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St Louis Caucus Night Watch Party

ArchPundit January 3, 2008 1 Comment

Obama Campaign to Hold Iowa Caucus Night Watch Parties in Missouri

St. Louis, MO – On Thursday, January 3^rd, friends and supporters of the Obama campaign will gather for Iowa Caucus Night watch parties in St. Louis and Kansas City.

Event details :

Who:             Friends and Supporters of the Obama campaign

What:             Iowa Caucus Night Watch Parties

When:           Thursday, January 3, 2008

                        7:00 pm CST

ST. LOUIS

Where:           Obama for America St. Louis Headquarters

1204 Washington Ave. Suite 300

                        St. Louis, MO 63103

Iowa Prediction

ArchPundit January 2, 2008 15 Comments

Republicans:

Huckabee 30%
Romney 20%
McCain 15%
Thompson 15%
Paul 10%
10% uncommitted

Iowa Conservative ministers carry the day and instead of racial slippage, we have Mormon slippage. I actually anticipate a higher number of uncommitteds simply because no one seems to like their second choices, but I cannot figure out where it comes from so I leave it at 10%.
Democrats

Obama 36%
Clinton 30%
Edwards 27%
Uncommitted 7%

While everyone seems obsessed with Yepsen’s inane ranting about college students from out of state, the reality is that there was a rally for Obama in Iowa City with 10,000 people on December 28th when there aren’t really any students around other than those from the local area. I’ve seen that kind of energy once before and that was in 2004. No, not in Iowa, but in the Illinois US Senate Democratic Primary. There’s not as much of an upside in Iowa as what happened on election day in 2004, but there’s enough to give Obama a clear win. The other two I believe are topped out at about their sensitive estimator on Pollster simply because neither is new to Iowa voters.

Because When I Think of Fun…

ArchPundit January 2, 2008 No Comments

Hillary Clinton certainly comes to mind:

A punchy Clinton, who has been logging 15- to 18-hour days criss-crossing the state, was in a freewheeling mood, referring to herself as a “diva,” urging her New Year’s Day audience to “party hearty” and enigmatically remarking that the worst deficit in Washington was “the fun deficit.”

When Did Gore and Kerry Get Sainted?

ArchPundit January 1, 2008 2 Comments

Markos and others attack Obama for daring to criticize Gore and Kerry.

I’m not picking on Markos individually, but this general idea that somehow those two twits are above criticism from our candidates is silly as hell.

They came in and trashed the party with condescension and crappy campaigns built on lame appeals fought over the margins and not the heart of the country’s values.   If you like John Edwards or Barack Obama, they are doing exactly the opposite by arguing about values and justice, not over the most recent version of school uniforms.

The person who is the natural follower of Gore and Kerry is Hillary Clinton–one of the best practitioners of the politics of condescension and someone who will argue over 10 voters in an Ohio precinct instead of millions of Americans across the country.

The question is are Democrats going to compete broadly and over values or are we going to have another candidate arguing over lockboxes and arcane votes? A Democrat will likely win the White House, but if we want to perpetuate the kind of crappy campaigns run in 2000 and 2004, pick someone who is going to argue over arcane policy points instead of arguing about the values that Americans hold dear.

The blogosphere faces significant challenges in being the best critique of the press and groupthink  in the press, but also is developing serious blindspots about the groupthink in the liberal blogosphere.

More specifically though the notion is that Obama is blaming Gore and Kerry for polarization.  That’s not what he said though, but running the kind of crappy incremental, policy wonkish and condescending campaigns aimed at winning that small sliver of swing voters perpetuates the polarization we see today.

Polarization has been heightened by a right wing noise machine over the last 25 years, but polarization is a natural effect of a closely divided nation. We would be polarized with or without the right wing noise machine. However, the way to overcome that polarization is not to build up the same infrastructure, it’s too create a large governing coalition so the elections aren’t that close.

It strikes me that both Obama and Edwards are proposing doing exactly that though using different language.  Even then, the language is more similar than anyone seems to notice with both offering critiques of the current system as a system cut from social Darwinism..
H. Clinton, Dukakis, Kerry, and Gore all held the debate on Republican terms.  Changing the terms to be on Democratic terms isn’t going to the right, it’s the kind of innovation the Party should have adopted years ago instead of going with the DLC in the early 1990s.

The progressive blogs have tended towards Edwards because of his rhetoric of fighting and I don’t find it unreasonable. I think there is a group think based on the notion that contrasting partisan fights are better overall and so it’s the only way to win.  I have never understood the argument as being an exclusive way to win though–in fact, it is one of two ways to change the debate on to Democratic terms. One can, effectively, argue that fighting for progressive values redefines the debate.  But at the same time, so does an argument that focuses upon different rhetoric, but gets you to the same end point.

The larger point is that both approaches are huge improvements over the traditional Democratic campaigns since 1980 other than 1992 and 1996. The people running those campaigns were part of the problem and it’s time to get rid of them and instead of reacting to Republicans, providing the argument to which they have to respond.