Something is happening in America; signs of a sea-change.

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The NFL playoffs kicked off Saturday night, but at the Barley House, an upscale tavern across the street from the state Capitol, it seemed as if the only games worth watching were the back-to-back Republican and Democratic presidential debates.

Backers of Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton packed the bar and punctuated long, listening silences with bursts of applause for their respective candidates.

“This is very telling,” Gerard Dillon, one of the handful of Republicans in the joint, said during the Democratic debate. “It’s impressive that it’s on here. You’d expect the football games to be on.”

The games were showing in one corner of the bar’s basement, where about a dozen patrons huddled. Even some of them felt out of place.

“We want to be in there,” 36-year-old Mike Holt said of an adjacent room where about 60 debate-watchers gathered. “There’s no tables.”

Roughly 150 political junkies positioned around big-screen televisions on the bar’s two floors were affiliated with one campaign or another. Obama backers dominated the basement while a mix, including a large contingent of Clinton supporters and some devotees of John Edwards , seated themselves on the main floor.

Waiters and waitresses wore tavern T-shirts advertising “Campaign Trail Ale” and advising “It’s about the beer, stupid.”

But the beer flowed slowly when the candidates spoke, with transactions picking up only during commercial breaks.

Chet Whye, a veteran Democratic political activist from New York, talked about the momentum he believes Obama is building in New Hampshire, based in part on telephone calls he has made to voters.

“I have people finishing my pitch for me,” he said.

Still, Whye said he is bracing for the possibility of a nomination decided at the Democratic convention later this year.

“We need to be prepared for a convention where we have to outstrategize the best politician in the world — and that’s Bill Clinton,” he said.

One New Hampshire voter who is pulling for Clinton in the Democratic primary is Republican Alan Harkabus. Harkabus is voting for John McCain because of his party affiliation and because he says McCain needs his help in the GOP primary more than Clinton does in the Democratic race, but Harkabus was impressed with Clinton at a campaign stop earlier in the day.

“After listening to her today, I’d think seriously about voting for her,” he said — even if Clinton and McCain face off in November.

“She may be a more rounded candidate than he is,” said Harkabus, who spoke in a room filled with Obama volunteers.

For those working on the campaigns who didn’t get enough politics on Saturday, they’ll have another chance Sunday.

But for some of the out-of-towners, that could provide a tougher choice between football and politics.

“It’ll be hard tomorrow when the [New York] Giants are playing,” Whye said.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com:80/trail-less-traveled/2008/01/debates-pack-more-punch-than-f.html