The young people finally showed up!. If the next generation is, indeed, taking over, is Chelsea the only relevant Clinton?
Obviously, the big winners yesterday were the Democratic party and Obama and Edwards. Both men made great speeches last night. If you didn't get to stay up and watch them live, here are the reruns: Barack Obama ~ John Edwards.
UPDATE: Walter Shapiro's Iowa in the rear-view mirror looks back at both Obama and Edwards in Iowa.
Dodd and Biden: I'm so sorry to see both of these candidates go, but glad to have them back in the trenches and doing what they do so well -- standing up to both the Republicans and the spineless Democrats -- full time again. And perhaps we will see them in new roles soon... majority leader and secretary of state, perhaps?
And while their campaigns are still active, Kucinich, Gravel and Hunter have been excluded from the weekend's New Hampshire debates, and their showings in Iowa do not bode well for their continuing efforts.
The good news is that the results in Iowa show that a candidate can't waltz in and just buy themselves a nomination. The candidates who thought they could throw some money at the state and win were shocked to see rivals with much less money do just as well, if not better, than they did. Yay for the power of the people! Also good news: the establishment took a big hit in Iowa. Hillary Clinton, the DLC, the BDE, Mitt Romney -- they all were schooled by anti-establishment winners like Obama, Edwards and Huckabee. Them's fighin' results!
Did the night also leave us with more questions than answers?
We do still have the same old Rudy Giuliani: "9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11..." He's got nothing else to say.
And who is suddenly the ugly stepchild in the GOP? Evangelical voters. Republicans have been quietly tolerating them, and using them to get out the vote, for years. But are they ready to let one lead their party? Apparently not.
Yes, I've known for a while that not all Republicans embrace the religious right, the culture wars, the incessant gay-bashing and all the other "social" issues. But they certainly tolerated and enabled these folks for decades (that's why some of us left the party a long time ago). I suspected and hoped that there'd come a time when the Republicans would finally have enough of the holy-rollers in their midst, but I never thought the revolt would come on little cat feet. Almost without notice, something changed, and establishment Republicans are now turning on Huckabee and the "values voters" that he represents, big time.Or is it Ron Paul that the Republicans can't stand?
2 comments:
Great post! Chock full of information and hearty opinion. BTW, I think I read that Gravel is out.
The "Republicans" are caught in an internal debate. Ron Paul has enamored a swath of libertarian oriented moderates/republicans that the party is scared. RP has a loyal and active base that both gives and works for their guy.
Huckabee scares the %!@#$ out of them because if he wins the primaries his agenda may likely distance himself from the purple states. They had hoped that a Regan doppelganger might run arise but that hope has drifted down in the polls (see Fred Thompson for details).
What you're left with is mixed bag of experience and quirks that don't show themselves as front runners yet - and Republicans don't like non obvious front runners.
The Dems have a smaller dilemma - Obama who has captured the imagination of many vs. Clinton / Edwards who have essentially been running for the last four years.
As far as the exclusion of Ron Paul from the debate, FOX should add that to their list of things to be ashamed of.
Wild ride ahead.
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