Iowa
Well, I’m 1 for 2 on predictions, with Huckabee taking Iowa and Edward second on the Democratic side. Obama convinced young voters to come out and join the caucuses, which was his margin of victory. The only thing I really regret about Iowa is Chris Dodd’s decision to withdraw. I would have liked to have rewarded his stand on the Constitution in the meaningless Florida primary.
I will stand by Edwards and Huckabee in South Carolina.
New Hampshire is weird, so I’ll go with Clinton, Obama, Edwards for the Dems, and McCain, Huckabee, Romney for the Reps.
I don’t understand why Kucinich decided to go right in Iowa by telling his supporters to make Obama their second choice. The move seemed totally out of character.
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Yeah, that one puzzled me too. I guess I’ll just have to re-think my plan to vote for Dennis. If the nomination is wrapped up by the time things get out here to California I’ll go ahead and vote for him as a protest vote against the “mainstream” nominees all of whom I consider wrong on health care, but if Edwards is still in the running, he’s at least to the left of Hil and Obama, so…
At present, Edwards is the least worst choice among the major candidates. It would be nice if the Democrats didn’t have to run against the media as well as the Republicans. It will be interesting to see how they are going to deal with Huckabee, both the media and the Republicans.
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Now that Dodd is out, and Kucinich is off the Texas ballot, I suppose I’ll go with Edwards… if he is still in it by March 4. I understand the reasons for having states set their own election rules, but it feels as if I am effectively disenfranchised by voting so late. Primary voting is party registration in Texas, so I will vote, but I expect to have no effect on any outcome.
I get to vote on the 29th of the month in a primary the party doesn’t recognize, but I have to vote because I’m sure there will be sneaky measures on the ballot.
Bryan, there’s the property tax reform measure which will screw over the public schools, so… yes, there are sneaky measures on the ballot.
I would love to comment about that on my blog, but I’d get fired.
There always are, Bobby, anytime there’s a low turnout election they will throw in some nasty ballot measure to sneak through under the radar.
i was a bit aggravated by dk’s endorsement of obama, but it wasn’t completely unexpected after that ron-paul-as-running-mate thingy.
otoh, i’m really happy to see obama doing well, and so early too. it’s mighty tempting to see this as a suggestion that we’re maybe might be moving towards being a slightly less racist society.
on the other other hand, it’ll be interesting to see how the southern states vote.
edwards has been my favorite, by a very tiny margin, for a few weeks now, over kucinich. still, i was surprised at how strong a sense of loss i felt when i saw dodd’s announcement.
The official Republican response to Huckabee’s win? Damnatio memoriae. The head of the RNC managed to give an entire interview on CNN about the Iowa caucuses without ever once mentioning Huckabee by name.
The South is changing, Hipparchia. Not very quickly, to be sure, but there are changes visible in public. The changes to hearts and minds is going to take a lot longer.
They do have a problem, Michael, because he is a former governor, and the evangelicals have been so important to the Repubs retaining power. If they say the wrong thing, they could destroy the link, just as they have destroyed their link to Hispanics. It’s time for another re-invention if they plan to continue as a viable political party. Huckabee isn’t Pat Robertson, he has government credentials.
Huckabee isn’t done, and he has a reasonable chance of winning in Florida. He will certainly take North Florida and the Panhandle away from Giuliani. It will be interesting.
I think the link is dissolving on its own: the fundagelicals are to the Republicans what most of us have been to the Democrats–ATMs and reliable votes. Both sides of the aisle are waking up and telling the parties that have been taking us for granted for so long that we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
But it’s worse for the Republicans, because while they’ve relied on the evangelical fringe for years as foot soldiers, every other faction in the party looks down on them and despises them. Huckabee won in Iowa largely because of a hugely disparate concentration of evangelical Christians that will be difficult to replicate in other red states with more diverse populations. Ironically, his next best chance would probably be Utah, though this cycle that state’s probably going to stick with its favorite son Willard.
Huckabee’s government credentials don’t look too good from our perspective. But they look even worse from the Republicans’: as witness some of the attack ads that other Republican candidates have already put out about him. He raised taxes in Arkansas, granted clemency to more than a thousand convicted felons, and released a recidivist sex offender. And besides, there are cities in this country that have larger populations and bigger economies than Arkansas. He can try to ride that horse down the campaign trail, but we’ll just laugh at him.
I’m just thinking about the primary battles, not the general. Huckabee has no chance of taking Florida in the general election, even with the Republican “machine” behind him, but the party activists are evangelicals. He can win Republican primaries in the South and Midwest, but he has no chance in other areas. They are going to need a massive GOTV drive to defeat him down here, and the evangelicals are the people who always handled that.
Obama is running as the Lawrence Fishburne character in the Matrix movies, so I don’t think race will be an issue here. Sure, many Southerners still won’t vote for a generic “black person”. But Obama isn’t running as generic “black person”. He’s running as a Hollywood archetype — the “magic Negro” who steps in and saves the day for the white folk. Racist white southerners are always quick to remind you that they only dislike “those” blacks, the uppity ones, not the helpful ones. Obama isn’t running as Uncle Tom, but he ain’t runnin’ as Average Joe Negro either — his entire campaign seems built around depicting him as this movie archetype of the larger-than-life “Magic Negro” who steps in to save the day. (Note: Before you flame me, the term “Magic Negro” is something I borrowed from The Black Commentator, which if I recall correctly is a publication of one of the radical black groups, and it is their analysis of black roles in recent Hollywood movies that I am depicting above).
I saw your post, Badtux, and I’m aware of the usage. The people who won’t vote for Obama will vote for Huckabee. They will vote Republican, if they vote. That is the problem for the Repubs – if Huckabee isn’t the candidate, they may not vote at all.
Republican turnout is going to be crap, bottom line. And that’s the good news.
Bloomberg may run if Huckabee is the candidate. I can see Repub donors leaning on him to do it.
[…] predictions were: Clinton, Obama, Edwards for the Dems, and McCain, Huckabee, Romney for the […]