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American Primaries
Elki
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
If you have nothing better to do tomorrow, jump on vent to talk about this primary bullshit. All the info you need is here. Edit: I actually can't get on vent. 
So just do the IRC thing, because why would you want to vent when I'm not there? You wouldn't.
irc.slashnet.org
Channel: #Iowa
Candidate info here
I'm not paying any attention to polling info atm. Whatever happens tomorrow happens. I'll just whore for the Economist a bit.
So just do the IRC thing, because why would you want to vent when I'm not there? You wouldn't.
irc.slashnet.org
Channel: #Iowa
Candidate info here
I'm not paying any attention to polling info atm. Whatever happens tomorrow happens. I'll just whore for the Economist a bit.
EVEN those who dislike Hillary Clinton want to hitch a ride in her helicopter, inevitably dubbed “the Hillacopter”. With a dozen presidential candidates criss-crossing Iowa to scramble for support before the caucuses on January 3rd, everyone following them wants to be in several places at once. And the roads are icy.
Parking is like curling. The main roads have been salted well, but not perfectly. Your correspondent spun once on black ice and saw three accidents. After dark, the oncoming traffic includes farm trucks with only one headlight. Mrs Clinton only has to dodge heckles.
The locals grumble more about the weather than politics. In a coffee shop in Creston, a small town south-west of Des Moines, the customers form two groups: those whose electricity has been restored since a recent storm, and those who are still waiting. “We're living like cavemen,” chuckles one of the staff.
When talk does turn to politics, the mood is disgruntled. Between mouthfuls of syrup-soaked pancake, Dalyne Gaede laments that he can no longer find work. He used to help make sophisticated machinery: self-service cash registers for Wal-Mart and trash cans that say “thank you”. But then he needed back surgery, and suddenly no one will hire him because his health insurance is too expensive.
A triumph in Iowa can kick-start a candidate towards his party's nomination. Yet turnout is usually low. Out of a voting-age population of 2m, only 130,000 caucused in 2004. More will probably show up this time because both parties are competing and the races are close. On the Democratic side, Mrs Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all have a shot. Mr Obama is slightly ahead, but Iowa polls are habitually unreliable. Among the Republicans, Mike Huckabee has opened a sizeable lead over Mitt Romney, but with his new prominence has come unaccustomed scrutiny.
Every candidate faces a holiday season without rest. Most will campaign until as close to Christmas Day as they can without interrupting the festivities. The Democrats especially are working harder than ever, inflicting their friends, families and celebrity endorsers on hapless Iowans.
Besides firing up their existing supporters and courting undecided voters, they are also trying to persuade their rivals' supporters to make them their second choice. Under Iowa's caucus system, voters will gather in some 2,000 small precincts and discuss the candidates before selecting their first choice. Under the Democrats' version (though not the Republicans') those whose candidates fail to win more than 15% or so of the votes in a precinct are then invited to transfer their vote to another, “viable”, candidate. This takes time, so only the most motivated take part.
Each candidate has a different style. Mrs Clinton leads her troops through the snow with such discipline that, had Napoleon copied it, he might have conquered Russia. Other Democrats' campaign staff are happy to answer questions. In Des Moines, Jim Mowrer, an Iraq veteran, says he supports Joe Biden because he is the only Democrat with a plan to quit Iraq without leaving chaos behind. The Clintonistas beside him say they are not authorised to talk to the press.
At Mrs Clinton's campaign office in Creston, the lone staffer consults his boss by telephone. His boss tells him not to reveal anything. Not even his personal reasons for liking Mrs Clinton? No. Not even where a guy can get a cup of coffee in Creston? The staffer hesitates before divulging this potentially sensitive information.
At Mr Obama's campaign office in the same town, the welcome is warmer: a seat, a cup of coffee and a list of local Obama-ites to call. Karl Knock, the chairman of a local bank, says he likes the openness of Mr Obama's campaign. The candidate does not simply issue orders; he asks questions. America needs a new leader who is not entrenched in old battles, he says.
Mr Edwards, a former trial lawyer and vice-presidential nominee, is running the angriest Democratic campaign. Though his manner is smooth and smiley, he rails without cease against the greedy corporations that supposedly make ordinary Americans' lives miserable. He lies third in the polls in Iowa, but his tireless stumping in remote hamlets might conceivably allow him to snatch a victory.
Mrs Clinton is still the woman to beat, however. Other candidates pander. She does her homework and then micropanders. For voters who fret about the environment and globalisation, she praises solar power. Someone has to screw those solar panels on the roof, and that's a job that can't be outsourced, she tells a crowd in a fire station in Shenandoah, near the Nebraska border.
Are you worried about violent video games? So is Mrs Clinton. They can lead, she says, to horrors such as the recent massacre in a mall in Omaha. Mrs Clinton knows the name of the local man who was injured there, of course. She's really intelligent, agree several members of the audience. But one couple say Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, is more qualified. A paranoid local lawyer mutters about Vince Foster, a friend of Mrs Clinton's who killed himself in 1993 but whom conspiracy theorists say was murdered.
The Republicans' Mrs Clinton is Mitt Romney, an ex-governor of Massachusetts. He, too, faces a younger, more charismatic threat. Mr Romney gives PowerPoint presentations; Mr Huckabee airs an ad wishing Iowans a merry Christmas.
Mr Huckabee has ethical problems (he accepted a ton of gifts when he was governor of Arkansas), eccentric policies (scrap income taxes, make America self-sufficient in food) and a feeble grasp of world affairs. But his verbal dexterity and years as a Baptist preacher allow him to dodge almost any awkward question with a Biblical allusion. He is joyfully backed by evangelicals and home-schoolers. Eric Woolson, his campaign manager in Iowa, cannot understand why the media harp on about his strong support among those who go to church every week. “Everyone I know goes to church every week,” he says.
A loss in Iowa could cripple Mr Romney, so he is fighting back hard. His television spots accuse Mr Huckabee of being soft on crime (his faith led him to pardon many criminals when he was governor) and illegal immigration. This is risky. Iowans don't like negative campaigning, says Cary Covington, a politics professor at the University of Iowa. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, two Republicans with no hope in Iowa but national reputations, are biding their time.
For both parties, a bitter struggle looms. But actual violence has so far been mild. Dan Holman, who follows Mrs Clinton around waving a gruesome anti-abortion banner, was allegedly poked in the ribs with a broom handle by an elderly householder who accused him of standing on his property. But Mr Holman recovered and is still haranguing his nemesis.
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I actually tried reading it straight through once but my attention span couldn't take it.
Fuck that. I may have turned liberal in my politics, but I'm still a fiscal conservative with my own money.
You don't need a microphone.
The people with mics can talk, the people without can type in Ventrilo.
God, now I'm nervous. I wasn't even this nervous in 2004; but then I foolishly assumed Kerry had it in the bag, especially in the morning. That was a terrible day. I start work, results were all suggesting that Kerry was winning in a landslide, I finish work happy, I come home and...the results had changed.
Which I find delightfully subversive and very smart.
But something hit me today: he's been doing it to Clinton in Iowa.
Consider that Clinton's campaign made no bones about the overwhelming logic, the undeniable rightness, of choosing her as the Democratic nominee for president. They call her 'tested and vetted,' and that she's ready for anything that can be thrown at her by the Republicans. They say she has the best chances of winning the general election- perhaps even the only chance.
What does Obama do in response? He takes her claims in good faith.
Obama announces his candidacy, and begins to act with the intent of making Iowa competitive. Clinton's people assert that Iowa is unimportant in the long run, and that she is weak there anyway. Obama insists that he's a better candidate than her, and that with organization, groundwork, and a good message, he can win in Iowa, and go on to win in the general election. The implicit message is: if Clinton is so 'inevitable,' she should be able to win in Iowa just as easily as anywhere else. Because Iowa is so important to Edwards as well, he unwittingly helps Obama convince Clinton that Iowa does, in fact, matter.
So Clinton takes the bait and comes to Iowa, where she has run a good campaign. She has not, however, been campaigning as long as Edwards or Obama, and it is in Iowa that her campaign ran into all the bumps, hit all the doldrums, and made all the missteps that are now cataloged in the history of the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. Meanwhile, Obama and Edwards have resonated powerfully with Iowans because, in my own opinion, both are better speakers than Clinton, and both are stronger candidates. Obama has reached out to independents and disaffected Republicans to bolster his support, and he has accompanied the speechifying with a relentless drive to get out as many caucus-goers as possible.
Obama isn't just the reason Clinton might lose Iowa, he's the reason she's there in the first place. He took her rhetoric of 'inevitability' in good faith and ran it through the ringer in Iowa, which may have completely destroyed it.
Any server on slashnet should be fine, if I understand the instructions properly.
Who is winning.
I'll most likely be driving during the results, along with other things away from a computer. Won't have much of a choice but to use IRC through my phone.
Polls vary from a 3-way dead heat to Obama being up a small bit and Clinton and Edwards being tied.
Notable support in the 11th hour: Nader threw his support behind Edwards, and Kucinich asked his supporters to put Obama as their second choice.
i've been perusing the "blogosphere" all evening because i'm apparently a masochist, but this diary entry over at kos at least brought me a chuckle.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Six days ago. A few people should be dropping from dehydration by now, forcing them to conclude tomorrow sometime.
I laughed. I admit it.
Human Resources: The True Enemy of Democracy
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
7 PM CST. The campaigns are telling people to get there at 6:30.
To break it down a little more, the "gold standard" poll going into IA showed Obama up due to huge leads among young voters (O55-C15-E16) and independents (O39-C15-E24), who apparently are going to vote in massive numbers. If those groups turn out at the levels suggested, and say 180,000+ attend the caucuses, Obama could win big. But if they show up at 2004 proportions and turnout is only up modestly, Clinton would actually win by a couple of points. And Edwards' supporters are far and away the most experienced caucusgoers, some polls show him winning the second-choice vote, and he's ahead in rural areas, which get a disproportionate number of votes. Right now Intrade prices are Obama 60, Hillary 28, and Edwards 16. They got Kerry right in 2004. Here's hoping.
EDIT: On the Republican side, it's down to Huckabee and Romney; very small poll edge to Huck but Romney has closed fast and has a massive organizational advantage. Third place is critical and also too close to call in this race; it would be a big boost for McCain to take 3rd here. If Thompson doesn't do so, he's probably done.
Anyway, right now my computer is so broken that not only can I not play audio, I can't even fucking install programs. So I will be posting on the forums tomorrow. Do drop in from time to time to keep me company.
If I get scheduled Feb 5th they can go fuck right the hell off. I'm punching in after I punch a ballot, and not a minute earlier.
Also, I predict the youth vote to be lower than projected/hoped for if for no other reason than the cold. Below freezing and ice scraping is no fun when you want to go to a movie, let alone a tupperware party for politics. Which sucks, because that gives Clinton a bit of an edge, and we're going to be around the 50's by the weekend which would have probably caused a lot more people to attend.
apparently all of the Dem campaigns are arranging for ice scraping/snow clearing/babysitting/carpooling/anything to get people to show up for the caucuses. i've even read about college students getting carpool campaigns together to get them to participate.
i'm being very cautiously optimistic...
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
More where that came from. I was dying pretty hard through the last paragraph.
Too bad Doonesbury did the exact same joke back in 1992. :P
Yeah, I was like 6. It's still funny.
I missed it. Was it a 'Who has a better beard' contest?