Predicting Iowa

Posted at: Eric Black Ink, Fri, October 5 2007, 9:33am
I think Obama will get unfairly labeled as ‘reckless’ for some comment or another, as Hillary is already tagging Obama with the ‘reckless’ label. Gephardt ads (was it something about social security?) killed Dean in 2004. The ’scream’ was over-played by the media. If Dean won, he would have been allowed to scream. I think Hillary is exactly where Joe Lieberman was in 2003, playing to the Republicans. Hillary is not as pro-war as Lieberman, but I suspect their money is coming from the same places. (I would be interested to know where the donors to the various 2004 campaigns are putting their money.) Obama is too new-wave for Iowa. As someone who is Iowa born, I say Obama and Hillary come across as media contrivances. Obviously, based on what we know today, John Edwards wins Iowa.

Now, just before caucus time:
There is no percentage in changing my prediction less than an hour before the caucus, but here I go, even though I am not in Iowa and do not watch any television news, which might help skew my reality to the important fictions of the media. I admit that the polls I've seen show Obama to be the slight favorite over Edward and HC. Also, Kucinich plus Richardson seem to be throwing some support Obama's way, which could be huge.

I was ready for Hillary to go negative on Obama, and I thought it might work, but he is teflon. I never really gave her a chance, as her "moderate tones" do not resonate with the party base. I understand she is brilliant, but Bush/Bush/Bush/Clinton/Clinton/Bush/Bush in the White House since 1980 has to stop now. BC suggesting he was always against the war in Iraq, after so many public comments to the contrary, hit that message home.

Edwards has the platform to win the caucus, and taking public financing was not a blunder, but going negative killed him, as it makes him different from 2004, and authenticity is critical to any candidate. I thought Obama and HC would be baring their teeth, when I wrote the October comment. Obama, rather than Edwards, now stands above the fray.

So, clearly Obama wins Iowa. I will even go out on a limb and say he wins the party's nomination.

The 12/23/2007 New Times Magazine profile of the Clintons concluded with an excellent and unarguable point:
There is, however, a rich paradox in the strategy that Obama and Edwards are employing in their quest to dislodge Clinton from her perch atop the field. The plain fact is that, for all their condemnation of Bill Clinton’s governing philosophy, both Obama and Edwards — and just about every other Democratic candidate in the field, with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich, who seems to have been teleported straight from 1972 — spend a fair amount of time imitating him. So thorough was Clinton’s influence on Democratic politics, so transformative were his rhetoric and his theory of the electorate, that Democrats don’t even seem to realize anymore the extent to which they owe him their political identities.

McCain is the most electable Republican, FWIW.

Barack Obama, our next president, is the next generation Bill Clinton.