I just wanted to see that headline in my lifetime.

As a kid, I would never have imagined I would write it.

Squirming pundits and pollsters wonder how they got this one so wrong. Here's how Jonathan Alter of Newsweek led,

The results of the New Hampshire primary help explain why politics is so fascinating for those of us who cover it, even though we all look more than faintly ridiculous right now.

I don't have a clear explanation for how Hillary Clinton defied the polls and prognosticators to win, but amid our compromised credibility as analysts, let me humbly try. I do so with the help of my wife, Emily Lazar, whose own switching back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may mirror some of what went on in the minds of ambivalent New Hampshire women, whose last minute shift back to Clinton gave her the victory....

Crunchy bits:

...her angry outburst in the ABC News debate made some men think of shrewish ex-wives, it seemed justified to many women, who thought she had reason to be peeved.

In a workplace context, Obama may have reminded women of under-qualified hotshots who come along and get the big job with less experience because they're cooler and have more rapport with the boss and are, after all, men...

Comedian Chris Rock's punchline, "I think America is ready for a woman president. But does it have to be that one?" must resonate at least a little with every woman who has ever been told by a man that she'd be perfect if it weren't for her (mole, ankles, voice, whatever).

Hillary has run the gauntlet of debates and hostile interviews with intelligence and guts. Grudgingly, perhaps, women give her props for strength and courage in the face of personal attacks that range from sneering dismissal to outright hate. The rest of us, almost to a woman, wouldn't want to break that ground if it meant hoeing that hard row.

If Hillary Clinton actually makes it to the White House, nobody will doubt that she earned her place in history the hard way.

Update: In Salon, Rebecca Traister calls out the old boys (The witch ain't dead, and Chris Matthews is a ding-dong: The glee with which Matthews and other angry male pundits prematurely danced on Hillary's grave made me -- for one night only -- a Clinton supporter):

The five days between Iowa and New Hampshire were discombobulating for anyone who had begun to get comfortable with the apparent ease with which American history had weirdly, smoothly made room for a female candidate. A woman had led the Democratic nominees for nearly a year with barely a whisper -- save for the occasional unflattering wrinkled photo -- of serious double-standard resistance from a nation that has yet to break its streak of white Christian guys sitting behind the Oval Office desk. It had all been so deceptively easy. But here were the buttoned up white boys over at Meet the Press going all Lord of the Flies on her. Cintra Wilson called the spectacle "a little witch-burny," while Time's Michael Scherer blogged about a call he'd received from a conservative pundit who told him, "The witch is dead, and life is going to change." The pundits, Clinton's opponents, her colleagues -- they were making sport of Hillary's immolation. They were rolling in it. Exulting in it. It reeked of a particular kind of relief, relief from the guys who had thought they were going to have to hold their noses and get pushed around by some dame. They were behaving like men who had received a sudden and unexpected reprieve, and classily reacted by pulling down their pants and peeing on her.

And then ... people began to notice. In my circle, mothers in particular began to notice. My friends and colleagues told me of their despondent moms. Even my own, whose politics list far to the left of Clinton's, bowled me over by expressing her sadness about the treatment Hillary received. I think she was surprised herself as she confessed that she was "sad" about Iowa. "Whether or not it's Hillary," she said, "I just think this shows that any woman who's going to be aggressive enough to make a go of it is going to be too aggressive to be likable."

Historical note: Shirley Chisholm won the N.J. primary in 1972; Jesse Jackson won S.C. in 1988.