As evidenced by every major news organization, Sen. Obama led the charge out of the primary gates. See, e.g., CNN's recap of the 2008 Iowa caucus results. So, score one for the Crimson. And, as I predicted almost a year ago, Sen. Clinton's steam has started to run out before the race has even started.
The next question is whether she will be able to overcome her perception of being a) an old woman, and b) a Washington insider. Considering that photos speak louder than words sometimes, my suspicion is that maybe the Democratic party better start uniting behind one person instead of three sooner than later. My anti-Yale sentiments haven't quite reached Thomas proportions, but I'm going to take a shot from the bow and say that Obama is going to have an even more decisive win in New Hampshire on Monday. As I said yesterday though, it's going to be a lawyer representing half the country, and we'll see how much more or less that figure is come November.
And since I'm in the fair and impartial side of the business right now, Huckabee has continued his march toward the Republican nomination. Since this race isn't nearly as interesting as the Democrats', I'll side with my friends from Massachusetts and wonder outloud which party will unite behind their candidate (e.g., Huckabee) the fastest. I'll speculate on who I think has a better shot when it's down to two.
After it's all said and done, I'll revisit my prediction from the midterm elections in 2006 regarding the anti-incumbency movement. If Sen. Obama's success last night in Iowa is any indication, television's coveted 18-49 generation finally has a candidate they can relate to, and another percentage of the incumbents in the House and Senate should start thinking (or more likely, worrying) about their marketing strategy and other young and charismatic up-and-comers. As I said in November '06, "Carry the youth vote over the 72-is-the-new-69 demographic and any election is yours." It certainly seems my uninformed opinion may not have been so uninformed after all, at least for now.
In any case, I have two interesting stories my friends forwarded to me, which I am going to try and write something about this weekend. Until then, I'm out to party with some clerks who remain stuck on a west coast happy hour schedule.
And, so that no bulldog comes after me, I agree that the "we suck" prank was pretty good. The evolution of that prank (as well as the original and the latest) can be found here.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Harvard Law 1, Yale Law 0 (UNC Law 0.5)
Thursday, January 03, 2008
The Hawkeye State: One of these lawyers are going to win
Well, considering that Senators Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Biden are all lawyers, the only thing for sure that we'll know tomorrow is that the Democratic frontrunner, at least as claimed by a few Iowans, will be a lawyer. Yay law! (I don't think Gov. Richardson is a lawyer, however, but I think he's got as good a shot as Sen. Biden, so I'll take that action).
I tried to do a quick google search to figure out why Iowa is so important to the democratic process. I did find one older article about how they conduct their "caucuses," which I guess is fairly unique to the Hawkeye State, but nothing that really explains why I should care about what a bunch of midwestern Democrats think. Isn't this whole primary process a little archaic in itself? For that matter, isn't the idea of campaigning for president two to four years in advance even tackier?
Like the President, I'm not going to lose sleep over this thing. I'm sure it will be all over the news tomorrow anyway with all but three or four (both Ds & Rs) calling it an election. After all, there's absolutely nothing I can do about how this one plays out, and again, why everyone is so keyed in on what the state of Iowa thinks remains a mystery to me.
If you know however, please feel free to post relevant links and commentary. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is befuddled about the importance of Iowa.
