But just in terms of salaciousness and shock factor and it all happened in a very compressed time period that was a very important time period, there is really nothing that compares with this. This was the cover of a tabloid called star magazine, a story about the then frontrunner for the democratic nomination for president , arkansas governor bill clinton. And this tabloid newspaper alleged that bill clinton had an extramarital affair. Published january 23rd. Three days later, on january 26th, bill clinton with his wife at his side gave an interview to 60 minutes fighting back against those tabloid allegations calling them flatout false. The very next day, after that 60 minutes interview, in front of basically every media outlet in the world, a woman named Gennifer Flowers gave a spectacle of a press conference, flanked by that tabloid magazine cover featuring her in which she fought back against the clintons and what they said on 60 minutes and gave what she said were details of this alleged affair. And this was all happening in january 1992. Thats the election year, right . Bill clinton, that year, was trying to win the democratic nomination for president in 1992. It was january of that year, which means this was all happening at basically the key moment, the key test of whether this arkansas governor really was going to make a run for the presidency. This was all happening right on the precipice of the New Hampshire primary. And just as the Gennifer Flowers allegations started snowballing in the media, then another story dropped about bill clintons past, which blind sided everybody and it could have proven to be just as hurtful to his chances. Just about a week after the Gennifer Flowers story, this emerged, it was a letter written by a young bill clinton, he was a Rhodes Scholar going to school in england, a letter where he argued he would not return to the United States to be drafted to fight in the vietnam war. That letter was dated december 1969. No government really rooted in limited parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong. Sincerely, bill clinton. He wrote that in 1969, to the colonel in charge of the rotc program, at the university of arkansas. I here in england wont come home to get drafted to fight that terrible war. So all at once, youve got the infidelity scandal, which includes not just the tabloid, but the rebuttal and then the rebuttal to the rebuttal with the salacious press conference. Then immediately there after you have the apparent draft dodger scandal, you have two scandals breaking one on top of the other, dominating the news, dominating the political coverage going right into the all important New Hampshire primaries in 1992, and because of that, nobody really expected bill clinton candidacy to survive those 25 days leading up to New Hampshire. But he survived it. He did it. Let me say that the evening is young and we dont know yet what the final tally will be, i think we know enough to say with some certainty that New Hampshire tonight has made bill clinton the comeback kid. Bill clinton came in second that night in New Hampshire. He didnt win New Hampshire. But he didnt lose either in a strong field. And him showing so strongly in New Hampshire after he took the best that anybody could have possibly conjured up to throw at him in terms of truly juicy salacious scandals not one, but two of them, right on top of each other, right ahead of that primary, him showing so strongly in the face of that, it is safe to say it saved his campaign, the New Hampshire primary 1992 saved the bill clinton for president campaign. And, of course, bill clinton went on to win the democratic nomination and then to be president for two full terms. But his president ial viability started with New Hampshire, with New Hampshire making him the comeback kid. More recently, New Hampshire made a comeback kid out of another candidate for president who everybody thought was beat until New Hampshire showed he wasnt. Im past the age when i can claim the noun kid no matter what adjective precedes it. But today we sure showed them what a comeback looks like. Thank you. Thank you. When the pundits declared us finished, i told them im going to New Hampshire where the voters dont let you make their decision for them. John mccain had a tough primary campaign in 2008. There were whole stretches of months at a time when the biggest news out of the Mccain Campaign was how many of his Staff Members were quitting, how poorly his campaign was going, how demoralized everybody was, how he had no money, no support. John mccain had to win New Hampshire in 2008. Specifically had to beat mitt romney there. And predictions of his demise to the contrary, he did it. He won New Hampshire. That victory in New Hampshire went a really long way to helping john mccain look strong and resilient and helping him win that year. It was more dramatic than it was on the john mccain mitt romney side. On the democratic side in 2008, the drama there was in part about how wrong all the polls were on the democratic side. Barack obama had just beaten Hillary Clinton in iowa the week before, that iowa victory was huge for him. All signs were pointing to him doing the same thing again in New Hampshire. But it turns out all those signs were wrong. Everybody was wrong. The polls were super wrong in 2008 about the democratic primary in New Hampshire. Hillary clinton, in fact, beat barack obama in New Hampshire that night. And that was our first concrete early sign that the fight that year for the democratic nomination was going to be an epic, epic fight. Which it was, right . It went all the way, almost, to the Democratic Convention in terms of figuring it out, between barack obama and Hillary Clinton. An amazing primary battle. But the polling before New Hampshire that year had basically called it a done deal for barack obama. And that specifically led to one very funny, very sobering moment, which i can, like, play, like, on a loop in my head when it is called for. I think i have still yet to live it down. Basically this moment, live on the air, when all of us here in this studio got schooled by tom brokaw on the night of the New Hampshire primary, right . Tom brokaw taking part in our msnbc coverage and were on the air marveling about how wrong the polls were, what a surprise that Hillary Clinton won in New Hampshire when the polls said barack obama would win. We marched into the coverage expecting something based on the polling. That led to this awesome moment from tom brokaw that night on the subject of us taking polling as a substitute for the voters judgment. This is just great. You know, what i think were going to have to go back and do . Yes, sir. Wait for the voters to make their judgment. What do we do then in the days before the balloting . We must stay home, i guess. We dont stay home. There are reasons to analyze what theyre saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote, you can take a look at that. But we dont have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed and trying to stampede in an effective process. Im not picking on just us, it is part of the culture in which we live these days. I think the people out there are going to make some judgments about us if they havent already if we dont begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding in many cases as we learned in New Hampshire when they went into the polling booth today. Tom brokaw on the night of the New Hampshire primary 2008. Saying we the media should not get ahead of the voters. Avoid the temptation to try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding. Dont let the polls dictate the results before the results are in. It is the voters. Boy, did we learn that lesson in 2008. In New Hampshire alone we learned that lesson, right . And partly you learn that lesson because, you know, sometimes the polls are wrong. So if you go into your punditry, based on what the polls are saying, sometimes you get showed up. Sometimes you learn that lesson because this is an election. Not a reality show. It really is up to the voters to decide and there is no substitute for the voters deciding. Thats the only thing like that. That media failure in 2008 and in conservative media misreading the polls in 2012 and the few other times it has happened, right . Those embarrassments were just about, you know, taking the polls and making bad predictions on the air. Misreading the momentum, right, based on the polling. Just about the problem there was just the way people talked about the election. This year that ongoing problem is much more serious and much more consequential. Because this year it is not just about how people are talking about the election, this year the Fox News Channel has proposed taking the polling and using it to actually decide who gets to compete for president in the first place in the Republican Party. Who gets to be on the stage who gets to make the case to the voters. The Fox News Channel is hosting the first republican primary debate this year said theyll only allow ten candidates on the stage for the first debate, and the way fox says they are going to decide which ten candidates is by using the most recent National Polling leading up to that debate. Fox is saying they want to use polling not just to, you know, inform their anchors and correspondents and pundits in terms of how they talk about the race on tv, they want to use the polling to decide who gets to compete for the nomination in the first place. I mean, the way most americans will decide who to vote for in the primary process, the way most voters experience the candidates and decide between them is by watching the debates, right . There are not many that many of these debates, especially this year. Fox news is the gate teeper for the first one. They said theyll keep quite a lot of the candidates out of that debate, out of the process based on National Polling. Cnn is proposing doing the same thing. Theyll host the second Republican Debate. Cnn is being more open about what criteria theyre going to use to pick their top ten and exclude other candidates. Fox is being really vague. We dont know, for example, which polls theyre going to consider when they make that top ten candidate cutoff. We dont know if theyre going to be rounding their polling averages. That may sound like an esoteric math geek problem but it is life or death for a candidate like Carly Fiorina. Right now Carly Fiorina averaging out to 1. 6 in the polls. If fox rounds her 1. 6 up to 2 , then she ties with john kasich and then makes it into the debates. If fox is not going to round up if they dont say 1. 6 is roughly 2 , it is 1. 6 , then shell be out. 4 in the decision about rounding and the National Polls would be the determining factor here to decide whether or not the only woman potential nominee on the republican side will allow be allowed to compete for the nomination. Thats ridiculous. Youre talking about infinitesimal differences here. Really it will determine whether or not a Candidates Campaign is essentially over. And the gatekeeper is the Cable News Network . The way that fox news is proposing winnowing down the field what they have disclosed anyway, at best an arbitrary basis on which to be deciding something as important as who is allowed to compete for the presidency. It is a terrible decision that they have decided to make, making this decision themselves instead of leaving it to the voters. Bad enough when Cable News Networks or anybody talking about this stuff on tv supplants their own judgment for the voters. But for the network to decide organizationally theyre deciding who is running . And theyre not even disclosing how exactly theyre making that decision . And this is all happening as more and more and more and more and more viable candidates have been getting in on the republican side. Look at the folk on this list. These are not cooks and cranks. These are not people who are faking a run or running a protest candidacy or not planning on hiring staff and want a book deal. Republicans are right when they say they have a deep bench. This is a group of candidates they can be proud of. Theyre right. This is not a clown car. But as more and more and more of those potentially viable candidates have gotten in, with still more to come, it has become more and more clear that fox cant do what they have said theyre going to do. It cant stand. It cannot stand. And now as of today, and as of tonight, it is on. Because as of today, it is not just me winking about that on liberal tv, as of now, basically the entire Republican Leadership of the all important state of New Hampshire is saying it too. This is a letter from dozens and dozens of Republican Leaders in New Hampshire sent to fox news today saying, basically, we the voters of New Hampshire get to decide who deserves this nomination. We have done it in years past. Were good at it. We deserve to do it again this year. It is going to be us making this decision. Not you, some Cable News Network. Historically it has been the responsibility of early primary and caucus states to closely examine and winnow the field of candidates and it is not in the electorates interest to have tv debate criteria supplant this solemn duty. Proposed limitations are unnecessarily narrow and risk eliminating potentially viable candidates based on unreliable National Polling that is rarely predictive of primary election outcomes. Letter go on to say, denying candidates the opportunity to participate in the first debate would, quote, artificially distort the political process and they make a strong cogent reasoned case that what fox news proposed would be bad for the Republican Party and it would be bad for the country. And then there is also just the sheer number of signers of this letter that make the most powerful part of their argument for them, more than 50 republican elected officials and leaders and activists have signed on to this thing. This is not some crank outfit, this is essentially the powers that be in New Hampshire saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, were in an early state for a reason, we make the decision about which candidates get on the stage and which candidates dont, our voters make those decisions, those decisions dont get made by some tv network. And went on to propose and some alternate ideas they think would be more fair in terms of how organized the early debates, they proposed an idea in which fox would broadcast multiple debates, backtoback debates, nix the top tier and lower tier candidates randomly together. So you dont have 20 people on stage all at once, but maybe two backtoback debates of ten. And mix them according to top tier candidates and lower tier candidates and see how it goes. And who knows, maybe that would be a better way of doing it. I dont know. What is becoming very clear is fox news plan to cut off the field at a round number based on flexible, irrelevant and opaque criteria, it is really not going to stand. Thats not going to be the way it happens. It is not going to stand with republicans. It is not going to stand in New Hampshire. And it is really just not going to stand for the country. And further, we have a bit of breaking news on that last point. The New Hampshire union leader, the newspaper in New Hampshire, right, the union leader, the most influential newspaper in New Hampshire has Just Announced that on the same night as this troubling first debate that has been scheduled by fox news, on that same night, the New Hampshire union leader is calling the question, theyre going to host what theyre calling a Candidates Forum. Theyre inviting the candidates to participate and say it will be televised live by cspan. This is the fox killer. The papers publisher calling fox news debate plan a, quote, real threat to the first in the nation primary, voters have an independent streak and they might well be disposed to vote for a socalled also ran who didnt meet the fox criteria but spent the time and effort here to answe