$10.00 Well Spent

Giuliani To Endorse McCain Tomorrow

With this endorsement, McCain is expected to adopt some of Giuliani's more successful campaign strategies, including skipping every single primary being held on February 5th and sending daily memos to the American people that 9/11 happened.

And The Political Oscar Goes To...

Hillary Clinton for Best Performance By A Presidential Candidate That Hasn't Actually Won! This honor is seen as a collective triumph of Hillary's past two non-victory performances, including her role in 'South Carolina: Does This Even Count?' and her more recent performance in 'Florida: Thanks For Nothing...Literally!'. In her acceptance speech, Hillary thanked her countless supporters that made "nothing at all possible", and vowed to declare non-victories "all over the known world", including in upcoming campaign stops in Never Land and Middle Earth. Backstage after the awards ceremony, those nearby reported hearing Hillary discuss the possibility of returning to states she actually did win something in to re-declare victories "just in case the voters forgot I'm such a huge winner and all".

Which Republican Is "Going To Disney World"?

________________________

~~~~~~~ Florida ~~~~~~~
~~ Republican Primary ~~
~~~~~ Predictions ~~~~~

1. Mitt Romney - 37%
2. John McCain - 35%
3. Rudy Giuliani - 16%
4. Mike Huckabee - 9%
5. Ron Paul - 3%
   

________________________

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Well, looks like I should have flipped 1 and 2 and had a bigger margin of victory, as well as given Huckabee a little bit more support, but I got Ron Paul exactly at 3%. The Republican race continues, with McCain momentum vs. Romney money...to be continued.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If these predictions prove to be true in tomorrow's Republican Florida presidential primary, then......Giuliani is done (who knew the country would be turned off by an uncouth, adulterous, 9/11-exploiter? oh, right, anyone with a brain)......Mike Huckabee is done (Hallelujah, it's evolution for the win! Now Chuck Norris can finally get back to, oh wait never mind)......Ron Paul should be done (but his supporters have drank so much Kool-Aid, they'll be campaigning for him well into the next decade)......Mitt Romney will be declared the Republican front-runner and likely do very well in the Feb. 5th primaries (his 'Bank of Romney'-sized campaign financing capabilities have already and will continue to serve his candidacy quite well)......And, finally, John McCain will be in trouble (especially on the fund-raising front), although the close finish will certainly keep him in the race through Feb. 5th, and it will take some aggressively successful campaigning to get McCain within reach of the momentum-holding Romney.

Yes Obama Can

It was certainly a good night for Barack Obama in South Carolina, with a margin of victory so decisive that Wolf Blitzer nearly emptied his bowels attempting to be the first station to declare Obama the winner just milliseconds after the polls closed. Obama's victory speech (above) was easily one of the best speeches he's delivered over the course of this entire campaign season. When you take a look at the demographical breakdown of the vote in favor of Obama, it's pretty amazing: Obama greatly beat Clinton and Edwards in both gender categories (Male-54%, Female-54%), in all age categories (except 65+), in all church attendance categories, in college-educated voters, and in African-American voters of all ages; for non-black voters, Obama managed to garner about 25% of the vote, while it was Edwards that ended up doing best in this category with a slight lead of about 38% over Clinton's 37%. And, once again, voter turnout reached a record high in South Carolina, with Obama receiving more votes in tonight's primary than the entire total of Democratic votes cast in the 2004 South Carolina presidential primary...the Democratic voters have arrived!

I'm glad to see that Edwards finished in a strong enough third to pick up a handful of delegates, and thus continuing to maintain just enough legitimacy to remain a player in the February 5th primaries. Furthermore, it's pretty clear that the Clinton campaign strategy of "What South Carolina primary?" is in full effect, clearly her best option at this point (although, Hillary Clinton's lack of any real semblance of a graceful concession speech is more tacky than Pat Buchanan's comb over).

As far as my success with predicting the candidate percentages, I didn't do too bad, and I'm actually pretty angry because if I had gone with my initial calculations (not posted here on the blog, but available for independent confirmation from my beautiful fiance) I would have been extremely close to the actual results; during my original calculations, I had predicted Obama would get 80% of the African-American vote (rather than 65%, like I posted) and 25% of the white vote, which would have resulted in an estimated 53% of the vote for Obama and, along with my other initial calculations, would have resulted in 27% for Clinton and 20% for Edwards, numbers that are pretty darn close to the actual Obama-55%, Clinton-27%, and Edwards-18% received tonight. However, when I took a look at those original prediction numbers, and saw a 28-point victory of Obama over Clinton, it just seemed like I had to have been overestimating something somewhere, so I lowered the Obama African-American predicted support to 65%. I'm very glad to say that my apprehension was misplaced and, thus, my original calculations were pretty darn good.

And finally, it appears that Caroline Kennedy, the last remaining child of President Kennedy, has written an op-ed in support of Barack Obama that will appear in tomorrow's edition of The New York Times, so with the win tonight I thought it'd be nice to close with an excerpt from that editorial:

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

Democrats Headin' To The Polls in SC

________________________

~~~~ South Carolina ~~~~
~~ Democratic Primary ~~
~~~~~ Predictions ~~~~~

1. Barack Obama - 45%
   
2. Hillary Clinton - 33%
   
3. John Edwards - 22%
   

________________________

Taking into consideration the margin of error and undecided voter figures of recent polling, these are my predictions for the South Carolina Democratic primary. Here are my extremely generalized calculations for such predictions: knowing that the South Carolina Democratic primary electorate is approximately 50% white and 50% African-American, I'm assuming Barack Obama receives approximately 65% of the African-American vote and 25% of the white vote (hence, (.65 x .5) + (.25 x .5) = .48); I'm further assuming that Hillary Clinton receives 25% of the African-American vote and 40% of the white vote, and John Edwards receives 10% of the African-American vote and 35% of the white vote.

Again, these are gross generalizations, but I'm willing to estimate that something relatively like these figures will come out of South Carolina. And, we'll certainly find out just how close my predictions are within the next 24 hours...get out the vote, South Carolina Democrats!

Guess Ron Paul's Age

[Check out Wikipedia for the answer...pretty surprising.]

Presidential Politics Has Never Been So Fun!

After you've had enough fun with this one, immediately check out Kung-Fu Election. It's basically modeled after the old Mortal Kombat games but with the presidential candidates as the fighters, and it is awe-some! Each candidate has a special move, some of which are tailored to their specific persona, like Barack Obama sending a swarm of doves at his opponent or Mitt Romney turning into a projectile-shooting robot or even Hillary Clinton summoning her faithful husband Bill to sprint across the screen and choke her opponent. Priceless.

Nick Kristof Says It Best

'Hillary, Barack, Experience'

By: Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist
Published: January 20, 2008

With all the sniping from the Clinton camp about whether Barack Obama has enough experience to make a strong president, consider another presidential candidate who was far more a novice. He had the gall to run for president even though he had served a single undistinguished term in the House of Representatives, before being hounded back to his district.

That was Abraham Lincoln.

Another successful president scorned any need for years of apprenticeship in Washington, declaring, “The same old experience is not relevant.” He suggested that the most useful training comes not from hanging around the White House and Congress but rather from experience “rooted in the real lives of real people” so that “it will bring real results if we have the courage to change.”

That was Bill Clinton running in 1992 against George H. W. Bush, who was then trumpeting his own experience over the callow youth of Mr. Clinton. That year Mr. Bush aired a television commercial urging voters to keep America “in the hands of experience.”

It might seem obvious that long service in Washington is the best preparation for the White House, but on the contrary, one lesson of American history is that length of experience in national politics is an extremely poor predictor of presidential success.

Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress.

They all did have executive experience (as did Mr. Clinton), actually running something larger than a Senate office. Maybe that’s something voters should think about more: governors have often made better presidents than senators. But that’s not a good Democratic talking point, because the candidates with the greatest administrative experience by far are Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee.

Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills — but not one was among our very greatest presidents.

The point is not that experience is pointless but that it needn’t be in politics to be useful. John McCain’s years as a P.O.W. gave him an understanding of torture and a moral authority to discuss it that no amount of Senate hearings ever could have conferred.

In the same way, Mr. Obama’s years as an antipoverty organizer give him insights into one of our greatest challenges: how to end cycles of poverty. That front-line experience is one reason Mr. Obama not only favors government spending programs, like early-childhood education, but also cultural initiatives like promoting responsible fatherhood.

Then there’s Mr. Obama’s grade-school years in Indonesia. Our most serious mistakes in foreign policy, from Vietnam to Iraq, have been a blindness to other people’s nationalism and an inability to see ourselves as others see us. Mr. Obama seems to have absorbed an intuitive sensitivity to that problem. For starters, he understood back in 2002 that American troops would not be greeted in Iraq with flowers.

In politics, Mr. Obama’s preparation is indeed thin, though it’s more than Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledges. His seven years in the Illinois State Senate aren’t heavily scrutinized, but he scored significant achievements there: a law to videotape police interrogations in capital cases; an earned income tax credit to fight poverty; an expansion of early-childhood education.

Mrs. Clinton’s strength is her mastery of the details of domestic and foreign policy, unrivaled among the candidates; she speaks fluently about what to do in Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur. Mr. Obama’s strength is his vision and charisma and the possibility that his election would heal divisions at home and around the world. John Edwards’s strength is his common touch and his leadership among the candidates in establishing detailed positions on health care, poverty and foreign aid.

Those are the meaningful distinctions in the Democratic field, not Mrs. Clinton’s spurious claim to “35 years of experience.” The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him.

To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president.

That’s Dick Cheney. And I rest my case.

[You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristof’s blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground.]

Leaving Las Vegas

Let's react to the results of the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina Republican primary, shall we?

• On the Democratic side of the Nevada caucuses, another solid victory for Hillary, especially when you break down the votes demographically. The delegate situation provides an interesting narrative in and of itself (namely, that Obama ended up receiving one more delegate than Hillary in Nevada), but that leads us to an entirely different, more complex discussion (coming up). Going forward, Obama finds himself in sort of a predicament: if he wins in South Carolina (which he is expected to do, and was affirmed by his 5-1 share of the black vote in Nevada), then he will regain a bit of momentum heading into February 5th, in which it's very likely both he and Hillary will come out of that primary event with a fairly equal share of delegates (thus, continuing on into the later primaries without a clear Democratic nominee); however, if Clinton manages to pull a true upset and defeat Obama in South Carolina, the Obama campaign will be wounded, limping into a February 5th primary that he will likely come out of too far behind a momentum-gathered Clinton. Therefore, it seems that the two potential big picture scenarios for the Obama campaign, based on a win or lose in South Carolina, is that he remains an equal with Clinton after Feb. 5th or he falls behind after Feb. 5th...in other words, how does Obama actually pull ahead of Clinton? I guess there is always the major campaign blunder moment (something a Clinton is not likely to commit), or the possibility that Obama actually does much better than expected on February 5th, something that seems to run counter intuitive to what one would expect in a 20+ national primary battle royale with a Clinton on the ticket. All that being said, I expect it will be the former situation where Obama indeed wins in South Carolina, both Clinton and Obama have relatively equal delegate counts after Feb. 5th, and the primary, once again, steams ahead without a clear front-runner. Finally, in what is a stunning outcome, John Edwards only managed to gather 4% support in the Nevada caucuses. This is cripplingly bad news for the Edwards campaign, who is going to have an extremely tough time here on out, especially in terms of fund raising and in convincing the voters that he's still a factor in this race (and, in the 'Edwards as Democratic convention power player' scenario, he's going to need a lot more than fifty-some delegates to have that kind of clout).
• On the Republican side of the Nevada caucuses, Romney was more than expected to win here considering he was the only main candidate to campaign in the state (although, Ron Paul in a second place finish with 14% of the vote is really just amazing). More importantly, turning to the Republican primary in South Carolina, this was a pretty necessary victory for John McCain and this will definitely recharge his campaign going forward (we'll see if the Republican establishment is yet ready to rule), but even more interesting is what is going on beneath the surface with this outcome. For starters, it's certainly fair for Mike Huckabee to declare a semi-victory in South Carolina with only three percentage points separating him from a first place finish (and I'd like to think his comments about the Confederate flag and a religion-infused Constitution actually hurt him here, but it's pretty clear that such pandering is executed to actually boost one's self in a state like South Carolina...yuck). Thus, you have Mitt Romney with more "gold and silver medals" than any other candidate (hey Mitt, the Olympics in Salt Lake City were more than five years ago...get over it), John McCain with two victories and the fresh momentum, Mike Huckabee with one win and some close finishes, and Rudy Giuliani with a yet-to-be-tested Florida victory strategy...in other words, you have four candidates with four sets of math and, thus, four potential claims for ultimately ending up the Republican presidential nominee! Moving forward, this is only going to get more exciting, so buckle up. In other less significant news, Rep. Duncan Hunter has decided to drop out of the race after receiving less than a thousand votes in the South Carolina primary (personally, I think the story should be how the hell did he receive even that many!?), while Fred Thompson still refuses to see the political writing on the wall, probably because he misplaced his bifocals.

Now that is some thorough post-election analysis, if I do say so myself (which I indeed did just say so myself, so there you go). And now......drum roll, please......off to South Carolina for the Democrats and Florida for the Republicans!

No More Bets

With both the Nevada caucuses and the Republican South Carolina primary being held tomorrow, I am now ready to declare my election predictions: for each of the parties, a candidate will come in first, another candidate will come in second, and some other candidate will finish in third. Yep, I went out on a limb.

The point I'm making here is that the races in both states are just too complex to throw out predictions that would be based on anything more than some shaky poll numbers and a large portion of guessing. There are, however a few things that can be said with some limited conviction, such as...

• An Obama win in Nevada will increase momentum for what many are already predicting will be an Obama victory in South Carolina next Saturday. This is best-case-scenario for the Obama campaign, namely three early state primary wins heading into "Super Duper Tuesday" (god, I hate that phrase, I apologize for even typing it).
• A first place finish for Hillary in Nevada will be viewed as an upset win over Obama, even though close poll numbers, equally heavy duty campaign organizations, and fierce endorsement battles would have us believe the race is pretty competitive (to be honest, setting up Hillary as "the underdog" in Nevada is about as solid an argument as characterizations that Mike Huckabee is "sane"......Me-1; Huckabee-0).
• If John Edwards is able to finish in a close third place in Nevada (or better?), his "There are still three candidates here!" assertions will retain their validity. An equivalent showing in South Carolina a week later may just give him enough strength to power through Super Dup...well, you know what day...and pick up enough delegates to hold some important political cards throughout the remainder of the Democratic primary. That being said, I think this will be very tough for Edwards to pull off (although, seeing how I think he's a good voice to have around in the primary process, here's hoping).
• A South Carolina victory for Mike Huckabee will be viewed as a triumph for religious conservatives (but, with all the confederate flag embracing and blurring of lines between Christianity and The Constitution, at what expense to a general election run?). Additionally (and potentially more impacting), this will be viewed as an unofficial win for Rudy Giuliani (even if he ends up with less votes in South Carolina than 'The General Lee') because it will only fan the flames of chaos that have swept through the Republican primary, preserving the continuously slimming viability of the 'Giuliani takes off with a victory in Florida' scenario.
• If John McCain manages to pull out the win in South Carolina, we may begin to see McCain becoming the candidate Republican movers and shakers finally start coalescing around in a more pronounced manner. Then again, I'm not completely convinced this will be the case, mostly because the margin of victory may be too slim, because a couple of electoral victories may not be enough for the Republican establishment to wholly overlook their problems with McCain, and because there is still the Giuliani wild card to be played.

And, there you have it. Good luck to the Democratic caucus goers of Nevada, good luck to the chaotic winds of the Republican primary, and, most importantly, good luck to Senator Obama. Here's hoping for a victory in Nevada!

Read Me

By Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men), this succinct, yet vivid, story of a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic America was a really enjoyable read. It's both haunting and somewhat inspiring and, even though this may be a huge cliche, I truly could not put the book down (one late night reading session that was supposed to be a short twenty-page activity turned into a 150-page event in pursuit of the story's ending).

Pick it up today in anticipation of the movie adaptation (supposedly being released later this year).

NJ Canvassing For Obama or: How I Came To Learn About The Culture Of Death From A Barefoot Woman

On Saturday, my fiance and I spent the greater portion of the day volunteering for the Obama campaign in our local county here in New Jersey. It turns out that a friend of mine from high school is a leading organizer of the volunteer effort in our county, so he ended up seeing that my fiance and I were supporters of Obama on Facebook, decided to contact us, and boom, just like that we're out on our feet in the brisk winter air talking politics with the local folk. And, of course, there was one special lady we came across during our day...more on that later.

In terms of the turnout at the canvassing event, I was really pleasantly surprised. There were around a few dozen people that showed up, most of whom said something to the effect of "yeah, I just saw the event posting on the Obama website and decided to come"; apparently, this kind of turnout on Saturday's "day of action" was replicated across NJ, so that's a good sign for the Obama campaign organization here in NJ. Anyway, after the distribution of some nice Obama campaign items (extra stuff courtesy of the connection with my friend), the districts were divided up and my fiance and I were off to knock on some doors.

Our route involved about 40 homes with a history of voting for the Democratic Party, all of which we managed to visit, less than half off which involved actually speaking with the residents (although, for those that were either too afraid to open the door to what they perceived to be a young woman and her pointy haired little brother, or for those simply out enjoying their Saturday off, they received a nice Obama campaign pamphlet wedged in the handle of their front door). For those houses that we were indeed greeted by people, one of them involved a door slamming in our faces and another involved an extremely old gentlemen that had a very difficult time hearing 95% of the words coming from my mouth.

However, everyone else we talked to resulted in really great conversation and led to some pretty interesting political observations. First observation: for every person that was an Obama supporter, their support was strong and they were very enthusiastic about his candidacy; they'd go on about how they've already donated, how inspired they were, and how they'll be gathering up their friends and family to vote for Obama in the February 5th primary. Second observation: for the rest of the people we spoke to, they were largely undecided, i.e. we never came across a strong Clinton supporter (of course, this is a VERY small sample of NJ voters we're talking about here, so it's really just wishful thinking on my part that the state is broken down into ardent Obama supporters and undecided voters...then again, this is probably more scientific than those New Hampshire exit polls, ba-dum-chh!); most of the time they were between Obama and Clinton and hadn't made up their minds yet, and some times they would discuss how they liked Edwards but were thinking of voting for the other candidates (we can thank the media's decision this past week to unofficially declare the Edwards campaign dead for this). And the third observation: for all the undecided voters we talked to, they overwhelmingly kept referring to the discussion of the history and experience of Clinton vs. the freshness and likability of Obama, so it looks like this political narrative is truly resonating with the voters.

Now, on to the woman referenced in the title of this post...or should I say the barefoot woman. So, my fiance and I come to this one house (with a really ugly porch made out of tile, by the way) and a woman promptly answers the door. She was a woman of large stature, one might say, and she wasn't wearing any shoes nor any socks (later, I'd come to find out from my fiance's observation that she apparently had bloody scabs on her feet, the possible explanation for her lack of foot attire, but I digress). It is important to recognize that the woman was extremely pleasant throughout the entire conversation, smiling her rose colored cheeks at the two eager volunteers standing before her door. And so, our conversation went a little something like this...

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Me: Hi [Barefoot Woman's Name], my name is Chris and this is Andrea, and we're volunteers with the Obama campaign, and we've been walking around the neighborhood talking with people about the upcoming Democratic primary here in NJ. First, are their any issues that you'd consider to be personally important to you during this election season?

Barefoot Woman: Well, I'm very much pro-life and so I could never vote for a candidate that wasn't pro-life, as well.

Me (after a slight pause) : Oh ok, well I believe all of the Democratic candidates are pro-choice, so has there really been any one of them that you've been interested in or following closely during this election season?

Barefoot Woman (wildly grinning): Well, no, because I can't support a candidate as long as they support a culture of death.

Me (stunned): Well then...I guess that's pretty clear...(uncomfortable laughter)...Thank you and have a nice day.

Barefoot Woman (foot scabs bleeding): Bye bye now!

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

So there you have it. Now, one might ask exactly why a woman that is so strongly pro-life would be on a list of voters with a history of voting for Democratic candidates...and that is a good question, one that I would love an answer to at some point. Regardless, I wish I hadn't been so blown away by the sheer enthusiasm with which this jolly woman pronounced the phrase "culture of death". If not, I might have mentioned that, assuming she'll be voting for one of the pro-life Republican candidates, she may want to take a look at a tiny little issue called the Iraq War, enthusiastically supported by the Republican candidates, responsible for hundreds of thousands of human deaths both American and foreign...but hey, who am I to say that this woman is a total hypocrite? Oh, right, I'm a person with common sense reasoning.

And, therefore, I hope that this woman and all residents like her will go out and perform their civic duty by voting in the upcoming New Jersey presidential primary which, as I told the woman, is being held...on February 6th.

Joking, of course.

Another One Bites The Dust

"Will Smith has joined the ranks of Hollywood power players actively recruiting for the Church of Scientology." [Huffington Post, 01/09/08]

Don't Mess With New Hampshire

Wow, just wow. Politics is not for the faint of heart. What an amazing night it was on both sides, but obviously more significantly on the Democratic side. Let's evaluate my predictions...

Yeah, I'd call my predictions a mixed bag, and that's being very generous. On the Republican side, I got the order perfect, with McCain first, Romney second, and Huckabee third, but my thoughts on the finishes being closer than expected was not really the case at all. I was also right about Giuliani and Paul battling for 4th place, but it looks like Giuliani will win by a couple thousand votes or so (which really speaks poorly for the Giuliani campaign, by the way). On the Democratic side, things were vastly bleaker for my predictions. Not only did Barack Obama not beat Hillary Clinton by 9-15 points, as I predicted, but he instead bucked the trend of so many polling sources and lost (by what was thankfully only a few points). The possibility that Edwards would come close to a second place finish was unfortunately not realized, and so I was pretty much off there, too. AND, that's not even mentioning that I haven't heard anything about Bill Richardson ending his campaign any time soon, so I can't even have that satisfaction!

So, there you have it folks. We've got ourselves one of them old fashion political duels on the Democratic side (although, I'm still hoping Edwards remains viable with the potential for some kind of victory somewhere along the way), and on the Republican side we're left with an all out melee between an entire cast of characters. Finally, there is one more prediction that I am willing to make at this point, and it's a definitive one...this is really going to be one hell of an election season!

**********
UPDATE: Looks like Bill Richardson is indeed ending his presidential campaign, so this allows me to recover a few points for my wounded prediction score. I guess this officially means that the Democratic field is down to three, and you know what they say...three's a crowd.
**********

The Nation's First Primary...Let's Predict!

New Hampshire, the state that professes 'Live Free or Die'...I choose live free, please. Time to make some predictions for tomorrow's exciting primary event:

________________________

~~~ Democratic Party ~~~

1. Barack Obama
2. Hillary Clinton
   
3. John Edwards
   

________________________

This lineup seems to be the conventional wisdom for the Democratic side. Barack Obama has a commanding lead in just about every poll and, if his performance in Iowa with young voters and Independents carries over to New Hampshire, I predict about a 9-15 point lead over the second place finisher. Various factors regarding the Clinton campaign (ramping up the negative campaigning, the Saturday night debate, today's crying incident) make me very badly want to predict that John Edwards will actually pull ahead of Clinton, like in Iowa, and finish in a close second over her; however, I just can't pull the trigger on that one, so I'll just state that I think Edwards will finish a lot closer to Clinton than others are predicting. And, finally, I predict Bill Richardson will realize that he should have exited stage left along with the classy Joe Biden and Chris Dodd back in Iowa.

________________________

~~~ Republican Party ~~~

1. John McCain
   
2. Mitt Romney
   
3. Mike Huckabee
   

________________________

This also seems to be what most political pundits are assuming will come out of New Hampshire tomorrow on the Republican side, however I feel there's more room here than on the Democratic side for things to be shaken up a bit. With the fear that John McCain's strength with Independent voters will be hindered by the Obama wave, and a nagging suspicion that Mitt Romney should still not be underestimated, I wouldn't be shocked if the McCain vs. Romney battle for 1st and 2nd is pretty tight, and/or Huckabee's third place finish is not too far behind the second place finisher. I'm giving McCain the edge, mostly because of the Republican debate performances this weekend and the loudly conveyed message that not even his fellow running mates like Romney (plus, McCain has always thrived on these kinds of underdog-esque narratives). As for the rest of the bunch, we are left with Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Ron Paul battling it out for fourth place. I'll assume voters have finally gotten the memo that not even Fred Thompson would vote for Fred Thompson, and predict that Giuliani and Paul have a very tight race, with Paul ending up with a slim and surprising fourth place finish (come on, those extremely vocal supporters of his have to be good for something!)

Almost Time To Get 'Lost'

And, cue the chills!

An Obama Victory In Iowa!

Simply inspiring. The entire night last night really was exciting, mostly because Barack Obama had such a great night in Iowa, but also because I've been waiting for this election season to actually get underway beyond an endless stream of pundit bloviation for what seems like an eternity.

So, how'd I do on the prediction front? Not too bad at all! On the Democratic side, I was perfect with Obama first, Edwards second, and Clinton third (and very surprised by just how much Obama pulled away from the other two, as well as disappointed Clinton wasn't further back from Edwards). And, as obviously asserted, no other Democratic candidate came close to getting anything above 1-2% of the vote (on a related note, so long to Joe Biden and Chris Dodd...hope to see you in an Obama administration). On the Republican side, I was certainly off with my prediction of Romney over Huckabee (and, it's amazing just how large Huckabee won over Romney). At least I was right on the McCain in third prediction (although, what the hell is Fred Thompson doing there with him!? Unlike McCain, he's the bad kind of old, namely an old geezer!). And, sure as I said, Ron Paul was right there with 10% of the vote nipping at the heels of the third place guys.

So, all told, not too bad with my predictions. Now...off to New Hampshire!

Iowa: Change Begins Here

Should any Iowa residents happen upon this blog (can't say that I've ever seen an Iowa-based location in the view history...but still), I implore you, first, to go out and participate in the caucusing process and, second, to caucus for Barack Obama.

Also, you might want to bring gloves and a hat...it's like below zero.

*** Good Luck, Iowa Democrats ***

It's Iowa Caucus Time!

OK, here we go, time to step out on that limb.
My predictions for tomorrow night's Iowa Caucuses:

________________________

~~~ Democratic Party ~~~

1. Barack Obama
2. John Edwards
3. Hillary Clinton

________________________

Obviously, the race is extremely tight between the top three candidates here, but if there is going to be something different than this configuration, I think it will be a switch between Edwards and Obama, with Hillary remaining in third. I think both Obama and Edwards will benefit from their respective "change" and populist messages, as well as from increased general and first-time caucus goer turnout (helped by clear weather and the hype of this election season). I also don't see how any other candidate has a chance of breaking into the top three here.

________________________

~~~ Republican Party ~~~

1. Mitt Romney
2. Mike Huckabee
3. John McCain

________________________

Similarly, the race is very tight between Romney and Huckabee, so another likely scenario could be a switch between the two of them. It really seems to be a choice between two candidates with their own set of political flaws: Romney seems to be the "stronger" presidential candidate (financially and stylistically), but his Mormonism and flip-flop background may hurt him; Huckabee is the proud Christian Conservative, but his political expertise has seemed lacking at times. Also, I'm going with McCain in the #3 spot, but wouldn't be shocked to see the slippery Ron Paul come close to a third place finish here.

Happy New Year, Indeed!

New Iowa Poll: Obama widens lead over Clinton

"Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has widened his lead in Iowa over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards heading into Thursday's nominating caucuses, according to The Des Moines Register's final Iowa Poll before the 2008 nominating contests."

Obama was the choice of 32 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers, up from 28 percent in the Register's last poll in late November, while Clinton, a New York senator, held steady at 25 percent and Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, was virtually unchanged at 24 percent."

"The findings mark the largest lead of any of the Democratic candidates in the Register's poll all year."