Today is the Iowa Caucus

[we vs us]

quote:Originally posted by recyclemichael

Great speech. He is a worthy candidate to be my President.

Say what you will about him, he's an excellent orator.

[RecycleMichael]

We desperately need a President who can communicate and inspire us.

The current one just smirks and lies.

I am an Edwards fan first, but would love to have Obama as my President.

[RecycleMichael]

I predict that Edwards and Hillary both get 27% of the vote and Obama gets 30%.

Nobody knows how strong the first-time caucus-goers are going to be. He has energized many of the normally apathetic Iowans.

[Rico]

Do you think that we should elect a President during "wartime" that has never been...?

Everybody is talking about "experience"....

"Ability to lead"

Where does it say any of these ladies or gents mentioned above fired their first "round".

Not important....? Not a critical quality..?



Oh.... My bad...... that is what the Iowa people are isn't it..?

The first round.[V]

I haven't made an absolute decision...

However;
I have not seen any evidence that Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee, Clinton, Obama, or Fred Thompson can hit the ground with "guns blazin"....
IED's goin boom...
body parts raining down like confetti...
 and the death count continuing to climb.

This election is not going to be about "happy.. happy.. joy.. joy.." it will be decided on whom can turn this boat around.

hint This boat is on fire.

[pmcalk]

quote:Originally posted by recyclemichael

I predict that Edwards and Hillary both get 27% of the vote and Obama gets 30%.

Nobody knows how strong the first-time caucus-goers are going to be. He has energized many of the normally apathetic Iowans.

I agree, I think Obama will win.  I like Edwards & Hillary, but there is something about Obama that is truly inspiring.  I have been a supporter ever since I read "Audacity of Hope."  What I like best about him is that his speeches are not dumbed down for the masses.  He doesn't speak in sound bites.

[Conan71]

I don't have a clue which channel it was on last night, but they were showing the voting process for the Iowa Caucus last night.  I had heard, but never seen it in action.  They were showing "voter training" in the story quite bizarre to see.  Cannon Fodder, did you ever participate in a caucus back home?

Here's another explaination of it from Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_caucus

[tim huntzinger]

I think Chris Dodd could be a dark horse.  This guy is more disciplined than Hillary, has never misspoke, and just seems solid as a rock.  He kind of glowers and that could be a problem, but his supporters (firefighters) are more reliable than most in terms of show-up.  They all know his talking points and stick to them, and could help immensely in the caucuses when the third-tier candidates get the boot.

Guillianni (sp) may be a scoundrel and at odds with much of the GOP 'base,' but everything I need to know about him was his reaction to the attacks on New York.  He really showed what he was made of at a gut level.

[YoungTulsan]

quote:Originally posted by tim huntzinger

I think Chris Dodd could be a dark horse.  This guy is more disciplined than Hillary, has never misspoke, and just seems solid as a rock.  He kind of glowers and that could be a problem, but his supporters (firefighters) are more reliable than most in terms of show-up.  They all know his talking points and stick to them, and could help immensely in the caucuses when the third-tier candidates get the boot.

Guillianni (sp) may be a scoundrel and at odds with much of the GOP 'base,' but everything I need to know about him was his reaction to the attacks on New York.  He really showed what he was made of at a gut level.

Actually, Conan brought up a good point about how screwy the caucus system is in Iowa.  If his supporters are firefighters, that might not help him.  The caucuses require that you be present for 2 or 3 hours that night, which excludes from voting anyone who cannot be there, be it due to disability, active deployed military, or having a job that requires you to work evenings.  I'm sure a really avid voter who waits tables could probably swing the night off, but someone who works in emergency services such as fire, paramedics, nurses, medical staff, etc might have a harder time getting off.  Especially the entire workforce which is what the strength of having the backing of a certain group is good for in the first place.  Almost seems a little unfair.

[rwarn17588]

On the other hand ...

I find Iowa's system refreshing because it requires a bit of dedication and interaction before you actually vote. Let's face it -- sometimes voters make decisions in the booth for shallow and glib reasons.

These people in Iowa are genuinely invested in democracy, so I have no problem with it. It's their primary, so they have a right to run it the way they want.

I'm not sure this could be feasible on a national scale, however.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by tim huntzinger

I think Chris Dodd could be a dark horse.  This guy is more disciplined than Hillary, has never misspoke, and just seems solid as a rock.  He kind of glowers and that could be a problem, but his supporters (firefighters) are more reliable than most in terms of show-up.  They all know his talking points and stick to them, and could help immensely in the caucuses when the third-tier candidates get the boot.

Guillianni (sp) may be a scoundrel and at odds with much of the GOP 'base,' but everything I need to know about him was his reaction to the attacks on New York.  He really showed what he was made of at a gut level.

Dodd's got about as much clout as Gravel.  I really don't see this.

Far right conservatives need to get over themselves about Rudy.  He kicked donkey as a prosecutor and under his watch as mayor, corruption, deficits, and violence was reduced to near nothing for a city it's size.  It went from being many people's idea of Hell to being a pretty liveable and safe city.  So what if he's diddled and he's got a P.O.'d ex wife or two?  Aside from the smoking hole where WTC used to be, NYC was far better off the day he left office than the day he took it.  That's indisputable.  That's leadership.  

Thing is, Mitt's got a proven track record as well from the Olympic Games to a relatively successful GOP governor in a liberal state.  So's Huckabee if you look at what all he had to clean up following Tucker and Clinton in the Governor's mansion.

If it wouldn't devolve into something incredibly self-destructive, I think it would be fun to watch a general election race between Clinton and Huckabee.  I'm sure both camps have plenty of **** bombs to drop on each other.

[we vs us]

"This is the most important election of our lifetime."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2233638,00.html?src=rss

A nice perspective on what's goin' down this season.

[Conan71]

The Guardian sucks unless you want to know the current talking points of the DNC.  England has been trying to manipulate our political system ever since we dumped the tea in the harbor. []

I'm trying to figure out why people still pay Michael Tomasky for his political op-eds?  They are all the same, they could just re-run his old stuff and save some money.  Reads the same, just the names are changed.

[Rico]

^

This conversation needs a small amount of humor...







[}:)]

[we vs us]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

The Guardian sucks unless you want to know the current talking points of the DNC.  England has been trying to manipulate our political system ever since we dumped the tea in the harbor. []

I'm trying to figure out why people still pay Michael Tomasky for his political op-eds?  They are all the same, they could just re-run his old stuff and save some money.  Reads the same, just the names are changed.

Well, see there?  You learn something new every day.  Silly me, not being an avid reader of British papers, I came across this in my travels and thought it had some interesting insights into the elections.  

Now I'll be sure to discard Tomasky as soon as I see his name in print.  Likewise the Guardian, and this despicable DNC which you seem to believe is pulling the ideological strings transatlantically.

[FOTD]

You won't see this in any newspaper in Tulsa....
AMES, Iowa

Op-Ed Columnist
Deign or Reign?

1-2-08

By MAUREEN DOWD


Edith Wessel, an 80-year-old white-haired retired nurse, moved slowly up the aisle with her walker after listening to Hillary make her pitch.

She told one of the Hillary volunteers that she had “great admiration” for the senator, but also great doubts about whether her strong negatives would sink her in the general election.

“I can’t understand why people dislike her so much,” Mrs. Wessel said.

The volunteer assured the wavering caucusgoer that the Republicans will slime anyone who gets the nomination and that Hillary has more experience wrestling them than her rivals.

Mrs. Wessel is torn. She likes Obama but worries about his experience. She likes Hillary but worries about her baggage.

The presidential anglers here are dancing on the head of a pin. The Democratic race — three lawyers married to lawyers who talk too much — is very tight and very volatile. Even the jittery pack of seasoned political operatives gazing into their BlackBerrys doesn’t seem to have a clue which way the Iowa snowdrifts are blowing.

Across town, Nancy Hibbs, a 57-year-old nurse, came to listen to John Edwards give his son-of-a-mill-worker rant against corporate greed, complete with a sneer aimed at Obama that anyone who thinks you can “just nice” the carnivorous Republican fat cats into submission is in “Never-Never Land.”

Ms. Hibbs had decided after seeing Barack Obama a year ago that she would vote for him. She saw him again Monday night in Ames and felt even more certain that he was the one. After listening to Edwards for 40 minutes on Tuesday, she up and changed her mind, deciding to vote for him.

“You can tell in his voice he’s not playing the game, you can hear his moral commitment,” she said. “We need a big turnaround.”

And what about Hillary? “I don’t want the same old entrenched politics,” she replied, adding emphatically, “And I don’t want Bill in the White House again.”

But Bill very much wants to be in the White House again. He is going around the state relentlessly, giving a speech as tightly choreographed with Hillary’s as a “Dancing With the Stars” routine.

“Miss Bill? Vote Hill!” reads one button being sold outside their events. By the time Bill and Hill are finished with you, you could be forgiven for thinking that she had personally forged the peace accord in Northern Ireland while socking away the $127 billion Clinton budget surplus and dodging bullets en route to ending ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

The Big Dog pushed the experience card hard. “Whatever’s fixin’ to happen,” whether it’s something like 9/11, Katrina or Pakistan, he said, Hillary is better equipped to face it.

As to the health care debacle, he said, “Every president will fail at something or another.” It’s how they dust themselves off that counts.

And whether she has learned from her mistakes, of course, is the heart of the matter, and something that voters can never really know — even if they study up as much as Iowans.

Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled? Or has she merely learned to mask her off-putting and self-sabotaging qualities better? If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom? She is speaking in a soft, measured voice in these final days, so that, as with Daisy Buchanan, you have to lean in to listen. But is she really different than she was in the years when she was so careless about the people around her getting hurt by the Clinton legal whirlwind that she was dubbed the Daisy Buchanan of the boomer set?

The underlying rationale for her campaign is that she is owed. Owed for moving to Arkansas and giving up the name Rodham, owed for pretending to care about place settings and menus when she held the unappetizing title of first lady, owed for enduring one humiliation after another at the hands of her husband.

Oddly, Barack and Michelle Obama also radiate a sense that they are owed. Not for a lifetime of sublimation and humiliation, but for this onerous campaign, for offering themselves up to save and uplift the nation, even though it disrupted their comfortable lives.

Michelle told Vanity Fair that Americans would have only one chance to anoint her husband, vowing “it’s now or never” and explaining “there’s an inconvenience factor there” and a “really, really hard” pressure and stress on the family that can only be justified if her husband can win the presidency and “change the world.”

She told a group gathered at a nursing home in Grinnell on Monday that “Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics.”

So it comes down to this: Will Queen Hillary reign? Will Prince Barack deign? And who is owed more?