As’ad AbuKhalil* lend me his favorite potato. It is from Iowa. I polled it. Results:
| Dems | Repubs | |||
| Edwards | 25.0% | Huckabee | 30% | |
| Obama | 25.0% | Romney | 30% | |
| Clinton | 25.0% | McCain | 10% | |
| Richardson | 5.0% | Thompson | 10% | |
| Biden | 5.0% | Giuliani | (9.11 / 2)% | |
| Paul | (6.66 * 2)% |
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January 3, 2008
Iowa Primary
Comments
Seems like bland Democrat paste vs. blander Republican paste.
Posted by: Diogenes | Jan 3 2008 22:11 utc | 2
I am looking forward to watching Hillary eat humble pie this evening. I am keeping my fingers crossed…
Posted by: Bea | Jan 3 2008 22:32 utc | 3
Kucinich will support Obama. [no link but it was on npr]
Governor Kaine (Virginia) endorsed Obama today.
So.
Posted by: beq | Jan 3 2008 22:42 utc | 4
Some kool-aid should go well with that poll. Gratis from Haaretz.
Iowa on the eve of primaries is a really dazzling democratic celebration. There is the farmer who could decide how the war in Iraq will be conducted; there is the shopkeeper who could decide what will happen with Iran’s nuclear program; there is the receptionist who could examine the future of relations with China; and there is the student whose vote will influence the stability of the Lebanese democracy. And ours.
Feeling better now, aren’t you?
Posted by: Alamet | Jan 4 2008 0:29 utc | 5
Well,to paraphrase something another commenter said yesterday, better to have these things decided by thousands of farmers and shopkeepers than one Supreme Court vote!
Posted by: Maxcrat | Jan 4 2008 0:38 utc | 6
watching cnn for the first time in a very very long time & whom do i see but this rascist xenophobic readers digest rumsfield – lou dobbs – he’s also had excerpts on the evil immogrants – the unimaginably evil red chinese – who are just waiting to take kith & kin – he’s fucking mad, quite mad but given the political landscape i imagine he looks normal
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2008 0:49 utc | 7
whoaaaa!!!!!!!!
over there at cnn – blitzer also
cnn has the market in these gonorrhea ridden golem
where are such men made
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2008 1:04 utc | 8
So,
any results yet?
Middle of the night here, in a snowy Sweden.
Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Jan 4 2008 1:15 utc | 9
no – they just appear to be babbling or barking but it is their habitude
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2008 1:21 utc | 10
All I know is that everything I’ve heard/seen today has projected Obama to win and Hillary to come in third. But it’s not over until it’s over.
Posted by: Bea | Jan 4 2008 1:22 utc | 11
bea
its hard to tell between these golem grabbing one another & calling each other the master newsmen of their age – when in fact what we are watching is one breath removed from dribbling
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2008 1:25 utc | 12
Probably no real results before at least 11pm Eastern Time (US) – they’re just yammering now.
R’giap: “gonorrhea ridden golem” !!! I love your writing. Too bad you are not a regular op/ed columnist in one of our major papers instead of the warmed-over hasbeens they foist on us like Broder and Cohen.
Posted by: Maxcrat | Jan 4 2008 1:27 utc | 13
They are now counting the Dems results at this place and it would appear that potatoe had some inside information.
Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Jan 4 2008 1:50 utc | 15
Oh great, Obama will win, then they’ll shoot him, and …??
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 4 2008 2:20 utc | 17
Its Official – ABC announced that Barack Obama [background from Coast Province in Kenya] has won the Iowa democratic primary. Unless Kibaki/Clinton robs him.
Posted by: BenIAM | Jan 4 2008 2:30 utc | 18
blitzer quite unhappy that people aren’t hacking each other with machetes in iowa caucus rooms
or the other – continuing of the fantasy (bill bennett) of the light on the hill – held by a huckabee who holds no candles to that thief & liar pat robertson – who sd just the other day “we’ve won china – they’re turning christian” & that god told him someone from the school of americas ought to go cleaning out leaders & people in latin america – to do his ministry’s work
& a barack obama – who will break the heart of those left holding on to any faith in parliamentary politics
for the golem – it’s just a gig – in hell
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2008 2:59 utc | 20
Obama’s numbers keep going up and Clinton’s keep going down. On the Rethug side Huckabee won and Giuliani looks pretty well finished (as well as possibly Romney).
Posted by: Bea | Jan 4 2008 3:01 utc | 21
Yes, thanks ASKOD. That was the most useful site of the evening for ALL THINGS IOWA.
Guess I was wrong about the 11pm timeframe. I thought it would take longer to collect all the tallies.
My not-especially-informed take on the outcome for Dems – its a big win for Edwards to place second. He is in play now. Clinton will still be in play with a 3rd, but it would have been tough for Edwards to climb up.
Posted by: Maxcrat | Jan 4 2008 3:01 utc | 22
Well as far as I know Blitzer only cares about what is good for Israel and this has not been a good night for Israel at all. They wanted Clinton/Giuliani.
Posted by: Bea | Jan 4 2008 3:03 utc | 23
In case anyone wants to see the county-by-county (or even precint by precint) counts, the Des Moines Register site has much more detail than all but the most fervent psephologists might desire.
Personal comments:
I am happy to see Hillary finish third, and found her televised remarks to be revealing of her almost Nixonian tin-ear for rousing campaign rhetoric. By contrast, I thought that Edwards’ took very effective advantage of the TV exposure his second place finish brought him. That speech may mark the real (visible) beginning of his national campaign. Huckabee was a folksy and limited as expected.
I didn’t catch Obama’s victory speech, but certainly a clear victory in an “unfavorable” state like Iowa may be analogous to JFK’s victories in Wisconsin and West Virginia back in 1960: an Obama victory in New Hampshire (another “unfavorable” state) would make him the odds on favorite for the Democratic nomination.
I doubt, alas, that any “accredited observer” will conclude from the fact that Ron Paul took 3 times the vote of Rudy Giuliani that the former is now a serious candidate. Also the Dennis Kucinich campaign seems almost invisible in the Iowa results.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jan 4 2008 7:57 utc | 24
Poor Republicans: their two leading mainstream candidates are either too cosmopolitan (Rudi G.) or too Mormon (Rommitty), but the Huckster is just too conservative for many Americans.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 4 2008 9:06 utc | 25
@r’giap – 7 – I saw that Lou Dobbs segment too – right out of Goebbel’s book.
Started from a WSJ piece of some Heritage Foundation hack on ‘rumours’ about a Chinese unmanned space craft.
Then Dobbs showed pictures of 1960s chinese bomber prototype and explained how “dangerous” this “new plane” could be and that China recently took out one of its own satellites (something the U.S. did 20 years ago).
Pictures of marching crowd’s and “Red Storm Rising” banner (the title of an old Clancy novel about a NATO/Russia conflict) on the screen – pure propaganda without any facts. The “experts” he had on where all rightwing warmongerers. One wonders how much Boeing and Lockheed pay him for this junk.
It’s a long way from Iowa to November and while I have no examples to back it up (memory only works if yer interested and I’m afraid amerikan primaries of either ilk don’t hold me entranced) I seem to remember that the early shows often run outta puff.
The fickle nature of the process, the media, and voters means that what seemed good in January can feel very stale by March. Obama will have his moment in the sun before racism, or more disingenuously the fear of racism, – like this- “Hell it ain’t me brother, remember I always said MLK’s birthday should be a public holiday, but you know these others who don’t feel that way. We gotta win this one. The country ( country = code for me and my mates at the trough) can’t afford another rethug prez”.
That’s when Edwards’ ersatz egalitarianism will rise to the surface like a fart in a bath of tepid, greasy ‘n whisker strewn, soap water. Gently “pop” as it breaks the surface before the stink of decaying virtues overwhelms everyone paying attention.
The bullshit machine is humming sweetly along now as it pumps out the daily ration of ordure, the best representation of this is found on the Gallup site here. If you scroll to the bottom of the page to “The most important issues in vote for president, amongst national adults” you will see that the war in Iraq has been declining as an issue while politically meaningless diversions such as ‘the economy’ are on the upswing as they say in the trade.
By politically meaningless I’m trying to infer that however bad voters are doing under current economic conditions and however much they make this ‘an issue’ they understand that little about the way the economy works will be changed when they vote in a dem prez, other than that prez will pretend to care about the straights his ‘fellow amerikans’ find themselves in.
It’s gonna be a bad couple of years for americans who have moved into amerika recently, immigration is regarded as ‘an issue’ by the usual crew of self-haters and incompetents, a poorly performing economy always increases the size of this sad cluster.
But the most telling chart is the one titled ‘healthcare’. There was a surge of interest in that as an election issue back in mid-07 about the time of Sicko’s release. Of course it didn’t take long for reality to spoil the fun. rethug governor Schwarzenegger is going to do more for californian citizens healthcare than any dem prez is going to do for amerikan citizens. And that won’t be a whole helluva lot.
The drop in interest in healthcare as an issue tells us that the people have pretty much given up on the notion of anything good for them coming outta the prez 08 circus.
It is interesting that the pols on both sides believe the ‘Iraq issue’ or the ’empire issue’ must not be debated during this electoral cycle. They seem confident they can mollify the voters on the economy or healthcare but terrified of a debate on empire focussing the election.
Hence money is being tipped into the back pockets of Iraqis that swore to destroy amerika a few short months ago.
The only question being whether the gunfire and IED’s will erupt before the campaign ends or afterwards when washington ‘forgets’ to roll over the funding for another 12 months.
My heart says before but my head thinks the Iraqi leadership may not be that prescient or at least not care too much when it is. They may figure that the war money will dry up inevitably, so a bloke might as well stick it till the end.
Oh well think of the bright side.
It’ll be fun in Washington for those on the circling bandwagons of never-fulfilled, once noble causes.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 4 2008 9:24 utc | 27
Fairly amusing meltdown in Iowa, or as an emphatic George Stepanopoulos stammered, “neither of the winners tonight has any currency with the Washington DC political elites”. I expect the real PTB curtains will again have to more than comfortably revealed to contain the damage, particularly against the clueless Huckster, who will feel the the long knives shortly. Which hopefully will drive the electorate farther, rather than closer to them – and show their hand more explicitly. Shaping up pretty well compared to the normally expected. More popcorn please.
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 4 2008 9:39 utc | 28