"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
I haven't posted to this blog for a while. Why? because nothing interesting has been happening, but let's take a brief overview of the cabbages among us and see if pigs fly.
In government, the Bush administration continues its Bataan Death March towards its ultimate end. So sad to see the village idiot vetoing the S-CHIP legislation by saying it will give this country socialized medicine, while just a few years ago idiot crowed about his prescription drug plan. No action by the Democrats about Dweeb of the week Alberto Gonzales. No action about the war. No action on anything. All they do is try to score political points off each other like candidates for a junior high school class presidency (maybe the sophomore class).
In politics, both parties exude unlimited boredom. The pundits have already anointed Queen Hillary. They may be in for a shock. The punditocracy is looking at two elements, the results of national polls and amount of money collected by the candidates. By these measures, Hillary is doing superbly as she garners impressive poll numbers and an even more impressive amount of benjamins. However, the nominating process is not a one-day national event. Instead, it consists of a series of hurdles that the candidates must conquer, with the Iowa caucuses being the first, followed by the New Hampshire primary.
As for Iowa, it looks as though the pundits may be calling the race a bit too early as
David Yepsen of the DesMoines Register reports that Barack Obama still has a lot of pull as he plays his "Kennedy Kard".
:: Tue 10.2.2007 6:11 PM
Barack Obama cloaked himself in John Kennedy’s legacy Tuesday as he sought to retake the initiative in the Democratic presidential campaign.
Invoking Kennedy imagery is a delicate thing for any politician to do but Obama succeeded in pulling it off.
The Illinois senator used the fifth anniversary of an anti-war speech he gave in Chicago to draw contrasts with his chief rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton. He brought former Kennedy speech writer and aide Ted Sorensen to Iowa to introduce him for the speech in Des Moines and again in Coralville.
Sorensen invoked parallels with the Cuban missile crisis decisions made by the young President Kennedy.
Obama is playing the Kennedy card because national polls show him trailing Clinton in the national contest. National observers are saying Obama’s not gaining traction and that Clinton is starting to lock up the nomination.
That’s not the shape of the race in Iowa, where polls show Clinton, Obama and John Edwards locked in a statistical tie for first place among likely Democratic caucus-goers. Obama’s spent more time than Clinton in the lead-off state, has plenty of money to deploy here and has built a formidable organization to go up against his two rivals.
Two hurdles confront Obama in Iowa. The first is the criticism he isn’t strong enough in his opposition to the war. The second is that he’s inexperienced. He used Tuesday’s speech to counter both and tweak Clinton and Edwards.
“The war in Iraq should never have been fought,” he said adding the American people were failed by a Congress “that voted to give the President the open-ended authority to wage war that he uses to this day. Let’s be clear: Without that vote, there would be no war.”
Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama said “and now we need to ask those who voted for the war: how can you give the President a blank check and not expect him to cash it?”
In other digs at the two, Obama said:
*Americans “should ask themselves: Who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right, and who got it wrong?”
*Also, “the American people get to decide: are we going to turn back the clock, or turn the page.”
*And “the first thing we have to do is end this war. And the right person to end it is someone who had the judgment to oppose it from the beginning.”
*Also, “we’ll reject torture, without exception or equivocation.”
*And “I wouldn’t be here, if time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation.”
That “torch” phrase was made famous by Kennedy. Sorensen, who wrote many of the late president’s speeches, told the Des Moines audience Kennedy was also criticized for lacking experience when he ran in 1960.
“What the country wants in a president is judgment,” Sorensen said.
He called Obama “the only serious candidate for the Democratic nomination” who opposed the war from the start. Like Kennedy, Obama has spent years of his life living abroad and so understands the importance of world opinion to U.S. policy objectives.
But not all of Obama’s speech was aimed at Clinton and Edwards. Bill Richardson is crowding him by appealing to anti-war activists with a promise to get all the troops out of Iraq.
Obama said clearly Tuesday he would “get all our combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months” of taking office. The only ones left will be those guarding diplomats or “carrying out targeted strikes on Al Qaeda.”
That may not appease the most rabid anti-war activists who like Richardson for his get-everybody-out stance, but at least it clears up an questions the left may have about what Obama intends to do with the combat forces.
For those who might have missed something very important, let me put it into large type for you:
Iowa, where polls show Clinton, Obama and John Edwards locked in a statistical tie for first place among likely Democratic caucus-goers.
here are some recent poll results:
American Research Group
9/28/2007
Iowa
w/o Al Gore
Hillary Clinton 30%
Barack Obama 24%
John Edwards 19%
Bill Richardson 10%
Joe Biden 3%
Chris Dodd 1%
Dennis Kucinich 1%
Unsure 13%
Source
Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International
9/27/2007
Iowa
w/o Al Gore
Barack Obama 28%
Hillary Clinton 24%
John Edwards 22%
Bill Richardson 10%
Joe Biden 5%
Chris Dodd 1%
Dennis Kucinich 1%
Unsure 9%
Source
Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International
9/27/2007
Iowa
w/o Al Gore
Hillary Clinton 31%
Barack Obama 25%
John Edwards 21%
Bill Richardson 6%
Joe Biden 3%
Chris Dodd 1%
Dennis Kucinich 1%
Unsure 12%
Source
Strategic Vision
9/22/2007
Iowa
w/o Al Gore
Hillary Clinton 24%
John Edwards 22%
Barack Obama 21%
Bill Richardson 13%
Joe Biden 4%
Chris Dodd 1%
Dennis Kucinich 1%
Unsure 14%
Source
Lets, see, Obama leads in one polls, ties in another and trails in a third. Yup, mighty conclusive evidence for a Hillary run-away.
Hillary seems to have a big lead in New Hampshire, but how firm will those numbers prove to be if Obama has a significant performance in Iowa? So many people dislike Hillary that her support will dry up like a creek in an Oklahoma summer if voters perceive another candidate can win the nomination and then the general election. Just look back a few years and study the candidacy of Howard Dean. He was going to blow everyone else away, until he himself blew up in Iowa.
Hmm, what else? Oh, yeah, there is a war going on in Iraq. Iraq, a country in name only. Nice to see that the legislature is back in session. Seems to be about as effective as that legislature in Washington. Does anyone believe ANY story that comes out of Iraq? Will American soldiers continue to die for the crime of launching an unnecessary war which was committed by the bush administration? Is that our national penance?
By the way, Move.On really screwed the pooch with their "General Betray Us" advertisement in the New York Times. They managed to deftly switch the issue from one of resolving this nasty mess, to one where they defamed General Petreaus. Nice going Eli Pariser!
Oh, yeah, one more thing: the press is in a tizzy because Barack Obama isn't wearing an American flag lapel pin. Sheesh! Maybe someone should point out that the lapel flag thing was started by none other than Richard Nixon, in his not-too-subtle appeal to law 'n' order.
Ennui marches on!
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