Wow.

CNN's Democratic Debate live RIGHT NOW is hands-down the most earth-shattering event of the '08 campaign thus far.

Hillary = Smart attacks on Obama so far — present votes, health care plan— but it seems unnecessary, doesn't it? She's winning in the majority of February 5th states and had the momentum going into tonight.

Obama = Having his political record criticized publicly for the first time, and it could either hurt or help him. Obama can no longer claim a perfect political record and skip to how to implement things as President, but with Edwards and Hillary pushing on him so hard there's a chance that voters might sympathize with him tonight.

Edwards = Fantastic. Watch for a 5% jump in S.C. polls overnight.


Keep it up, Dems.

The End of Fred?

I thought so last night. Everyone's talking about Fred Thompson's "impressive" delivery of his post South Carolina primary speech, but as I sat alone in my living room with the lights off and the volume cranked up I could have sworn I was witnessing the end of Fred's campaign.

A word of caution to every candidate, never deliver a speech when less than 5% of the vote's been counted, and never say what Thompson said last night: "We're turning in a little early tonight," "I want to take a minute to speak to you from my heart," and "I want to thank all the people that have travelled with me all these months"—I was seconds away from making calls to friends and family celebrating his withdrawal.

The most poorly managed presidential campaign in recent memory? You bet.

Behind Poor Numbers

John Edwards' distant third-place finish in Nevada says two things: First, televising these caucuses live from the Strip, as CNN did, really hurt the public image of Senator Edwards' campaign. Why? With 166 voters at Caesar's Palace only 2 voted for Edwards. Two of 166 is barely more than 1% support. Across the state, the 5% Edwards pulled isn't much better.

Second, Edwards' showing exposed one of the biggest and most obvious flaws of the caucus system itself. Recent polls leading into today's voting showed John Edwards with between 12 and 18% of the vote. On a caucus by caucus basis, a portion of Edwards' supporters could have survived the 15% viability test and avoided having to throw their support behind another candidate. Just as Iowa's caucus system cut down the combined support of Richardson, Biden, and Dodd from ~16% to 2%, Edwards was effectively squeezed out of the final results in Nevada because his support hovered around the viability mark.

A candidate with a message that doesn't resonate with voters, or a voting system that doesn't fairly represent all voters and candidates?

You decide.




(photo credit: © 2008 by Luke N. Vargas. All Rights Reserved.)

The Life of a Blogger

For some it could be all about watching the number of visitors go up and down.

Unfortunately for others, like me, high traffic doesn't always occur when you're putting out your best work, so I try not to care.

But the traffic graph is still kinda cool.

One Comment

This from a reader on Politico.com reflecting on tonight's Democratic debate in Nevada says it all:

"The big winner was the Democratic Party. Their spirit and vision shine so far above the Republicans."

The Democrats, despite this whole race debate the past few days, are the party with vision: Clinton, Obama, Edwards, heck, even Kucinich and Gravel.

Unlike the Republican candidates, who seem focused on a single issue like illegal immigration or gun rights, each Democrat remaining stands for an America of tremendous change and promise.

Thank God for that.

Romney Wins

...and his victory speech is weak. Ann looks tired and Mitt is just plain uninspiring. Even this talk of Washington being nervous that a businessman is going to sweep in and change broken government. Even an extended call and response with the audience and shouts of "we love you!" don't get me excited.

Perhaps it's that I loathe this guy.

Actually, that's just it.

Negative.

Flip-flopping.

Lying.

Yuck.



(photo credit: © 2008 by Luke N. Vargas. All Rights Reserved.)

Early Michigan Results

3% in

Romney - 37%
McCain - 31%
Huckabee - 16%

You bet I'm voting against Romney, so hopefully this result starts to turn around.

Photo of the Week

Faces of Victory, originally uploaded by vargas2040.

(photo credit: © 2008 by Luke N. Vargas. All Rights Reserved.)

The Road We've Already Tread or Why One Woman Can Do it Better than Barack Obama or John McCain

Dodd's out. Biden's out. My two favorite Senators and presidential candidates are out of the race.

Meanwhile, February 5th, the day of the Massachusetts primary fast approaches and a number of questions run through my mind: Do I take experience over change? How much should I base my vote on Iraq war policies? Do I vote for a Republican or Democrat?

A lot of these questions aren't too hard to answer, or at least you'd think I would have answers to them given the amount of commentary I have posted on this site about the candidates and their proposed policies.

I wrote a post on New Years Eve reaffirming my support for Senator Chris Dodd. Being in Iowa only hours later broadened my perspective on the race for the Presidency, but arriving at what was the world capital of spin and political positioning nearly made me lose sight of what this election is about.


During the four hours of travel back to Boston last week I read Senator Joe Biden's book, Promises to Keep. Masterfully woven into his stories of growing up as a Catholic boy in the new suburb of Delaware are unforgettable messages of spirituality, purpose, and respect. Certain fragments of Biden's religious values and snippets of the principles his parents stood for and communicated to the young Biden still echo in my head.

Biden and Dodd are men whose words on the campaign trail never received the attention they deserved. Very few Americans ever heard Biden's chilling speeches on the Iraq War or Dodd's uplifting call to begin a new era of national service. Biden and Dodd's promises were promises to keep, and I trusted them more than anything. As happens in twenty-first century elections, however, the voices of knowledge and clarity of political vision were practically ignored. Instead, voters in Iowa cast off Biden and Dodd and opted for “change.”

As he recounts, Biden was urged to run for president by Democratic strategists in 1984, the year he delivered what's become one of his most famous speeches at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. After giving his speech Biden wrote that, "I hadn't sufficiently appreciated how each person might hear something different from what I'd intended. After all, each person has a little something different buried in a broken heart. In Atlantic City on that day I could tell that people were moved to get up and stand with me."

Barack, anyone?


Public and party reaction to Biden's speech was tremendous. Biden resisted their pleas to run: "Why Run? To do what? I simply could not visualize myself running the bureaucracy of the federal government. I didn't think I knew enough about how the government functioned, and I wasn't sure I knew the people to call. Even after eleven years in the Senate, I didn't know and trust enough of the right people...By my own standards, I wasn't ready to be president."

Biden waited four years and announced his candidacy for the presidency in 1988. He was forty-two years old, and "after a decade on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and nearly that long on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I knew the world and America's place in it in a way few politicians did."

Despite his time as a community organizer in Chicago, that intimate knowledge of what it takes to be President cannot be said for Obama, forty-six years of age and only beginning his third year as a U.S. Senator.

And with intelligence committees and foreign relations I think of John McCain.


John McCain would prove a formidable opponent to any Democratic challenger in a general election. His experience and personal integrity are second to none. Throughout six years of a Republican presidency, McCain has consistently pointed out and fought for what he believes is in the best interest of this country and is not afraid to criticize those who stand in the way of the progress he feels is necessary even if they are from his own party. McCain has the guts that many only dream of, his heart is a compassionate one, and more than anyone he's taken hits for the things he's done throughout his career. He would be the perfect man for the job —except for his policies.

What makes McCain the wrong choice in 2008 is that he seeks to remedy the problems of Washington instead of the problems of America and its people.

On Iraq, McCain sees our invasion as being one conducted with too few troops—a failure of military judgment—not a moral wrongdoing. On health care, McCain sees problems in wasteful spending and the tax code, not in our shared responsibility of taking care of those who cannot care for themselves. On abortion, McCain sees problems of activist judges and the interpretation of the Constitution, not a woman's rights and personal decisions.

On experience, Senator McCain is the clear winner, but America needs more than a foreign policy tactician and a call to clean up Washington.

Midway through page 11 of his book, Biden recounts one of his mother's sayings: "You respect the habit, she used to say, you respect the vestments, you respect the uniform, but you do not not have to respect the person in it." Earlier, "they abuse their power, you bloody their nose."


In August of 1997 Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady, penned an editorial for the New York Times about the S-CHIP program she was urging the passage of, and that she is often credited with sparking the introduction of in the Senate. Clinton wrote:

"Even as we celebrate this progress, we should recognize that passage of a bill, no matter how historic, does not guarantee success. Whether this legislation fulfills its promise depends on how hard we are willing to work in the months ahead."

Clinton's nose was bloodied by Republicans when she presented universal health care coverage to America in 1994, and the failed proposal resulted in a Republican windfall in the midterm elections that year. But Clinton didn't stop. It was S-CHIP in 1997 and in 2008 it's universal health care. A month ago Clinton said in a speech, "I believe the way you get change is by working hard for it. Persistence, perseverance, even some perspiration - that is how you change lives, you change institutions." Hillary Clinton didn't give up in 1994, 1997 or 2007, and she's still going in 2008. In her words, "I think you actually learn more about people when they may not be successful than if they just slope through life. I had a choice: I could have said 'ok, we didn't do it, I'm not trying anymore.' Or, what I decided to do was to say 'ok, we didn't do it, let's regroup and see what we can get done.''


What separates Hillary Clinton from Barack Obama is that Obama, without the years of trying, failing, and regrouping, has consistently passed on the issues that require tough stands and only talks about the regrouping and changes that need to be made. On juvenile justice bills, on anti-abortion legislature, on important gun regulation bills, Barack Obama didn't get his nose bloodied because he "passed" and voted neither "yes" or "no" on over 100 pieces of legislation in the Illinois Senate. Obama's time in the United States Senate has not been much better, with Obama abstaining from voting on legislation designating the Iranian Guard as a terrorist organization and legislation condemning the liberal group MoveOn.org for comments made against General David Petraeus.

So far, Barack Obama hasn't stood for change or taken a stand on critical issues like abortion and gun control.

In racing up the stepladder of political success Obama has shouted the themes of his campaign without taking the time to prove that they are core beliefs he's capable of and willing to stand behind when the going gets tough. If he had made the difficult decisions, if he had taken the lead in the political arenas he promises to change as President, this opportunity would be his. What Obama needs is an extension—time to prove that he not only has the values we like to see in a leader but that he also has what it takes to lead—not a promotion to the Presidency.

For her experience, her willingness to fight and argue for what she believes in, and her strength to return to those who used her name as a punch-line in the past , I will vote for Hillary Clinton on February 5th.




(all photos: © 2008 by Luke N. Vargas. All Rights Reserved.)

A Really Quick Read

Former TV personality Roseanne Barr has a blog at her website (CLICK HERE).

Here's someone expressing all the thoughts that fly through her mind and not filtering or regretting what she says.

There is a definite pro-Hillary/Edwards/Gore/feminism tone in what she says, but her bursts of commentary are more than exciting. The following was published yesterday:

Feeling Pissed Off...

...that a woman finally made it all the way through the boys' club alive, to make history and that fact isn't even acknowledged. Hilary is the only woman who ever made it through this far. I have decided that having a woman president before any man of any color is what these times call for. i am a feminist, and I will die one. It matters that a woman made it through. i made it through and i know the horror and the pain a woman must endure from this woman hating culture to succeed. Hilary I am proud of you. You did it for all of us, black and white, and brown. A black male president should come after your presidency. One man is as good as another, no matter their color, no matter their creed. They are all men, and the propping up of any of them is old and tired and over. It's Women's time now, and the world needs us!!

and

Hillary.

What you need to do to win: offer free childcare so that mothers can come to vote. Say you will end the war immediately, borrow some visionary things to say from obama, and have chelsea campaign more, and "the hubster" less. Reference the sixties more for the boomer grandmas too. Talk about two americas, and class! bring on Babs S.!

It's fun stuff. 

No Drumroll Necessary

I'm going to publish my candidate endorsement within the next day. My experience in Iowa has sunk in and the sleeplessness of Primary Night in New Hampshire is behind me.

Waiting.

Watching.

Writing.

The Punches are Flying on Hardball

And this professor on right now, Michael Eric Dyson, ranting about Obama is driving me nuts.

In response to Pat Buchanan's inquiry as to whether the race question has helped make Obama even a little more beloved by Democrats, Dyson sounded off...and sounded ridiculous:

"Barack Obama has overcome despite the racial realities. Barack Obama has had to walk into the room proving he is highly intelligent, highly literate, capable of transcending any tribal loyalties, to articulate a transcendent vision that speaks to the entire universe of political reality."

What the @#$%?!

Let's admit it. Hillary Clinton was greatly helped in the New Hampshire primary because she received a big dose of 11th-hour sympathy by voters in the Granite State in part because she is a woman, just as Barack Obama's race also helps garner his candidacy extra attention and interest.

Either a Clinton or an Obama presidency would be unprecedented in this country's history—stop trying to make one seem more important than the other.

New Hampshire Voters Voted "With Their Hearts and Their Minds"

The line of the night.

The waiting game ended here at Southern New Hampshire University as CNN finally called the state for Hillary Clinton. The television projector, the large screen extending around the side of the stage, displayed the news as the hundreds of supporters here burst into applause and song.

Barack Obama's concession speech was originally viewed in silence before tthe audience demanded the sound be turned off: "Music down!" they cried repeatedly in unison.

To show up expecting a 10% defeat and be presented with a triumphant come-from-behind Senator who takes the cup is bigger than any sports upset for me.

Nobody expected a win--the media's story of the day was "Clinton campaign nervous about likely defeat"--but a win was in the cards.

Photos tomorrow, but for now --U.N.B.E.L.I.E.V.E.A.B.L.E.

22 Hours

Hillary Clinton will be rallying with supporters after the results of tomorrow's New Hampshire primary at Southern New Hampshire University.

Barack Obama is the hot story around the country and the world right now, but Senator Clinton's finish tomorrow is the most important story to watch. Is Obama's campaign just as big as the "national campaign" that Clinton's camp claims to be running after Iowa? How much of a margin of (possible) defeat is bearable for the Clinton campaign?

Questions, questions, questions.

You bet I'll be there.


(photo credit: © 2008 by Luke N. Vargas. All Rights Reserved.)

He's Doing It

In a matter of weeks John McCain has had a second coming in New Hampshire. A poll just released today by CNN in the Granite State reaffirms how imprecise and changeable these measures of public support can be.

Notables:

Favorability ratings for Republican candidates:

John McCain — 81% favorable - 13% unfavorable (half of what it was last year)
Mitt Romney — 65 % favorable - 28 % unfavorable (slowly increasing)

Republican candidate likely to bring needed change:


Jan. 5th, '08 — McCain = 23%, Romney = 23%
September '07 — McCain = 13%, Romney = 25%


Not only is John McCain the most favorable candidate in the Republican field in the eyes of New Hampshire voters, but he's starting to get the "change" vote, an interesting factor that's hard to define but is definitely hot after Obama's Iowa victory. Tell me I'm wrong, but a McCain victory in New Hampshire would be huge...and it might just happen.



(photo credit: © 2008 by Luke N. Vargas. All Rights Reserved.)

That Hurts

McCain just clobbered Mitt Romney.

"It's easy to be misquoted when you keep changing your positions on issues."

McCain can smile, Romney can squirm in his seat.

Romney Hurting Himself

Why? Too many details.

New Hampshire voters don't mind long answers-- they listen carefully--but when it comes to fiscal questions like whether or not government should pay for healthcare they expect a clear and concise response. Even if Governor Romney made a good conservative policy move by requiring all Bay Staters have healthcare, he hurt himself tonight by getting caught up in the details...and hurt doubly by Fred Thompson's witty and stinging interjections.

Thoughts on the ABC Debate

So far, breaking up the debate with short video clips like the health care snippet just now.

Rudy Giuliani's answer on what he calls the Democrats' "socialized medicine" was impressive; I was skeptical of his rephrasing of the question, but he skillfully dodged the argument that if $1 trillion could be spent on the war we could have paid that towards universal health care.

Annoyingly good.

Reliving Precinct 22

The Harding Middle School north of downtown Des Moines looks like one of those schools built in the 50's that has never been fixed up since.

At 5:45, a full hour and fifteen minutes before the caucus here would begin (the earliest I've ever shown up for an event, for the record), only nine people filled the lunchroom. Of the nine, two were Obama supporters, one woman was setting up her Richardson table, and the other six were volunteers helping to set up and run the caucus.


As voters began to file into the room it was fascinating to observe just how easy it was for people to register to vote. On the spot in less than one minute, a voter could register to caucus by simply providing a form of identification and having their name matched with a list of residents living within the precinct. When one voter showed up without a proof of residence or form of identification he simply walked the block and a half home and picked up his most recent telephone bill and was allowed to caucus.


One of the caucus organizers I spoke with said that precinct 22 only covered a strip of about fifteen to twenty square blocks surrounding the school. Because the caucuses are conducted within small local communities, the atmosphere inside the voting places is friendly. The supporters I saw gathered for Obama, Clinton, and Edwards recognized each other, and two families at the Edwards table said they attended many campaign events over the past few months and decided to support Edwards together. Hearing that made me wonder why the candidates spent a combined $200+ in television advertisements for every caucus-goer this year; it's nice to be reminded that minds are still made up by observation, consideration, and discussion.


As the time neared the 7:00 PM cutoff for arriving to participate in the caucus, a number of families with children began arriving. Of all the preference groups, the Edwards camp had the highest number of young observers—two four-year-olds and two infants.


The first order of business after 7:00 was to select a caucus chair and secretary. The chair of caucus here four years ago read the procedure for selecting these two positions, and, when a younger man rose to announce his attention of running to be the new chair, the decision was put to a vote. With a simple show of hands the younger man was elected caucus chair. He was passed the caucus instructions booklet by the former chair and took over immediately. The same process occurred for selecting the caucus secretary, but this time the incumbent secretary, a short woman with a loud voice who was always encouraging the crowd with pro-Democratic Party slogans, beat out a younger Kucinich supporter.

The caucus chair surveyed the room—which to the best of my judgment looked to be split pretty evenly between Obama and Clinton supporters—and announced in which corners each of the candidates were being represented. Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, Biden, and Kucinich each had supporters. Mike Gravel and Chris Dodd had no supporters and were quickly scratched off the caucus chair's list of candidates.


Once everyone had a clear idea of where the candidates' sides were, they were told by the chair to assemble in their preference groups and determine which candidates would be viable. Chairs were pushed together and people stood together behind signs supporting their candidate of choice. The caucus volunteers ran through the list of voters present and the chair announced that 111 voters were in the room and that a candidate would need seventeen supporters to be counted as viable and have their results tallied.

At the news the Richardson group near me counted up quickly, only to discover they only numbered fifteen in total. The Richardson precinct captain, whom I had spoken with earlier and had brought with her to the caucus papers with all of Bill Richardson's positions on key issues, immediately approached two uncommitted voters in the center of the room. As she did so one Kucinich supporter and one Biden supporter joined with the Richardson group; it was no longer necessary for the Richardson precinct captain to fight for her candidate's viability by convincing the undecided voters.


Representatives from each of the campaigns approached a table of about five uncommitted voters. Of the five, all but one, who chose to abstain from voting, moved to the Obama corner. During the process of convincing the uncommitted, two members of the Richardson group quietly slipped out and joined the Obama group as well.

Five minutes later, when the caucus chair counted the Richardson group, their numbers surprisingly tallied to only 15, short of the viability cutoff. When this number was announced to the room, two Edwards supporters left their group to make Richardson viable and give him one of the precinct's four delegates.

The caucus chair asked the precinct captains from all four candidate groups to count up their supporters and report the number to him. As they gathered around him, the chair wrote the numbers on an official caucus results reporting slip while the secretary entered the reported numbers into a caucus calculating program distributed by the Obama campaign. All four precinct captains signed off on the results and the caucus chair quickly phoned in the numbers to the state caucus committee. Within minutes those numbers would be added to the familiar vote tracking tallies that scroll at the bottom of cable news networks' broadcasts; precinct 22 divided its delegates equally among Obama, Clinton, Richardson, and Edwards.


The whole process was quick, well-organized, and altogether painless. Why? Because caucusing is more than just a process that is drearily followed here in Iowa, it's a part of being an Iowan. Even though caucus turnout has been poor in recent years, those who attend know how the process works down to the dime.

Skeptical initially about how often the voters at precinct 22 had caucused in the past I asked an elderly woman if this was her first caucus or not.

She began her answer: "No, I've only been caucusing since the War ended..."

She meant World War II.

This is the Iowan's baby, the caucus. You've got to see it to believe it.



(all photos: © 2008 by Luke N. Vargas. All Rights Reserved.)

Boston

Finally made it. Alive and back home.

There are still lots of people with Barack pins here in the airport--that says a lot about the strength of his campaign, attracting volunteers to Iowa all the way from Boston.