Obamania hits Granite State

The junior senator from Illinois has jumped out to a lead of 10 percentage points over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.

Oh, by the way...

The new political wisdom says that Mike Huckabee's victory in Iowa, which scares the bejesus out of establishment Republicans, is a big boost to John McCain's candidacy (see the previous post).

But consider this: Obamania is likely to attract a lot of independent voters to the Democratic primary election in New Hampshire next Tuesday. Those are independent voters who won't be available to McCain to help him gain new traction on the Republican side.

If Huckabee wins in New Hampshire, he's going to be hard to stop, no matter the fervent wishes of his party's elders.

Now what?

In the wake of Iowa's stunning results, the 2008 presidential race suddenly turns a corner and heads down a path so strange that John McCain, with only a fourth-place finish Thursday night, is now seen as a much stronger contender for the Republican nomination.

How weird is that?

BooMan says Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are finished and predicts that Barack Obama will defeat McCain in November.

The Politicker explains why Mike Huckabee's victory is good news for McCain.

Arianna Huffington wonders if the outbreak of Obamania might be just a fleeting thing.

The Rockford Rascal says it won't be fleeting and offers this bit of eloquence as evidence:

Obama wins!

Well, I got the winners in both parties wrong.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney was much weaker than I had expected. And among the Democrats, I had figured that John Edwards had a better ground game than Barack Obama and that Hillary Clinton was fading.

With some precincts still to report, it looks like Clinton will finish third, a psychological disaster for her campaign.

Clinton has enough money, organization and popular support to soldier on, but if she finishes third tonight, she is badly wounded. Edwards, in second place, has dodged a proverbial bullet.

Iowa predictions

From around the blogosphere (leftward and rightward alike), educated guesses on the outcomes of the Iowa presidential caucuses can be found here and here and here and here. Check out the comments on those sites, as well.

My own predictions, published three days ago, are here. (I'd be glad to be proven wrong on my picks for winners in both parties. If Obama and Huckabee win, I'll be more than delighted.)

What if Edwards wins Iowa?

If John Edwards finishes first in Thursday night's Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa (which I predicted here a few days ago), the race for the nomination might last a lot longer than would otherwise be the case.

BooMan analyzes the situation here.

POSTSCRIPT: I have to admit that I've lost a little of the confidence I had in my prediction that Edwards will win in Iowa. My radar is picking up on a last-minute rush toward Barack Obama. But I'll stick with my Edwards pick.

Ah, good old Alan Keyes

Those of us in Illinois -- and especially here in Rockford -- have a perspective on Alan Keyes that the rest of America can scarcely appreciate.

Keyes was our Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate back in '04. He was recruited by Rockford State Sen. Dave Syverson, among others, when the winner of the GOP primary had to drop out in a sex scandal.

Keyes didn't even live in Illinois, but the Republican poohbahs seemed to figure that their own articulate black guy could fare well against Barack Obama, so they got him to move here from Maryland.

The result was a disaster. Keyes said his candidacy was "God's will," and opined that Jesus Christ wouldn't vote for Obama. He referred to Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter as "a selfish hedonist" and otherwise condemned homosexuals as evil.

Keyes quickly became a statewide joke and ended up with only 27 percent of the vote.

But lately, if you haven't noticed, Keyes has imposed himself on the hapless field of Republican presidential hopefuls in the 2008 race. His presence, not surprisingly, has been greeted disdainfully by conservative pundits who once regarded him with more fondness.

Roy Edroso surveys the situation here.

Your so-called liberal media

Some pinhead at The Washington Post has written a long article about the fact that Hillary Clinton often wears pantsuits.

This is the same Washington Post that spreads baseless rumors about Barack Obama and offers the senile scrawlings of David Broder.

I remember when the Post was a great newspaper.

Wow!

I've been involved in politics one way or another for 40 years, and this is the best campaign commercial I've ever seen:

You don't have to be a sexist to oppose Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy -- but it helps

Hillary Clinton would make a better president than any of the Republican candidates for the job, but she's not my first choice. I prefer Barack Obama.

Clinton's gender has nothing to do with my choice in this matter. Nor is it necessarily a factor in the attitudes of some of the other folks who prefer some other candidate. But let's not kid ourselves. There are a whole lot of people out there who have deep-seated misgivings about the very idea of a woman serving as president, and lots of them see certain traits they would admire in a man as unattractive in a woman.

Robin Gerber of the Gallup Organization has an interesting take on the situation.

Your so-called liberal media

There isn't one shred of evidence that Barack Obama is now or ever has been a Muslim, but that doesn't stop the mouth-breathers on the far right of the political spectrum from spreading rumors to the contrary -- and it doesn't stop The Washington Post from giving voice to those rumors on the front page of today's edition.

This kind of rubbish would be no surprise in a rag like the Washington Times, the infamous Moonie paper, but for a once-respectable publication like the Post to stoop to this level is shocking.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, CNN debunked the Obama-is-a-Muslim story many months ago. (H/T to Talking Points Memo.)

POSTSCRIPT II: Here is another good take on the Post piece and other sins of "the liberal media."

POSTSCRIPT III: This guy, too, has the proper slant on the Post's idiotic article.

Even reputable bloggers sometimes misinterpret polls

Talking Points Memo, one of my favorite blogs, had this to report today:

"New ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Obama with lead in Iowa."

But the poll does not actually show Barack Obama with a lead. It puts Obama at 30 percent and Hillary Clinton at 26 percent. That gap of 4 percentage points is within the poll's margin of error. Hence, the poll shows a statistical dead heat.

It's bad enough that the mainstream media do such a poor job of interpreting poll results. Progressive bloggers should be careful to avoid such mistakes.

UPDATE: Fox News gets the Post/ABC poll wrong with this headline: "Latest Iowa Poll Shows Obama Leading the Pack." But The New York Times gets it right with this: "A Statistical Tie in Iowa."

A pretty good speech

Barack Obama has received high marks for this speech delivered last week in Des Moines:

Why I'm for Barack Obama

Andrew Sullivan explains it well in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

What Social Security crisis?

I don't like the campaign rhetoric from Barack Obama suggesting that Social Security is facing some kind of big crisis.

As Paul Krugman noted in The New York Times a few years ago, just a little tweaking of Social Security would fix the system for the next 75 years.

OOPS!!

On Tuesday, I mused here on what a fuss would ensue if Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

But then yesterday, I flatly predicted that it wouldn't happen.

Well, of course, now it has happened. Al Gore is a Nobel laureate -- unless it turns out that agents for George W. Bush can steal enough votes on the Nobel committee or can somehow get the Supreme Court to reverse the verdict. (Heh, heh. Just kidding.)

So, now I'm left to make another flat prediction, and I've got a lot of confidence in this one:

Al Gore will not run for the Democratic presidential nomination next year. A failed effort in that regard would only diminish this most prestigious honor. Why would he want to risk that?

Besides, a candidacy on Gore's part would be highly problematic. He's not the best political campaigner. He would alienate many of the followers of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and would split the Democratic Party apart (just when the party seems to be fairly unified while the Republicans are badly splintered and dispirited).

No, Gore won't run. He'll be happy to take his Nobel and use it to advance the cause of environmentalism.

POSTSCRIPT: Here's an early roundup of reaction from around the blogosphere.

Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore

The silly flap over whether Barack Obama or any of the other presidential candidates sports an American flag pin on his lapel brings to mind John Prine's antiwar song of 1968:

While digesting Reader's Digest
In the back of the dirty book store
A plastic flag with gum on the back
Fell out on the floor.
Well, I picked it up and I ran outside
Slapped it on my window shield
And if I could see Old Betsy Ross
I'd tell her how good I feel

(Chorus)

But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.

Well, I went to the bank this morning
And the cashier he said to me,
"If you join the Christmas club
We'll give you ten of them flags for free."
Well, I didn't mess around a bit
I took him up on what he said.
And I stuck them stickers all over my car
And one on my wife's forehead.

(Repeat chorus)

Well, I got my window shield so filled
With flags I couldn't see.
So, I ran the car upside a curb
And right into a tree.
By the time they got a doctor down
I was already dead.
And I'll never understand why the man
Standing in the Pearly Gates said...

"But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
We're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more."

Why do Sean Hannity and Fred Thompson hate America and denegrate our brave troops?

Decent folks have been up in arms the past few days over news that Barack Obama doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin.

The nerve of the guy! Oh, sure, he says he prefers to show his patriotism in more substantive ways. Who's he kidding? He's just a terrorist sympathizer, that's what he is. He has no respect for our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. The man's a damned traitor.

You wouldn't find Sean Hannity or Fred Thompson without flags on their lapels, would you?

Oops! I guess you would.

Uh-oh! There seems to be lots of pictures of the Republican presidential candidates all dressed up in their Sunday best -- but most of them without flags on their lapels.

Wait! It gets worse. Here's President Bush shaking hands with some guy, and the prez is completely flagless! No wonder his approval rating is in the dumper.

Man! This country's in big, big trouble.

Frederick of Hollywood speaks

Now we know why Don Manzullo has endorsed the yet-to-be-announced presidential candidacy of Fred Thompson.

It's because the guy is so articulate. Consider, for example, his response to a question today on just when he might actually get in the race:

We are going to be getting in if we get in, and of course, we are in the testing the waters phase. We’re going to be making a statement shortly that will cure all of that. But yeah, we’ll be in traditionally when people get in this race.

Admit it. The man's eloquence puts Barack Obama to shame. And Fred's an actor, too, you know.

Which GOP prez hopeful leads in Illinois?

Come on. Ask yourself: Which of the 10 candidates for the Republican presidential nomination (11, if you include Fred Thompson) is ahead in Illinois?

If I didn't already know the answer, I probably would have guessed Thompson. Well, according to this American Research Group poll, it's Rudy Giuliani by nine percentage points over Thompson.

I expect that to change. Yes, yes, I know that Illinois Republicans, on the whole, are a bit more moderate than their brethren nationally (and they're becoming increasingly moderate in the suburbs of Chicago). But Rudy's popularity among the GOP rank-and-file in this state likely will fade as his numbers decline elsewhere, as surely they will.

There's simply no way that this thrice-married, pro-choice, pro-gay New Yorker is going to be the Republican nominee. He'll be an also-ran by Christmas.

The ARG poll results for Illinois in the Democratic race also are a bit surprising, in that favorite son Barack Obama is no better than tied with Hillary Clinton when you factor in the margin of error. But that, too, will change before year's end.