Month: January 2008

The Independents

They went for Obama and … Ron Paul respectively. Among independents, Clinton came a poor third: 17 percent to Obama’s 41. And McCain lost out to Paul: 23 percent to 29. The men with the most support among independents – the people you need to win a general election – are the most despised by the Republican base. In they end, the Republicans poisoned themselves. Maybe they’ll begin to recognize how far they’ve fallen.

Huckabee vs Romney

A fascinating contrast: Huckabee won the pro-Bush vote; he won the middle class and working class vote; he won the religious vote. He also did very well with women. Romney is strongest among those who earn more the $100,000 a year and men. Huckabee did best among the under-30s; Romney did best among those over 65. This really is about the future – and it isn’t Romney’s. In the end they rumbled this phony.

The Christianists Triumph In The GOP

That’s the obvious conclusion of tonight’s amazing result. The two Republican leaders are both Christianists to their finger-tips, and the one who actually believes that the country should be run on Biblical lines won. I think he’s under-estimated still. This is the party Bush and Rove built. And it isn’t done yet.

“A Completely Manufactured Event”

Andrea Mitchell describes the Clinton headquarters in the wake of Clinton’s devastating loss. The hall was empty and then they packed it. But the message of this caucus is surely that you cannot buy votes, as Romney tried to, and you cannot intimidate people into voting for you, as the Clintons tried. In the end, voters want real people with actual arguments in order to change the country. That’s why Huckabee and Obama have prevailed. They’re real. The establishments of both parties lost.   

Clinton Reels

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Obama is beating her by – at this point – around 8 percent. That’s a much bigger win than most expected. For someone with Clinton’s name recognition and her resources and her ex-president spouse to come in third is a real possibility. We’ve seen her fight her first battle in her first national campaign. She doesn’t have the experience to win a campaign and she doesn’t have the change message to prevail.  If you think back two months, would you have believed this result?

This black man won an overwhelmingly white vote in Iowa. Whatever else heappens, he has made history tonight. And he deserved every single vote.