Hillary's base: The Rosanne Barr Voters

So says Daniel Henninger:

I always thought of Hillary as the Ma Barker of the Clinton gang in those years. When the going got tough, when the Feds were closing in and the boys were whimpering in the corner, Ma would slap the fight back into them. Well, there are a lot of Ma Barkers in northern Ohio just now and across the U.S. With the economy on edge, their lives stressed and their men moping, these women are the ones who've got to suck it up and hold the house together until the troubles fade.

In Ohio, the ratio of female to male voters was 59 to 41. Among white women, who made up 44% of the Ohio turnout, she got 67% of their vote. In high-school gyms on Sunday in Youngstown and Akron, these women were screaming for Hillary. It was intense. This wasn't the soccer-mom vote. It was the "Roseanne" vote.

Yes, this is Hillary's "base." But till now it's been regarded as an undifferentiated blob, a political category. Now we see that these women don't just support her. They love her -- and what she represents.

But amid the screaming, raucous throng, the fact remains: Her message is a downer. It is completely negative. She helps predisposed audiences to bring their resentments into sharp focus, and explode. Any sense of achieving, or at least feeling, something new or fresh is what Mr. Obama brings to the table. She doesn't. Other than tenacity, there isn't much truly positive that wells up from Hillary Clinton. It may yet turn out that this woman and hard times are a strong match to win the Democratic Party's nomination. If she does, that one big question will remain: Will the whole country want her?