I love American elections. Tonight the US Presidential primaries get underway with the Iowa Caucuses. James Forsyth of the Spectator Coffee House is actually there and I am green with envy. However, I hope to be in Washington for Super Tuesday on 5 February.
Whatever the results tonight, everything changes in the race tomorrow. From what I understand Barack Obama may well come out on top on the Dems race, leaving Hillary Clinton with a very tricky spin operation. If John Edwards comes third, he may as well give up. So after only one of the primaries it could well be a two horse race in the Democratic race.
On the Republican side it's more murky as Giuliani has sat this one out. Conventional wisdom points to Huckabee beating Romney, which would be a bitter blow to the former Governor or Massachusetts. I interviewed Huckabee last year briefly and was distinctly underwhelmed. He would be a joke nominee and Hillary or Barack Obama would whip him. I feel the same about Romney, who just doesn't come across as believing in anything apart from his own ambition. The joker in the pack is John McCain, who, if he does well in New Hampshire, will have consolidated his reputation as the "Comeback Senior". His campaign was all but dead and buried a few months ago. He had no money, fired most of his staff, but since then he has come into his own.
22 comments:
I find it hard to believe that it will much matter who the Republican candidate is. Unless there are "events", I suppose.
I love American elections, too! I love all the hucksterism and the razzamatazz and all the computations.
I read that Hillary is likely to come third in Iowa.
I don't like Obama, but it looks as though he's going to win in NH. He's a dangerous man. Although Hillary's being talked down as fading, I think a win by him will galvanise voters into giving their vote to Hillary, though,in the following primary. The man's daft.
For the Reps, I think if John McCain can get the nomination, he would stand a good chance of pulling off a victory for the Reps. He's respected across the board and I think ditherers would get out and vote for him.
For the Dems, if I were a betting woman, I would put a small wager on Hillary for winning the nomination, if not the election.
I don't know why I wrote NH when I meant Iowa.
I hate to point out the obvious, Iain, but the US primary election season DOESN'T start with the Iowa caucuses tonight, because the caucus is NOT a primary and bears little resemblance to an actual primary.
I see that Guiliani has just backed a "surge" for Afghanistan. Quite a bold move. (Sorry I can't do links, but http://www.nysun.com/article/68755)
"apart from his own ambition"-sound familiar???
This election is so interesting. I'm a huge fan of Barack Obama and I hope he does well. I would be happy with Hillary winning - but Obama is really special.
If Hillary wins - will she be brave enough to choose Obama as her VP? I think she feels threatened by him. Clinton and Obama though - what a winning ticket that would be... fingers crossed.
The next year will be fascinating...
I saw Huckabee on Meet The Press and he was woeful. Tim Russert asked him if Pakistan was mainly Sunni or Shiite and stumped Huckabee for a few seconds. I think he guessed and (luckily for him) got it right. If you fancy a laugh as to Huckabee's handle on foreign policy then you should read this piece in Foreign Affairs.
"If someone told you that a conservative was someone who supported amnesty for illegal (immigrants), who supported limiting free speech, who embraced the ACLU's brief for terrorist detainees, and who opposed tax cuts during the Bush administration, well what would you say?" You'd say they were not a conservative, right?"
Rush on 2nd January 2008.
Believe it. McCain is NOT one of us.
"I've just described some of Sen. McCain's positions, ladies and gentlemen".
Verity - I know very little about Obama, am interested to know why you think he is dangerous. Would he be worse than the vile Hillary?
I would love to see Bloomberg enter the race as an Independent - he doesn't need to curry favour from anyone to raise campaign funds, and from what I read, is doing a fine job as Mayor of New York.
DEMOCRATS
I think the Dems is harder to predict in round 1 because of the polling method. If you've ever watched a caucaus in a town hall its a cross between ingenious and insane!!
it can look for example like howard dean & john kerry are neck and neck. lots of tactical caucus goers of the lower candidates will weigh up the scene and then when they realise their man won't win or their vote isn't going to gain them delegates (there are certain thresholds to win a delegate) they leave kusinich, wesley clark and dick gephardt in their droves..... Before you know it the top three candidates are all trying to make peace with the outsider candidates and Kerry is propelled into the lead and john edwards becomes everyone's second choice candidate. howard dean etc etc becomes history on the basis of all the switchers!!
in my analysis... which is pure guesswork and gut-feeling!!... I think that Clinton will be many people's first choice. However, when the switching comes into play there will be a large number of people from the lesser candidates who will prefer the radicalism of obama and edwards.
So I think clinton could actually come third in Iowa.
however, i think she could be strongest in a normal primary race with none of the caucusing.
REPUBLICANS
I've not even a gut feeling for this one. Romney comes from one of these political dynasties so who knows what contacts he can call on. I don't think his mormon faith sits comfortably with everyone though and i personally cant take to his demeanour in debates - he is polished like al gore was, but also wooden and uncharismatic like al gore. I think Huckabee will be the surprise package.... coming from further back and possibly taking this contest. He will be found out when he is under greater scrutiny. There was an exchange during the campaign (possibly between these two) where they were almost boasting about who was tougher and had sentenced the most criminals to death. Yikes.
I prefer McCain and Guilliani over both these guys. Question remains what will happen to Ron Paul's fundraising millions? Fred Thompson's too scarey and there has been the whiff of laziness about him.
To Verity.
Accept it.... if Hilary is the Dem nomination, then the Reps have it in the bag. That hag is hated across America. If she is nominated, it's another Republican in the White House come 2009. Whoever it is.
Verity, I'm intrigued by this - why do you find Obama "dangerous"?
I find him actually a very brilliant mind (although admittedly naive on foreign policy). I have my reasons for not wanting him to win, but I've heard this before from conservatives, what is it exactly that you find "dangerous"
Still no mention of Ron Paul I see.
Shame on you all.
And you call yourselves conservatives?
Soon you all will have to start talking about him whether the Conservative, the Labour, the Lib/Dems party and the entire US political establishment want to or not.
He may not win but he still has a better chance then Romney.
at the risk of looking stupid, I'm calling it thus -
DEMS
Hillary will win the nomination, although Obama will get off to a great start, win in Iowa and show strongly in NH. But her campaign is too experianced and too rich and Obama will find it difficult to stay the course.
GOP
Huckabee's going to be the surprise package. He'll win in Iowa, and is going to start picking up support elsewhere. Romney will be all but done after the early primaries and need a huge Super Tuesday, McCain will need to win big in NH to stand any chance of making his money last, and Fred Thompson will need to get off his lazy @rse and look like he's running.
It will come down to a bare knuckle fight between Giuliani, who is going to struggle to look presidential after some huge early setbacks (last in Iowa, 3rd in NH), and Huckabee, who will continually compare himself to Ronald Reagan and lose California and NY on Super Tuesday.
So it'll be a battered Hillary and a bruised Rudy to contest the White House in October.
And if, by chance Giuliani doesn't make it through the primaries, look out for Mike Bloomberg to make a late entrance as a 3rd Party candidate somewhere in July. He has got some VERY smart people working for him.
I think Obama is what America needs to be honest. Clinton is a big turn off for the voters, and I'll bet she doesn't get as much support as everyone thinks.
I really don't like the woman, and I'm hoping and praying Obama comes out top.
I would love to see McCain get the Republican nomination, he's experienced, seems quite intelligent and he annoyed the religious right in 2000.
But there is the rub. I think Huckabee will get the Republican nomination. I really hope not as he's 'Bush.2'. Or 'Dubya Vista'.
I think it'll be Obama/Edwards for the Democrats. Anything else and I think they'll be doomed.
Ah, Verity, but American elections were so much more fun when the Donkeys always used "Happy Days Are Here Again" as their theme-tune. Now they just play some poppap or rockhorror. Ugh!
There's only one candidate in either party even worth bothering to vote for.... RON PAUL
Judith and Andy:
1. The man has no experience. He is like a small boy who thinks he could be an engine driver. He has all the vast experience of having been a senator for two years.
[And let us not forget that senators are seldom considered presidential material, because they have no executive experience. And someone who's just been a senator for two years hasn't even found his way round DC yet. Governors are always to be preferred, because they've actually run a state, which is like a country. States have more independence than British people realise.
2. So I think he's an even more delusional egomaniac than all the others.
3. He has no domestic experience and no foreign experience and bases his ideas about Britain on a one-day stop-overin London. And we're their closest ally - although, to be fair, I'm not sure that he knows or understands that either.
4. He's a zealot.
5. Although he denies it, he's a muslim. He went to a madrassah in Indonesia, that he now claims was just a school He says that madrassah is the Indonesian word for school. That is a lie. I speak a small amount of Bahasa Indonesia, and the word for school is sekolah.
6. Frankly, his past is a little too filled with incident for my taste.
I am still predicting it will be President McCain.
The key question for the Republicans is the one rather inelegantly posed by a lady at one of his campaign meetings: "How do we beat the bitch?" The (rather obvious)answer is to choose the candidate with the greatest appeal to swing voters. I am convinced that if Clinton runs away with the Democratic nomination, McCain will get the Republican nomination, and the presidency, although I concede that if Obama gets it, the GOP may feel that it, too, can gamble on someone less experienced like Romney.
Wow,Andy! Thanks for a breath-taking summing up!
George Bush is (obviously) a 'dangerous' man. Barack Obama is neither 'daft' nor 'dangereous'.
He's intelligent, personable and optimistic. In fact - he's a genius.
:)
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