She cried — sort of.

The ABC News video clip of Hillary Clinton, seated at a table, brandishing the microphone with the flick of a wrist — like the rock star some have made her out to be — is making waves across the country. Probably around the world.

Why?

Is it the pause, with that half-grin, half-sob, and a wisp of moisture in her eye?

Is it centuries of sexism rising from the depths of the American female psyche to burst onto the presidential campaign in quiet fury?

Is it because we're surprised that someone's talking candidly in a horse race that's been, well, exhausting?

I think it's because we suddenly caught a glimpse of reality — from a woman who, right there in front of us, has been figuring out who she is. It ain't about Bill anymore (if it ever really was), and it can't be about New York because, well, she's not really from there.

In that moment, at that table in New Hampshire, we saw something. And it was real — not pre-packaged, not scripted, not calculated (though if you look this clip up on YouTube a few times, you'll see how smoothly she moves from almost-lost-it to gotta-get-back-on-message. She's no dummy.

Don't expect to see the campaign pivot on that moment. It takes more than momentary candor in front of adoring crowds to make one fit for leadership on the national and international stage. We've got some hard watching and listening to do as this campaign season surges forward.

But we were seeing in the massive reaction (albeit brief, it's a long way to November) the symptoms of a nation yearning to put its heart and soul back into democracy. Young voters are showing up in droves at caucuses that used to be collections of oldsters. And like visionary young people tend to do, they're making their elders sit up and pay attention.

If predictions are correct, it's young voters that are going to swing this election. And it's about time. We live in a nation that has youthful vigor and brilliant outside-the-box brains driving its economy and best steps toward sanity and recovery at many levels. (And please get this: the young people I'm talking about aren't all white suburban kids. Some of the smartest have bilingual and bi-cultural abilities, in some cases learned overseas.)

Journalists, for all the flak they get, are pretty good at being watchdogs. And they were smart enough to have their cameras on and audio running when truth peeked out at them from Hillary Clinton.

Let's hope it happens again — in more places, with more people.