I don't like doing this, but aren't you a Bush-ite? I mean, come on. Gaffes? Idiocy? He is coming to the end of his 2nd term and I wouldn't believe you if you told me he had learnt to tie his shoes and feed himself.
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The Iowa Thread
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I don't like doing this, but aren't you a Bush-ite? I mean, come on. Gaffes? Idiocy? He is coming to the end of his 2nd term and I wouldn't believe you if you told me he had learnt to tie his shoes and feed himself.
The funny thing about Obama is that he's nowhere near as fluent in a one-on-one interview. Yet put a lectern and 10,000 people in front of him and he can match anything ever produced by JFK, Bill Clinton, or Jesse Jackson.
I was hoping Edwards would win Iowa, but even so, the last three minutes or so of Obama's speech where he starts riffing on 'this is the moment' and 'hope' send chills down my spine.
There is an inflection at the end of potent sentences that he ripped from MLK Jnr, but I'll cope. He's just a freak. The content was more impressive than the delivery, which was fantastic.
Can we send the speech to Hevvy Kevvy? I don't think our reps could speak the word let alone approach a lectern and preach on it.
Not really
At least Bush has a clue on trade and taxes
Re Obama and examples
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2182955.ece
Obama willing to invade Pakistan in al-Qaeda hunt
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., delivers a speech about terrorism, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Tom Baldwin in Washington
Barack Obama, a leading Democrat candidate in the US presidential race, provoked anger yesterday by threatening to send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists — even without permission from that country’s Government.
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9163589
But some of Mr Obama's prescriptions have been faintly worrying. On May 7th he caused a splash by telling Detroit's car giants that they bore some responsibility for their financial problems. They had failed to adopt clean technology, he said, and so were not producing cars that consumers wanted. Good analysis: but Mr Obama's remedy smacks of old-style industrial policy. He proposes a government bail-out of the firms' health-care costs provided they invest the money in reducing fuel emissions.
Nor is Mr Obama above craven pandering to special interests. He has supported subsidies for liquefying coal, for instance—an environmentally filthy operation, but a lucrative one for coal-rich states such as his own Illinois. He has signed on to ideas from the loony left, such as the Fair Pay Act, a nonsensical bill that demands equal pay for “comparable” work. These are doubtless politically driven decisions: the Fair Pay Act is sponsored by Tom Harkin, an Iowa senator whose endorsement would be most useful. But they suggest it may be too early to declare Obamanomics to be sensible centrism just yet.
One on One interviews they pump questions at him. In a speech about 1000 of the best paid speechwriters would have put together a great speech all he needs to do is put his element into it.
I don't like Obama for some strange reason. He seems, almost, fake. A bit like Rudd.
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Good to see Obama in first with Edwards second. Out of the 'big' (rich) candidates thats the best I could of hoped for.
Huckabee... meh. Most of the Republicans in this are Christian nutters. We can only hope their eventual nominee loses to the eventual Democratic nominee!
Huckabee... meh. Most of the Republicans in this are Christian nutters. We can only hope their eventual nominee loses to the eventual Democratic nominee!
Without having read much of the press yet, this would be my take:
The Winners
Obama (D): plenty's been said already.
Huckabee (R): Won by a larger margin than expected. It remains to be seen how credible a candidate he is, but this is the best possible start.
Thompson (R): Scraped into third place, but thats good when expectations were so low. He's done the barest minimum to stay in the race; he had been expected to drop out had he finished lower than third.
Giuliani (R): An odd sort of 'winner' considering he scored less Iowa delegates than Ron Paul. But Rudy ran dead in Iowa. All he needed was for Romney not to place first.
The Losers
Edwards (D): Had to win Iowa. He's gone.
Clinton (D): Whilst she's probably still the favourite this is a setback.
Romney (R): Big loser. Finished a distant second. Must win New Hampshire.
McCain (R): A disappointing fourth place finish despite his apparent rise in the national polls. Must win New Hampshire. Like he did in 2000.
The Winners
Obama (D): plenty's been said already.
Huckabee (R): Won by a larger margin than expected. It remains to be seen how credible a candidate he is, but this is the best possible start.
Thompson (R): Scraped into third place, but thats good when expectations were so low. He's done the barest minimum to stay in the race; he had been expected to drop out had he finished lower than third.
Giuliani (R): An odd sort of 'winner' considering he scored less Iowa delegates than Ron Paul. But Rudy ran dead in Iowa. All he needed was for Romney not to place first.
The Losers
Edwards (D): Had to win Iowa. He's gone.
Clinton (D): Whilst she's probably still the favourite this is a setback.
Romney (R): Big loser. Finished a distant second. Must win New Hampshire.
McCain (R): A disappointing fourth place finish despite his apparent rise in the national polls. Must win New Hampshire. Like he did in 2000.
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- #184
I reckon that should Obama win the nomination, his ideal running mate would be Wesley Clark. His age and experience in defence and foreign affairs are the perfect antidotes for Obama's biggest perceived weakness, without detracting from the 'anti-establishment' image that his campaign is cultivating. He's also a white guy from the South - if Huckabee is the Republican nominee Clark won't deliver Arkansas, but he gives Obama a strong chance in Virginia and possibly Florida.
If Huckabee is the R nominee then Obama could have Walter Mondale as running mate and still romp it in.
The overall, absolute winner on the night was the Democratic party.
They had twice the participants than the Republicans and their top three candidates outpolled the Republican winner. Of all 356,000 participants.
Obama 24.5%
Edwards 20.5%
Clinton 19.8%
Huckabee 11.4%
And this in a state that went for Bush in '04.
They had twice the participants than the Republicans and their top three candidates outpolled the Republican winner. Of all 356,000 participants.
Obama 24.5%
Edwards 20.5%
Clinton 19.8%
Huckabee 11.4%
And this in a state that went for Bush in '04.
Huckabee highlights the division in the Republican coalition. The Republican establishment hate him, and have tried to hoist their preferred candidates on their base, yet the evangelicals who they manipulate to win elections aren't listening.
Yes BUT if Hilary wins the Dem nomination you would think the God botherers would hold their nose and vote for anyone but her.
Look again at the numbers who voted in the Iowa caucuses. 2 to 1 to the Democrats. You can't compare these numbers to '04 because Bush had no competition but look at the turnout numbers in 2000. Republicans had 87,000 participants compared to 59,000 Democrats.
Bush has completely tarnished the Republicans. Clinton has high negatives but these are far outweighed by the negative of simply being a Republican. Any friction in the Republican coalition will make it impossible for them to mount an effective campaign to overcome the advantages of simply being the democratic candidate.
And the fact is she far outpolled Huckabee.
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No. Clinton leads all combined polls by 6-7% currently, and it will be interesting to see if that changes over the next few days. Unlike Iowa, those numbers mean something as well because people vote privately, and they're not discussed, negotiated, dissuaded and changed by other Democratic voters as in Iowa. There are not second-choice preferences that count as extra bonus votes as there was in Iowa either.
Colour doesn't matter in the slightest when it's only Democrats voting. He would have received less than 10% if he was a Republican in Iowa though.
This was predicted in Iowa beforehand though. Clinton leads more with women nationwide. Iowa was not Clinton's strongest state, and partly because of the caucus format there.
Clinton, Edwards and Obama will all beat any of these crop of Republicans. That was shown by the amount of Democrats (220,000 to 114,000) that voted in a Republican state last night. It's just a matter of which Democrat it will be. Had Clinton won last night, it would be all but over, and despite Edwards doing well last night, it is now a two horse race.
You may be on to something, however how much of this is due to Guiliani (and to a lesser extent McCain) not campaigning there?
He is copying Martin Luther King in tone and rhetoric.
If he becomes the front runner, I expect the Dem leaning MSM to go after him. The Dem establishment prefer Billary or even Edwards I suspect, even if the rank and file don't.
True that- he's my favourite candidate, slightly ahead of John McCain, but I wasn't hugely impressed by his interviews.
Seeing that speech, though, no doubt in my mind he is going to win. Not just the nominations, but the whole shebang. The truth is, most candidate speeches are a quest to get a soundbite or two and not make some horrible screw up, but when that man speaks, people listen.
In the modern age of teleprompters, speech writers and image consultants its very very rare to find a politician who is a genuine orator, but Obama has it in spades, up there with all the great political speakers of the 20th century. You hear him, and you can feel your genes standing to attention and demanding you go march in some civil demonstration or refight the battle of britain or invade poland or something.
That doesn't necessarily guarantee he'll be a good president, but I'm curious to see how he turns out, and its just nice to see a candidate who is capable of getting elected on the basis of their personal charisma rather than the party machine behind them. I think he's the right candidate for a country disillusioned with Bush.
Walter Mondale
If the GOP choose Huckabee then they really are stuffed. Is it just me, or does everyone struggle to understand the US electoral system? Whether it be the caucuses and primaries or college voting I have tried to understand US electoral politics and have failed.
evo
Let's hit the f*ken road!
Dave,can you briefly explain why Edwards is gawn?
Like Richo,just when I think i understand this process,I realise I don't.
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He is gone because he lacks the support of Clinton and Obama in the other 49 states. There is no way that he can make ground with his lack of funds. Nationally Clinton was leading Obama last week in combined polls by a margin of 44.6% to 24.4%. Edwards was at 14.0% which is too far behind.
His best expected state finish was Iowa, which was one of Clinton's expected worst states. Coming into Iowa, he was a chance to win it, but he is not expected to do that well again in any other state. The Democratic nomination is between two candidates although Edwards will continue to compete for as long as he can afford it.
evo
Let's hit the f*ken road!
Ok thanks.
So presumably if that is the accepted wisdom,he would know it too.
Why wouldn't he now say to himself VP will be my chance of power and chose to team up with Obama or Bilary;VP is better than a hopeless 3rd.Can he do that at this early stage?
I see it exactly the other way around, GJ. The media loves Obama. There's a poll out there recently that I read that collated newspaper articles on the Dem frontrunners and tried to gauge how positive the coverage of each was. Results were that while Obama had less total coverage, it was far more positive than Hillary's. The media antipathy toward the Clintons is longstanding. While there are some Clinton surrogates in the media (Carville's one that comes to mind), they are the exceptions IMO, not the rule.
You watch. The media will come out in favour of Obama during the primaries. I predict that they'll turn on him in the general, though. Particularly if McCain gets the Republican nom.
Reason is, the MSM were not taking BO seriously then, only as novelty factor and they have to keep a story going.
Dunno where you get this "antipathy" to the Clintons idea from? That's like saying there is media antipathy to Bush?
We shall see. One thing for certain: the media will put Obama under much closer scrutiny now that it looks like he's going to be "next President". In fact Obama has just upped his rhetoric - not only are "we" going to change America (after Iowa) . After NH, he says that now "we" are also going to change "the world" This enlarged ambition in the space of 24 hours.
Nothing galvanises media hounds more than the notion that a presidential candidate has got up himself on the basis of one win in a hick place like Iowa when they know they haven't put him under the grill yet.
Interesting belief that the media would turn on Obama if McCain was the Repub nomination. Why do you think this?
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