hillary to well up Monday. Marianne Pernold Young, 64, told ABC she’d initially been “moved” by her emotion. “We saw 10 seconds of Hillary, the caring woman. . . . But then when she turned away from me, I noticed that she stiffened up and took on that political posture again . . . the woman I noticed for 10 seconds was gone.”

Young said the faucet on and off thing disturbed her enough to cast her vote - for Barack.