What a difference tears can make over the years. In 1972, Ed Muskie, the heavy favourite from neighbouring Maine, semi-wept on a flat bed truck in the snows of New Hampshire over newspaper insults to his wife and, suddenly, was dead politically. On Monday, Hillary Clinton allowed the hint of tears in a diner and put herself back in the race for the White House.

The day before New Hampshire voted, conventional wisdom had it that Barack Obama had caught lightning in a bottle and was in the process of consigning the House of Clinton to history’s dustbin. It also suggested that the Republicans could not even find the bottle.