Boy, the New York Times has really managed to produce some quality analysis from their columnist lately. It must be the Bill Kristol effect (of course, Maureen Dowd's issues continue).

But Bobo Brooks is swimming with the counter-factual tide and has himself a blog and manages to crank out this statement:

Republicans voted in nearly the same numbers as Democrats. In Iowa, Democratic interest swamped Republican interest. In New Hampshire, the Democrats had an edge, but it was not huge.

Um, yeah...

As his own paper's Ron Klain points out (and as a number of people pointed out here and on other blogs yesterday) Brooks is laughably wrong...as usual.

The four Democratic candidates last night drew about 270,000 votes between them, while the larger G.O.P. field drew about 210,000, or about 60,000 more votes for the Democrats than the Republicans. Maybe this sounds like a small difference to some, but given that fewer than 700,000 New Hampshirites voted in the last general election for president, a 60,000-vote differential in that small state is quite significant.

In the real world, as opposed to "Bobo's World", 56% of voters going Democratic to 44% for the GOP is pretty significant. In fact, as Klain states, it is unusual in New Hampshire's history:

In the three decades since 1980, there have been four primary years when both the G.O.P. and the Democratic nominations were contested – 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008. In all three of the previous elections, there were more votes cast in the Republican primaries than in the Democratic primaries. The G.O.P. margin was almost 40,000 votes in 1988 and almost 80,000 votes in 2000. So to see more votes cast in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary last night than in the state’s Republican one — not to mention 60,000 more votes — is almost as historic as seeing a one-two finish by a woman and an African-American.

It also tells you that one of the most historically Republican states in the country has moved on. The Independents are coming out for the Democrats, and in New Hampshire they came out in droves for Obama AND Clinton.

But if Bobo and other GOP shills want to keep up this sloppy and non-panicking analysis, be our guests.