Truman's Conscience

Iowa Caucus Wrap

The post caucus speeches given by Obama, Edwards, and Clinton were all pretty good. Edwards gave a pretty good speech that was typical John Edwards. The speech Barack Obama gave was blistering. There is no doubt the guy has something special and a charisma that can't be denied. Hopefully his speech will be on YouTube soon enough and I will post it here. Of course everyone is saying that Edwards is done and he has nowhere to go from here with a weak organization in New Hampshire. Even the left blogosphere seems to have embraced the idea Edwards is done as with this typical reflection by Firedoglake's Jane Hampshire:

"Not sure where Edwards goes from here. Obama clearly won the "not Hillary" vote."

I can't disagree with her rather cryptic observation but I will say this, New Hampshire is an open primary where Independents can cross over and vote. The real test for Obama will be a closed Democratic primary and how he does with people who think Democrats should pick the nominee. All we can do now is wait and see. Here's a prediction from someone whose prediction was totally wrong tonight: Obama wins New Hampshire and he runs the table.

Again, I hope to have all of Obama's speech in its entirety later. Looks like this election will be one for the history books and the fun is only beginning. See? I'm not as depressed as I anticipated I would be!

Update I: I have Obama's Iowa Caucus victory speech up on the right sidebar under a new section titled: "Post Caucus/Primary Speeches." As Edwards' and Clinton's come in I'll post them as well.