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January 4, 2008 | Results from the 2008 Iowa Caucus are said to be stunning by some and an anomoly by others, given the nature of the way the Iowa Caucus is conducted.
What was not stunning was that the media darlings were boosted past those candidates with scant media coverage that may or may not be entirely due to the money their campaigns received and subsequently spent. The big news was that Iowa said no to Hillary Clinton and passed her over for Obama who won 38% and Edwards who won 30%. Clinton took the bronze medal with 29%. Pundits for Hillary have surmised, given the nature of the Iowa Caucus process, that some Iowans might actually have been afraid to be seen favoring Clinton and succumbed to the peer pressure and moved toward their second choices. The peculiar Iowa dynamic includes the arcane rules - and permissible horse-trading, perhaps - of the caucus system, in which there are no secret ballots, and people are herded across the room to declare their preference for president of the United States. Hence, the following speculative morsel I picked up on the phone in a conversation with one Democratic candidate's (obviously not Hillary Clinton) deputy in Iowa: his particular anti-Hillary camp's expectation-or hope-that many caucus goers may be downright reluctant to be visibly observed by friends and neighbors as favoring Clinton. - Carl Bernstein [1] Past the top three media darling Democrats, the remainder of the candidates Richardson, Biden, Dodd, Gravel and Kucinich won only 3% of the remainder. Biden and Dodd will bail out of the race - if they have not already officially done so. The GOP had five candidates above 10% with Huckabee (34%) and Romney (25%) taking the lions share of delegates. The recent hubub about McCain rising as a front-runner turned out to be pure dribble as he and Thompson each won only 3 delegates each with only 13% of the votes respectively. Media darling Guliani was side-swiped receiving only 4% of the votes. No doubt, some pundit will reflect that "them thar" rural Iowans didn't want nothing to do with a New York City politician. If there is an interst in exit polls used to try and explain the caucus in more segregation, CNN tripped all over itself with detailed analysis. The GOP polls had some interesting distribution consistencies with voters, but the Democratic polls showed some interesting variations with particular regard to the age of the voter. There is much talk about Americans rejecting the "dynasty" issue in favor of "change" and "hope". The relality is that such monikers limit intelligent analysis in this very early beginning to the 2008 elections. ___________________________________ 1.4.2007 |