Manchester’s Elm Street is the kind of main thoroughfare you might find anywhere in the American Northeast. It borders the Merrimack River with neat rows of square-cut brick buildings.
On any other Super Bowl Sunday, Elm Street would be pretty much deserted. But not this Sunday.
This is the day before the day before the New Hampshire primaries, and America is holding its breath as it awaits the message from the sinewy inhabitants of the Granite State.
So on this Super Bowl Sunday Elm Street is crowded with candidates, Secret Service vans, surrogates, handlers, reporters and shouting, sign waving volunteers.
What message will Elm Street send America on Tuesday?
Predicting what New Hampshire voters will do is a risky business. These are notoriously unpredictable folks, and they are notoriously undecided until the last minute. But I’m going out on a limb anyway.
My guess is that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders will be the two winners. No, Ted Cruz is not New Hampshire’s cup of tea. Neither is robotic Marco Rubio. Nor Ben Carson. Nor Chris Christie.
John Kasich is cut from the same cloth as those live-free-or-die voters in New Hampshire. But that’s not enough to beat out a defiant rude boy like Trump.
Jeb Bush? Too little too late.
And Hillary? Not this time. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But I’m sure she is going to come in second in New Hampshire.
So what’s the message from Elm Street?
That politics is a crazy game, I guess.
