Obligatory Comment on John Edward's Indiscretions

Former presidential candidate John Edward's behavior with women behind closed doors would be the business of a very limited number of people if it were not for the first few words of this sentence: former presidential candidate. Those three words make the Edwards affair public property...

I supported Edwards for the Democratic nomination. I feel a little cheated now, a little angry. The question everyone asks is the simplest one: what if he'd won? What if Edwards were the presumptive nominee at the moment instead of Obama? Or worse, what if this had come out after the convention and Edwards had been the actual nominee?

John Edwards was playing Russian roulette when he decided to run for the presidency this time. Let's pull the trigger and see what happens. The problem is that it wasn't his own head in front of the barrel; it was the Democratic Party's head. That will be hard to forgive. And it won't disappoint me greatly if Edwards now disappears into the world of consulting and/or academia - or perhaps returns to private law practice.

Primaries & Caucuses: SuperTuesday and the Saturday Stumble

For a variety of personal reason, I never really got around to commenting on SuperTuesday. But now that the dust has settled a little, there are some things worth saying about each party's race for the presidential nomination.

I haven't heard much comment on voter turnout.

• In Colorado, about 120,000 people turned out for the Democratic Caucuses; the GOP drew only about 55,000 people. Colorado went for Clinton in 1992 (but not in 1996), for Jimmy Carter in 1976, and for Johnson in 1964. In the last 12 elections that state has gone to the Democrats just three times.
  
• In Georgia, 1,046,000 people voted in the Democratic Primary. Only 958,000 people voted in Georgia's GOP Primary. Georgia went for Kennedy in 1960, Carter in 1976 and 1980, and Clinton in 1992 (but not in 1996).
  
• In Missouri only about 585,000 people voted in the GOP Primary compared to around 820,000 in the Democratic contest. Missouri has gone to the GOP in seven of the last 12 presidential Elections.
  
• In North Dakota the Democrats drew almost 18,000 caucus goers, compared to only about 9,000 for the GOP. North Dakota hasn't voted for a Democrat in November since 1964.
  
• In Oklahoma the Democrats drew over 400,000 voters to their primary while the GOP only saw about 330,000 come out. Like North Dakota, Oklahoma hasn't voted for a Democrat in November since 1964.
  
• Democrats in Tennessee drew 614,000 voters to their primary, while the GOP managed to get out only about 547,000 (even with favorite son Fred Thompson running). Tennessee went for Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Carter in 1976, and Johnson in 1964, but they've gone to the GOP in eight of the last 12 elections.

The question: Will this translate to the November election? Maybe...

The trend continued in Louisiana, where over 350,000 people voted in the Democratic primary yesterday and only and only about 155,000 voted in the GOP race. The state went for Kennedy in 1960, Carter in 1976, and Clinton twice, but has gone to the GOP two-thirds of the time since 1960.

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Did SuperTuesday have winners? Well, it certainly had losers on the GOP side. Fred Thompson placed fifth in his home state. I'll go back to the actor metaphor I heard somewhere a while back and say that Mike Huckabee seems to have gotten the part that Fred Thompson tried out for.

Romney fell victim to a combination of factors. There was the fact that the Conservative vote was divided three ways. That made it easy from McCain to pull out a win in states like Missouri and Oklahoma. In a head-to-head race with just the two of them, Romney might well have beaten McCain out of those 90 or so delegates. Romney fell victim to high expectations; he was expected to do better than he did, and that made it difficult to justify staying in the race. I think Romney also fell victim to his own ambitions in as much as he's more committed to being president someday than he is to being president now. He could be perceived as having hurt the party by staying in, so he suspended his campaign.

While McCain carried the day, the biggest GOP winner may well turn out to be Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor is now the only choice for many Conservatives and logic choice for the anti-McCain block. Huckabee picked up the endorsement of Dr. James Dobson, champion of the Religious Right. And Huckabee's two wins yesterday testify to his new status as Last Conservative Standing. Mathematically, it's still possible for Huckabee to win the nomination (especially is Romney releases his delegates to vote however they want). It's not very likely, but it's possible at the moment.

On the Democratic side, SuperTuesday proved that the Clinton-Obama race really is a tie. That translates to a win for Obama. And that momentum carried him to three new wins yesterday. More and more, the focus of the Democratic race is on SuperDelegates since it doesn't look like either candidate will get enough delegates from the primary and caucus process to win outright.

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The Saturday Stumble is the name pundits giving to the performance of McCain and Clinton yesterday. If McCain is not careful, he could end up being offered a position as Huckabee's VP. If Hillary is not careful, she could just plain lose.

No one seems to stay a front runner for very long...

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In case you hadn't noticed:

• Fred Thompson endorsed John McCain.
  
• Ron Paul made some statements to the effect that he probably really would support the GOP candidate (he refused to rule out running as an independent during a Washington Post interview a few weeks ago).
  
• NYC Mayor Michael Bloomburg seems to have shut up about running for President as an independent now that it looks like the GOP will nominate a moderate candidate.
  
• President Bush said yesterday that McCain wasn't a moderate and endorsed McCain's credentials as a true Conservative.
  
• Conservatives from Ann Coulter to Dr. Dobson are suggesting that their people should just stay home in November and left the Democrats have the White House if McCain is the nominee.
  
• And Mike Gravel is still technically a candidate for the Democratic nomination.

But who cares about trivia...

Farewell to Edwards

I was disappointed today to hear that John Edwards had withdrawn from the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. I thought he was the best candidate. I've said recently here that I thought he was in a three way race that no one would win, and that as long as no one won, it didn't really matter who had the most delegates.

But Senator Edwards sees things differently, I suppose. And so for all realistic and practical purposes it is now down to a two candidate race. That means that in all likelihood, one of those two candidates will win outright before the Denver convention.

And I no longer really have a preference as to which of the two it is...

Why John Edwards is Still a Serious Candidate

John Edwards lost in South Carolina. He's lost in all the primaries and caucuses so far. But the question becomes, how is that relevant?

It may not be. The simple truth is that the Democratic nominating process is being held by precinct and Congressional district this time around - not by state. True, all the precinct in a state may vote on the same day, but the relationship almost ends there in most states. John Edwards may have lost in South Carolina, but he still left the state with eight new delegates committed to vote for him on at least the first ballot in Denver when the party has its nominating convention.

At the moment, after events where delegates were awarded in four states, Barack Obama has acquired 63 delegates committed to him through the primary/caucus process. Hillary has 48 and Edwards has 26. That means that Obama has gotten 46% of the hard delegates who are required to vote for him in the first round of balloting. Hillary has gotten 35% and Edwards about 19%. How many delegates do they need? Two Thousand and Twenty-Five (2025)...

We're a long way off. It doesn’t look like Edwards can come in first. But it doesn't look like anyone can win. And that means that Edwards could end up as the compromise candidate on a second (or third) round of balloting at the convention. He could truly end up being the nominee based on the support of the "grown up wing " of the Democratic Party after all the blood is mopped up from the Clinton-Obama fight.

Of course, he's not along in that. After a first ballot in which no one achieves the magic number of 2025 votes, we could end up with Bill Richardson or Al Gore or Mark Warner or, well, use your imagination...

If Edwards withdraws and the race becomes a two-candidate race, either Hillary or Obama will most definitely win. Personally, I think both of those candidates have electibility issues in the general election. And they look determined to cripple each other before the Democratic Convention.

Let's hope Edwards hangs on until Denver.

The Issues: Taxation

It occurred to me recently to try and articulate what I think the major issues are in the current Presidential election., Over the next few weeks I hope to write short pieces on what the issues are (for me) and how I feel about those issues. At the moment I can think of four. They are (in no particular order): taxation, the war, education, and health care.

American stand, I think, at a crossroads in terms of the nature and philosophy of taxation. It's not a very sexy issue. It is an issue primarily because a group on the far right of the political spectrum wants to do away with income tax and replace it with a "fair tax" that would charge everyone a flat rate in the form of a sales tax at the cash register.

The "Fair Tax." Genius. That's a better name than No Child Left Behind. Someplace along the way, Conservatives have learned that if you give an idea a really good name you're more likely to be able to make it a law. But I digress...

There are a bunch of things wrong with the "fair tax," as I see it. The most important is that it is a ploy, a disguised effort to control government spending by reducing revenue. I say that because the analysts that I've looked at all seem to agree that the proposal in Congress now would drastically reduce federal revenue. The result of that would be either a) a world in which Congress cut existing programs willy-nilly because it simply could no longer pay for them or b) the Reagan deficit, multiplied several fold. I would bet on "b," but neither is a pretty choice.

I'm not going to dignify this proposal by calling it a "fair tax" again; for several reasons, it's not fair. So we'll refer to it from here on as the sales tax proposal.

The reason the sales tax people have gotten as much traction as they have is simple: the tax system in America is complicated, convoluted, and seems to facilitate tax avoidance for the rich. Ron Paul is in favor of this proposal; Ron Paul is a fruitcake from outer space. But Mike Huckabee is also in favor of it; he uses it ironically to promote his image as a populist.

I found this definition of populism at Answers.com: "A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite." Call it part of being an enigma for candidate Huckabee: a Baptist preacher in a rock & roll band, the Republican populist...

The sales tax proposal is a bad idea because it makes taxation voluntary to the extent and degree that you can live on less than you make. Those in then upper class who make obscene amounts of money and squirrel much of it away for a rainy day (or a trip to the Italian Riviera) don't pay taxes on much of it - they get away with not paying their fair share. It also means that middle class Americans who live beyond their means by making purchase on credit cards can conceivably make pay more than their fair share in a give year; if they make $70,000 and spend $85,000 they pay taxes on the $85,000 they spent.

In addition to reducing the flow of revenue into the federal government (the real agenda for the sales tax, in my view), the result of the above situation will be that the burden for paying for government will be shift more onto the middle class. That makes the use of this tax to promote an image of populism truly ironic.

Of course, rejecting the sales tax proposal doesn't solve the problem. The truth is that taxation in America is broken and does need to be fixed. And spending in America really is a problem. The question is one of who can come up with proposals to fix the current system. John Edwards (a populist and a Democrat) and a few others have suggested closing loopholes and addressing some specific aspects of the tax code. Why should someone who makes their money in the stock market pay a lower rate in capital gains tax on their 1040 than a teacher, nurse or secretary pays on their salary? Why should the average Joe pay the payroll tax on almost every penny he makes while the CEO of some company pays it only on the first $62,700 and is off the hook for the rest of his $400,000 annual salary?

Fix the loopholes and the system produces more revenue and seems more fair. If the system produced more revenue, the actual rates might could be reasonably reduced.

The purpose for taxation and the manner in which Americans are taxed - these are among the most important issues on the table this election. And I don't think most Americans realize that...

Political Vandalism in Second Life

I find this story interesting for a number of reasons, but my discussion of it is motivated primarily by skepticism about the value of political activity inside a virtual world...

Second Lifer Astrophysicist McCallister, whose real name is Skyler McKinley, was kind enough to comment again one my blog. He described the report that a Gravel aide had been involved in vandalizing the John Edward HQ in Second Life as "misinformation." So I looked into it a little further.

Let me say a couple of things first...

Number One: I understand that Second Life (along with the Internet in general) is growing and evolving. Maybe Second Life will morph so completely that it will cease to be a game one day; but that day isn't here yet, I don't think. And so my attitude is one of tongue-in-cheek humor as I think about trying to convince someone whose appearance is a cross between a cartoon character and a mythical beast from Homer's Odyssey that they should vote for my candidate for President.

Number Two: On a scale of geekiness, I probably only get a four or five out of ten. But I am computer literate, involved in the Internet, and thrilled about the coming of the Information Age. I use a SmartBoard in my classroom almost daily. I send and/or receive 50 to 100 emails a day. I read my news mostly online. I have a Facebook page. I made part of my living by blogging and creating Internet content for the New York Times Company for about eight years and I still make money blogging. I can use PowerPoint, Excel, Access, and Word. I own a digital camera and I listen to MP3s. So I'm not throwing off on Second Life per se (it's probably a great game) or on Internet communication in general. It's the way I communicate, too.

That said, I found myself laughing a lot a I explored what information (and misinformation) I could find about the cyber-attack on the Edward’s HQ in Second Life.

Unless there were two attacks, Skyler seems to be correct in saying that the idea that a Gravel aide was involved is just misinformation. Did an attack happen? The Edwards campaign has a blog post about it at their official campaign website where a "witness" describes seeing it and says that the perpetrators were (gasp) Republicans. The attack included cyber-feces (which I’m guessing doesn't smell as bad as the real stuff). It's not clear to me how the witness could tell that the vandals were Republicans. S/he took notes, saved chat logs, and filed a report with Second Life's owner, Linden Labs. That strikes me a something akin to calling Mattel because I think someone molested my Barbie doll, but what do I know.

The source of the misinformation was Wonkette, published in July of 2007. The Edwards blog post is dated February 28, 2007 - almost five months earlier. So if there was a Gravel aide involved in an attack on the Edwards HQ in Second Life, it was a second attack I'd say. But Wonkette is the only source I found.

On the other hand, there are a number of stories about the February cyber-attack on Edwards. Vox said in March that "anarchist hippies" did it. Vox called them "virtual terrorists" and said the group calls itself "Patriotic Nigras: e-terrorists at large." Wired Blog Network has a short piece dated March 1st with a good picture of the damage. And 10 Zen Monkeys has a longer article on the attack, published on March 5th.

Besides the one from Skyler, I got two comments on the first story. The one by Second Lifer Kiwini Oe (whose real name appears to be Steven Nelson) was interesting. Follow his logic:

20 years ago there were chat rooms and message boards. Some people used them to play games, others to lead fantasy lives, and others to discuss politics with people located around the world. Graphics hardware, network speeds, processing power, software have all evolved over time, and a multiuser interface like Second Life is the result. Some people use it to play games, others to lead fantasy lives, and others to discuss politics with people located around the world.

And the problem is one of unraveling those incompatible uses if the goal of political discussion is to accomplish something in the real world. They're not going to have a Second Life Primary anytime soon that leads to real delegates at the real nominating conventions (I don't think).

The last comment was from an anonymous person claiming to be Second Lifer Pollywog Gardenvale (Claire Condra in the real world) who did the interview with Skyler's Second Life alter ego on the Gravel campaign in the virtual world. I have no reason to doubt that she is who she says she is; but she evidently doesn't have an ID for Blogspot, so I don't know how I'd verify it.

She says two things that stuck out to me:

1. "My interview with Skyler McKinley (Astrophysicist McCallister) is no less valid because it was conducted inside a virtual world rather than by phone or e-mail." Well, I suppose that's a matter of opinion. I've taught fact verse opinion to fourth and fifth graders regularly for a couple of years now as part of their reading curriculum. I'm not sure how you define "valid" in this context. But in a setting where your subject might be playing a fantasy game, what do his answers mean to me as a reader?
   
   You seem to have had a marvelous career in publishing, dating back to at least the 1990's when you (I think) were publishing stuff on time management in the San Diego Business Journal. If one of the purposes of writing is to entertain, your piece does that. I wasn't throwing off on your work. I was throwing off on the idea of political activity inside Second Life.
   
   
2. "I've attended a number of conferences and business meetings inside Second Life and have met interesting people from all over the world." Hmmm. I doubt that. Not that I'm calling you a liar. But as I understand it, there are no "people" in Second Life; just avatars. Perhaps our perception of what is real differs significantly.

So let's sum up.

• Second Life is a great game (probably); but I have too much to do in real life to care. (That sounds snotty and I didn't really mean it to sound snotty.) It seems time consuming.
  
  
• Political activity inside a virtual world seems pointless. Maybe it's a good place to do fund raising. I understand that Second Life money converts into real cash. But political persuasion seems pointless when you're talking to a space alien or a mythical creature.
  
  
• Whatever I think about it, Gravel and Edwards both have their own campaign sites inside the virtual world of Second Life. Edwards’ site got vandalized. There's not much evidence that Gravel's people were involved - none, really, that seem credible.
  
  
• I don't really care what happens in Second Life, except perhaps as a source of humor...

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Virtual Politics: I Don't Really Get the Relationship Between Second Life and Presidential Campaigns

I figured out recently that several of the political candidates running for President have a presence of one sort or another in a place called Second Life.

Okay, Second Life is not really quite a "place" - unless you think cyberspace is a place. If we're standing in front of a computer talking about the history of Timbuktu and I say, "Well, let's go to Wikipedia and see what year that was...," is Wikipedia a place? Do we really "go" there? How long does the trip take.

Second Life is a game. Like football, NASCAR, or most other games, it can be much more than a game. It can be a hobby. It can be an obsession. It can even be a way to make a living. But it's primarily a game. And it belongs to a genre of games called virtual worlds. At any given moment, 40 or 50 thousand people are playing Second Life all over the world. There are about nine million user ID's that have been created for the game since it started in 2003.

I'm familiar with virtual worlds because I've had to write about them at my site on investment in China. They're big business. The basic idea is that a person enters the game to interact with other players. The game is like life, in a lot of ways. But you have much more power over who you are. It's your second chance at life - a purely imaginary hobby of a life. If you're fat and fifty and bald and tired of life as a newspaper delivery man you can have a new life as an LA Lawyer, or as a Wall Street businessman, or as a 20-ish blonde beach babe with a full figure and a nice tan (if that's what you want). And whoever they are in the real world, most people in Second Life are someone else in the game, someone other than their real self.

But enough background...

I wrote a blog post after the Iowa Caucus and said that Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Mike Gravel had dropped out. Skyler McKinley from Senator Gravel's campaign staff contacted me to let me know I was mistaken, that Senator Gravel had no intention of dropping out. I'd gotten my info from MSNBC; they were wrong. Fair enough.

I Googled Skyler. Skyler goes by the name "Astrophysicist McCallister" when he's playing Second Life. I found an interview with Skyler, or at least with Astrophysicist McCallister, by someone who calls him or her self "Pollywog Gardenvale" published a newspaper for the Second Life world. For all I know, Pollywog Gardenvale is Skyler McKinley, too (there's nothing to prevent that, I don't think); but probably not.

Skyler's interview is about Senator Gravel's campaign headquarter in Second Life.

When I saw that Skyler was the coordinator for the Gravel Campaign inside a computer game, it reminded me of an email I got the other day from someone who finds my interest in politics at least a little humorous, I think. It was a image of a box of Corn Flakes, and there were pictures on the box of 19 presidential candidates. The box said "Same old corn, different flakes." And along the bottom it said "Now with Added Nuts!" And I thought, "The nuts are Ron Paul and Mike Gravel..."

My first impression was that Gravel's presence in Second Life was just confirmation of his "nut" status. I like the quote from this blog comment, "He (Gravel) is the fringiest of fringe candidates, so it probably comes as no surprise that Democrat Mike Gravel has a Second Life campaign site. What’s he got to lose?" I was wrong...

What I discovered is that a bunch of presidential candidates have some sort of a presence in Second Life. Gravel was the first. Second was Dennis Kucinich (okay he's almost a nut).

Lane's List has a list of other campaign sites in Second Life and claims that Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Ron Paul, and even al Gore have political offices in Second Life. Of course, you have to develop a Second Life ID to enter Second Life and visit these virtual sites. And it's not clear which ones are actually connected, officially, to the campaigns of those candidates (or non-candidates, in the case of Gore).

One of my favorite little tidbits that I came across in studying this is that a Gravel aide in Second Life evidently vandalized the Second Life campaign HQ of John Edwards (my first choice for President). If it's true, I hope he's in a Second Life jail somewhere...

The Internet has become incredibly social. I've found a few old high school classmates through Facebook. I'm familiar with MySpace. And even the average everyday site wants readers to comment on the site so the author can answer them and get a dialogue going.

Facebook and MySpace were intended to be places where people could advertise who they really were. Some people abused it and pretended to be someone else to form predatory relationships. But it was mostly social reality.

Second life was started as social fantasy. Be who you wish you were! It seems like the politicians have abused it by presenting their real selves in that context. Newt Gingrich basically started that abuse of Second Life.

What puzzles me is why politicians would insert themselves into a fantasy, role play game in the hopes of winning supporters. It seems like wasted effort...

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Is Second Life a game? In the FAQ section of Second Life's website, question number two is "Is Second Life a MMORPG?" MMORPG stands for massively multiplayer online role playing game. And their answer is yes (and no)...

Yes and no. While the Second Life interface and display are similar to most popular massively multiplayer online role playing games (or MMORPGs), there are two key, unique differences:

• Creativity: Second Life provides near unlimited freedom to its Residents. This world really is whatever you make it, and your experience is what you want out of it. If you want to hang out with your friends in a garden or nightclub, you can. If you want to go shopping or fight dragons, you can. If you want to start a business, create a game or build a skyscraper you can. It’s up to you.
  
  
• Ownership: Instead of paying a monthly subscription fee, Residents can obtain their first Basic account for FREE. Additional Basic accounts cost a one-time flat fee of just $9.95. If you choose to get land to live, work and build on, you pay a monthly lease fee based on the amount of land you have. You also own anything you create—residents retain IP rights over their in-world creations.

New Hampshire Makes it Muddier

I'm listening to Barack Obama concede. It's clear that he's conceding nothing but the New Hampshire Primary... "And when I am president, I will end this war in Iraq and bring our soldiers home..." That's not a concession.

Barack won without winning and lost without knowing it.

He won because Hillary is still on the defensive. Almost winning has only increased his credibility as a challenger. Six or eight weeks ago the Democratic Party was a coronation procession on its way to crown Hillary Queen of America. Today most Americans aren't sure who the Democratic Party's frontrunner is. And I'm not sure myself.

Obama lost because he didn't replicate the young college vote miracle that work for him the Iowa Caucus. I'm sure his campaign people will worry about that...

Because it is a two-way race, Edwards is still in it and makes it a three-way race. But that will change soon unless Edwards a) comes in second, in front of one of the two "frontrunners" again before February 5th and b) wins at least a couple of primaries on February 5th (or before).

Who's not in it anymore? Joe Biden got twice as many votes as Mike Gravel. Since Joe Biden dropped out last week (he's still on the ballot because they were already set), maybe Gravel should reconsider his status. When Dennis Kucinich is 10 times as popular as you are, Senator Gravel, you're probably not popular enough to be President.

The GOP field becomes even muddier after New Hampshire. McCain has new life after winning the New Hampshire Primary. It will be interesting to see how much momentum that gives him going into the next few state, and whose votes he cuts into.

Romney and Huckabee are in a death struggle for the conservative religious vote. Romney has now lost twice in states where he was supposed to win; but he probably won't go away. Huckabee did better than expected in N.H. and is sneaking up on Romney in Michigan (next up, January 15). If Huckabee wins Michigan and South Carolina (January 19 for the GOP), I think Romney is toast. If Romney wins Nevada (far from certain) on January 19, that may take the edge off the defeat; but Romney has to win Michigan or South Carolina to stay alive, I think.

Giuliani finished fourth as was glad for it. He almost came in fifth. It's still three weeks until Florida. Giuliani decided not to compete in the races before Florida. The question is, will anyone remember who he is in three weeks? The economy has replaced terrorism as the leading issue; that's bad for Rudy. If Huckabee doesn't bead Rudy in Florida, McCain will. If McCain doesn't, Romney may. And Ron Paul got new life in New Hampshire by giving Giuliani a run for fourth place.

Does anyone remember when Fred Thompson was considered a shoe in; all he had to do was declare his candidacy? Huckabee, in third, got ten times the votes of Thompson, in sixth. Fred can take comfort in beating Duncan Hunter...

One week until Michigan.

Iowa is Over...

Well, almost.

At the moment about 94% of the precincts are reporting and Barack Obama is the clear Democratic winner with 37% of the vote. The Loser? Hillary looks set to come in third, about half a percentage point behind Edwards. In a state that borders Illinois, it's not surprising that Illinois Senator Obama had a small home field advantage. That doesn't account for a seven point victory. Obama clearly benefited from mobilizing new caucus goers. So the question becomes one of how much momentum her gains from this and whether he can keep bringing new participants to the caucus and primary process.

The last I looked, Hillary had a small lead in New Hampshire. And I believe NH is a winner-take-all state, unlike Iowa...

Iowa's Democratic Party uses the caucus process to pick delegates that go on to another caucus to vote on who to send to the nominating conventions. At the moment, CNN reckons that Obama will get 16 delegates sent on to the next level. Hillary will get 15 and Edwards 14, even though Edwards finished ahead of Hillary. Thus are the eccentricities of the system. there are 12 "super-delegates" that are uncommitted; so it's still anybody's guess ow tonight will effect the actual nominating process.

The GOP results seem to only be available through CNN. Even the GOP's Iowa Website doesn't seem to know how the vote is going. (The Iowa Democrats have had a very nice site updating numbers every 30 seconds since shortly after the caucuses started.)

Fred Thompson said that he needed to finish second in this race; he looks set to finish third, with McCain in fourth. But there's still about 15% of the GOP vote out and I'll probably go to bed before the count is complete.

And while the Dems seem to split their delegates, the GOP is closer to a winner-take-all format; Huckabbe, according to CNN, will get 37 of the 40 delegates from Iowa to the GOP nominating convention.

Giuliani is in last place; but considering he didn't really run in Iowa, that's no surprise. Ron Paul, in fifth, is probably the GOP's biggest loser; perhaps the hype about Paul will go away now...

When it Comes to It, Electability is the REAL Issue for Dems

Reuters is reporting that if the 2008 presidential election were held today and Hilary Clinton was the Democratic nominee, Rudy Giuliani could beat her.

So could Mitt Romney.

And John McCain. And Fred Thompson. And even Mike Huckabee.

I the same poll in July, people were unfamiliar enough with the most of the GOP candidates that Hilary would have won by a small margin. Not as big as the margin that Barack Obama or John Edwards would have won by, but she would have won. But people have had time to think about it.

The campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination has been about influence and money until now. Many Democratic women want a woman to be president. And Hilary is easily the most well connected of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Hillary has led until now. She still leads the other Democratic candidates in polls that ask Democrats who they plan to vote for.

There is a danger for the Democrats, a danger that they could lose sight of the real goal of the nominating process. The goal is not to find out who is most popular with other Democrats. The goal is to nominate a candidate who can become President. The concern has consistently been that Hillary Clinton may not be that person, regardless of her influence and popularity with the party.

The choices are really at the party level:

• Almost every Democrat wants universal health care administered by the Federal government; almost every Republican believes that it can be left in the hands of private insurance companies and employers.
  
• Almost every Democrat wants to get out of Iraq; almost every Republican want to stay in Iraq.
  
• Almost every Republican wants to privatize social security and reduce benefits for future generations; almost every Democrat wants to extend the payroll tax so that the wealthiest one or two percent of Americans pay that tax on all (or at least most) of their incomes (like the rest of us) so that we can fund the system as it currently exists in the future.
  
• Almost all Democrats are pro-choice; almost all Republicans are pro-life.
  
• Almost all Republicans want to take our education system toward government financed private education; almost all Democrats want to strengthen public education and repeal many aspects of the disastrous No Child Left Behind law.
  
• Almost all Democrats want to simplify the tax code and make it more progressive; almost all Republicans want to simplify the tax code and make it less progressive (or do away with it and replace it with a federal sales tax).
  

So take your pick. Do you want a Republican or a Democrat in the White House in 2008. If your answer is that you want a Democrat, that person is probably not Hillary. And if we nominate her, there's a good chance that we will end up with eight more years of George Bush's policies and a President name Mitt or Fred....

The 2008 President Race - Some Tidbits...

You've all probably heard the joke about the agnostic dyslexic insomniac who used to lie awake in bed at night and wonder if there was a dog. But did you know he was running for president? Okay, I don't really know how well Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) sleeps at night. And he's a Unitarian, not an Agnostic. But he is dyslexic.

There's a lot we don't know about this batch of presidential candidates. The information is out there; it just doesn't seem to float to the top very often. Maybe that's because it doesn't really matter much (or matters less tan it used to, at least). Here's another example....

Almost everyone is away that candidate Mitt Romney (R-Mass.)is a Mormon. What rarely gets mentioned is that the wife of candidate Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Jackie Marie Clegg Dodd, is also a Mormon. Dodd's father was a U.S. Senator. In 1970, Dodd, a Catholic, married his father's speech writer, Susan Mooney. They divorced in 1982. Dodd dated for 17 years; his romantic interests included Bianca Jagger (Ex-wife of Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger) and Carrie Fisher (who player Princess Leia in Start Wars). The in 1999 he married Clegg.

If you had to guess which presidential candidate was the bass player for a band that had opened for or played with stars like Willie Nelson, REO Speedwagon, Charlie Daniels, Alabama, and Grand Funk Railroad, who would you pick? Would it confuse you more if I told you the candidate was a Republican? Mike Huckabee is the answer. The former Arkansas governor is a blues and rock band leader as well as an ordained Southern Baptist minister (he went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas).

There are 17 declared candidate in the two major parties. Where did your favorite go to college?

Hillary (D-NY) went to an all-girls school, Wellesley College, before doing her law degree at Yale (ironically, the alma mater of our current president). On the other hand, Romney, Obama (D-Ill.), and GOP hopeful Alan Keyes all get their last degree at Harvard. So will the fact that Harvard beat Yale this year make a difference in the campaign?

Here's a list:

• Joe Biden when to the University of Delaware and did his law degree at Syracuse University.
  
• Chris Dodd went to Providence College before doing his law degree at the University of Louisville.
  
• John Edwards (D-NC) started at Clemson, graduate from North Carolina State, and did his law degree at the University of North Carolina.
  
• Rudi Giuliani (R-NY) went to Manhattan College and on to New York University School of Law.
  
• Mike Gravel went to Columbia University.
  
• Mike Huckabee did his undergraduate work at Ouachita Baptist University.
  
• Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) got his BA and his law degree from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
  
• Alan Keyes did his undergraduate work at Cornell.
  
• Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) went to Case Western Reserve University.
  
• John McCain (R-AZ) went to the Naval Academy.
  
• Ron Paul (R-Texas) went to Gettysburg College before getting his medical degree from Duke.
  
• Romney attended Stanford, but ended up doing his undergraduate work at Brigham Young.
  
• Obama finished up his undergraduate work at Columbia University before going on to Harvard.
  
• Bill Richardson (D-NM) went to Tufts University.
  
• Tom Tancredo (R-CO) went to the University of Northern Colorado.
  
• Fred Thompson (R-TN) got his undergraduate degree from the University of Memphis and did his law degree at Vanderbilt.
  

That's eleven lawyers, one doctor, two soldier, one minister, one Peace Corp volunteer, one real live knight, one actor, and one real estate agent.

Other tidbits worth mentioning:

Ron Paul is a Republican, but he is also a member of the Libertarian Party. Bill Richardson was a French major in college. Mitt Romney's father ran for president in 1968. Duncan Hunter won a Bronze Star in Nam as an Army Ranger and went to college on the GI Bill. Rudi Giuliani was knighted by Quenn Elizabeth. And Fred Thompson was the GOP mole in the Watergate Hearings.

The Reincarnation of Bobby Kennedy?

Could John Edwards be the reincarnation of Bobby Kennedy?

I don't actually believe in reincarnation (not many Baptists do). Plus the math doesn't work: John Edwards was a few days shy of being 15 years old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. But Kennedy succeeded in 1968 in convincing America that a man can be rich and still care about the poor. And he did it partly with a campaign trip that took him through the heart of Appalachia.

Edwards will spend three days on a poverty tour not unlike Kennedy's trip. The "Road to One America Tour" will leave New Orleans Monday morning and travel 1800 miles through some of America's poorest cities and rural counties. And Edwards plans to end his journey where Kennedy did 40 years ago, in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.

The Edwards tour starts tomorrow night in New Orleans, in the Lower Ninth Ward. Hurricane Katrina left that area of the city particularly devastated and recovery efforts have not been very successful there.

Edwards will also stop in

• Marks, Mississippi, where Martin Luther King Jr. began his 1968 Poor People's March to Washington.
  
• Helena and West Helena, Arkansas
  
• Memphis, Tennessee
  
• Cleveland, Ohio
  
• Youngstown, Ohio
  
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  
• Wise, Virginia
  
• And Whitesburg, Kentucky

The tour will end Wednesday with a visit a health care clinic in Wise, Va., and meeting in Whitesburg where Edwards will talk with area youth about economic opportunity, and finally a speech at the Floyd County, Kentucky, Courthouse where Robert Kennedy spoke.

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"It's time to be patriotic about something
other than the war in Iraq." - John Edwards

Leading in Iowa: John Edwards

John Edwards is the Democratic Party's frontrunner in Iowa, according to a recent poll by the Des Moines Sunday Register. A win in Iowa could move Edwards up in the polls nationally. But the Iowa Caucuses are still about eight months away.

At the moment, 29% of likely voters in Iowa would vote for Edwards. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is second with 23% and Hillary Clinton is in third place with 21% of the vote.