Thursday, January 3, 2008

Iowa

(Please sing along with the Dar Williams song 'Iowa', keeping in mind that 'the screen doors of discretion' are closely related to the song of the same name from 'The Music Man'.)

The local view is, This was an enormous win for Bill Richardson. An enormous loss for Hillary. And all the rest, we wait and see what develops in NH.

Huckabee was engaging, persuasive and sounded remarkably like Barack Obama. Mike Huckabee is a master of coded language--he referred to the unborn, servant leadership and the loving warrior in dog-whistle language subtle enough that if you're not a part of the Christian culture, you may have missed it. Make no mistake about Mike, he is the most dangerous candidate in this field by far. More so taking into account the possibility that Obama doesn't get stopped short in NH by Clinton.

If it comes to Mike vs. Barry, we are so far beyond screwed that the light from screwed will take 2.4 years to reach us. They're too much alike to allow the low-information voter to make an easy distinction on anything other than race.

And while we're talking about Obama, please no. Anything but this brilliant, charming and conciliatory man who has never run a partisan race against a vicious Republican. I'd settle for Hillary. Hell, I'd settle for Richardson, and his closet is so full of skeletons he has nowhere to hang his suits. 

May New Hampshire act responsibly in the face of the allure of hope.