Suddenly my phone started dancing, flashing and singing like it never had before.

MSNBC had just called it. A bunch of white farmers had marched on schools, churches and civic centers in record numbers to be heard. And they declared Barack Obama the winner of the Iowa Democratic Caucus.

I was hootin' and hollarin' like my college team had won the NCAA Basketball Championship (which will never happen). There were laughter and tears and everyone I knew was calling and texting to congratulate me.

This election primary on the Democratic Party side is essentially a tie right now.  Real Clear Politics show that Hillary and Barak hover at 10,000,000 votes each. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...

Next Tuesday Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont voters must think about who will beat McCain.  Who will be impervious to attacks on patriotism, who will fight and who will prevail against McCain in the general election.  

Clearly both candidates are strong but I think the nod goes to Hillary – because taking a clear look at Iowa, where Obama’s ascent began, Iowa Primary wins are no bellweather for the White House (see below) and despite weeks of pro-Obama hype – yesterday Obama polled behind Hillary in a McCain matchup.    Time to come to grips with the strength of a Clinton candidacy.

Huckabee's been quite a character and he's added a lot to the living dead Republican race. I was quite impressed with his Iowa

victory speech

think we've learned three very important things through this victory tonight. The first thing we've learned is that people really are more important than the purse, and what a great lesson for America to learn. Most of the pundits believe that when you're outspent at least 15 to 1, it's simply impossible to overcome that mountain of money and somehow garner the level of support that's necessary to win an election.

There it is in all its Christian socialist glory. He'd signalled that he'd gotten the message, that the rhetoric of the country was changing. And that new rhetoric was change

My parents moved to Fairfield, subject of the front page diary on Ron Paul's top zipcodes to the left, from Mason City Iowa when they retired in 1998.  I grew up mainly in Mason City, born in Dubuque.  

Perhaps the only development more disappointing than the injection of racial politics into the Democratic primary process has been the descent of Bill Clinton into attack dog politics.  It seems that with each passing day, the still very popular former President sacrifices his good name - and the huge reservoir of good will he enjoys among the American people – in the service of his wife Hillary's presidential campaign.  Sadly, while Bill Clinton's unseemly and undignified barbs may batter Barack Obama's standing, they also inflict lasting damage to his own.

I've read a zillion diaries on the Iowa caucuses.

The pros are that the wise people of Iowa get to meet the candidates individually, test them out, kick the tires. That the underfunded candidate can still win, because it is not necessary to make a large media buy.

The cons are that Iowa is a small state, that the demographics do not represent the country, that the process disenfranchises those who live in other states.

I would just like to toss one more "con" on the barbie.

These are fantastic numbers:

Assessing the presidential results in Iowa and New Hampshire, Democratic leaders see signs that young voters are flocking to their party and away from the Republicans. Of the 65,230 young people ages 17 to 29 who participated in the Iowa caucuses January 3, 52,580 caucused for Democrats while only 12,650 caucused for the Republicans.

That's a more than 4-to-1 advantage for the Democrats, party leaders point out.

It's not just Iowa, of course.

In New Hampshire, the Democratic analysis shows, youth turnout "surged to 37 percent this year, from 18 percent in 2004 and 28 percent in 2000," says the study.

"Sixty-one percent of youth voters supported Democrats over Republicans. That's 43,753 young people going for Democrats and only 28,288 young people going for Republicans."

And while Obama cleaned up in the 18-24 group in NH, Clinton actually got more votes in the 25-29 year olds. Iowa didn't break them up in the entrance poll... Obama took 57% of those 17-29 Iowa votes.

Youth is turning out for the D's, just as they did in 2004.

According to exit polls, Senator John Kerry won the under-30 set with 54 percent of the vote to President Bush's 44 percent. The Democrats lost every other age group.

Guess the party represented by angry, old, bigoted, war-mongering white men may go the way of the dodo bird in one generation.

I've been going through the news reports, pundit analysis, and the blogs, trying to figure out what really happened to result in Hillary Clinton's upset win in New Hampshire?  It is like one moment, everyone is writing off Hillary Clinton's campaign, and now the next moment, everyone is shaking their heads, asking what happened?  I think there are a number of factors to consider, each factor interconnecting with each other.  

For more, continue below the fold.

Riding an evangelical wave to victory in Iowa, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee by necessity has taken a decidedly more secular line in New Hampshire.  Without the religious right base to tap into in the Granite State, Huckabee had focused instead on taxes, immigration and other more mundane issues of this world.  But on Sunday in Windham, New Hampshire, the former Baptist Minister returned to his roots and delivered a sermon on being "soldiers for Christ" in "God's Army."

It was harder than usual to wake up on 11/03/04.
After all, it was our first election.

I think that the conversation regarding youth voting misses a lot regarding general youth movement towards politics, the Democratic Party, and especially Barack Obama. I’d like to explain why I think he fits our generation, and hopefully facilitate some dialogue where nobody calls anybody a swear word or leaves DKos for a month. Being a bastardly Obama supporter, however, I will use my own story to begin... :)

I came from a right-leaning, working class family in southern Tennessee. My parents were teachers. I was an apolitical 17 year old when I walked barefoot across the stage to receive my high school diploma in May of 2001. That summer of 2001 was a great one, filled with creeks and canoes a crappy job with wonderful co-workers.

In August I moved to North Carolina for college and turned 18. My country now called me an "adult," and I could get into R-rated movies, smoke cigarettes, and even practice consensual sex in Idaho – although I thankfully never became very passionate about any of the three.

Oh yeah...and I could vote.

As the New Hampshire primary approaches, a desperate Mitt Romney has emerged as a vocal defender of the foreign policy of George W. Bush.  On Sunday, Romney developed a full-blown case of Bush envy, echoing the President's 2001 spaghetti western threat by saying, "I want to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive."  To be sure, by alternately downplaying or emphasizing the importance of capturing Bin Laden as political circumstances require, Romney has indeed taken a page straight from the Bush playbook.

Below is a cross post from my blog. Most of my readers are artists and sad to say I'm one of their few sources of political news. But at least they're listening to me...so far. Here's what I sent them today about the Iowa Caucus. If you find any of it useful please feel free to share it around your own list of contacts.

Maybe most of the people on this site will think its lame, but I have to admit to my addiction to "The Amazing Race".  

During football season, the episodes all end up getting a little delayed.  So when I turned on the TV tonight to catch the show, instead the CBS channel was still showing the end of tonight's episode of "60 Minutes".

I feel like it's just a cliche, that Andy Rooney's final commentaries are supposed to be a folksy bit of observation from yesteryear.  But the one tonight was really maybe over the line.

It's now on the website, here

Tonight, all he could talk about was how he really wished that the candidates of today sounded more just like the standard old dead white guys who used to always be in charge.

The organizations passing as "news" and their employees passing as "journalists" are just about declaring The Winner in an election that won’t come until November 2008.  This metaphorical horse race has been a marathon for a couple of years now as a variety of elected officials do that hat toss thing declaring them in the run for what has become CEO of the United States.  And while candidates have been galloping around the election track and journalists have been making bets on their favorites; We the People have been trying to get the attention of not only the media, but those candidates running that race, without much success.

All the candidates positions, both Republican and Democratic, differ from what We say we want.  MSNBC (no direct link found; go to msnbc. com and then click politics and rate the candidates+issues matrix) has a chart of every candidate and what they are saying about every "important" issue.  The most interesting thing about this little poll is that it shows that none of the candidates meet our criteria.

OUR TAKE ON THE IOWA CAUCUS RESULTS (from the Iowa-based Progressive Populist): On the Democratic side, Barack Obama is for real. Hillary Clinton is not inevitable. And John Edwards is the progressive populist in the race.

Now that the Democratic presidential race has practically narrowed to those three candidates, Edwards remains the progressive populist choice for change. Many progressive voters would be proud to vote for a black candidate or a female candidate with a solid chance to occupy the Oval Office, but while Obama and Clinton have been occupying the middle of the road, Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who comes from a working-class background and made his bones as a trial lawyer challenging reckless and abusive corporations, has been challenging the status quo. Although he has been derided by some for his wealth, he made his fortune by winning verdicts for his working-class clients who were injured by those corporations that are unregulated by the Republicans and lightly regulated by the D.C. Dems.

I would have liked to have posted this Thursday night or Friday, but stupidly stayed in a place without Internet access!! Anyway, finally arrived home in Alabama late last night and thought, well, better late than never......  Iowa was an experience and I wish John had won outright, but we did good work and I don't regret the time or expense at all.
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The caucus process was amazing, as was all the activity in Edwards' Davenport HQ.  There were staffers, volunteers from Iowa, and volunteers from all over the country: Alabama, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, and Oregon (that I remember).

Here's my first person account of what it was like..... with photos!

This is cross-posted at Left in Alabama

Ronald Reagan was conservative. Very conservative. More conservative than many of the independents and Democrats who voted for him. He's the hero of the Republican Party because he had an appeal that went far beyond the conservative base of voters who agreed with him on the issues.

At the end of my quadrennial trip to Iowa Thursday night, as the caucus results were coming in, one of the Iowa radio stations reported that independents and first-time caucus goers were heavily favoring Obama. Clinton lost narrowly among regular Democrats. The tone sounded as though the Fox affiliated station was trying to downplay Obama's victory but I took it as a positive statement.

Lots of diarists have submitted their Inevitability 2.0 stories (e.g. here), suggesting Edwards should pull out and back Obama.  We've had the seven stages of grieving repeated to us.  We've been asked to bet.  We're told that it's over.  I disagree.

I am just not ready to concede.