Some Final Musings On Iowa

Before turning our undivided attention to New Hampshire I wanted to post some final thoughts and a couple of interesting data points I picked up from reading a variety of post-mortems around the net.

John Aravosis of Americablog made a point that none of the pundits I listened to on CNN or MSNBC made last night: Not only did Hillary still get more votes than Huckabee from her third place finish, she nearly doubled Huckabee’s vote total. This does not bode well for the GOP in November. Not only that, Romney has been running ads here in Florida and they have been directed against Hillary. What a magnificent drain of Tagg Romney’s inheritance.

Leave it to the BBC news services to make an astounding observation about Iowa and that states record with women candidates. From Justin Webb’s blog of the BBC news he informs us of this morsel of electoral history:

“And a thought about Hillary’s predicament: is it relevant that Iowa has never elected a woman to congress or to the Governor’s mansion? Only Mississippi has the same record.”

This little fact was not only relevant but a perfect example of how low the bar has been lowered regarding our mainstream media and what we expect out of them since I had to find this out through the foreign press. To expand on Mr. Webb’s point Iowa has never been kind electorally to the Clintons as he lost Iowa in both of his general elections for President and the Iowa caucus in 1992. Here’s a bet that President Clinton was well aware of his family’s record in Iowa. Looking back it might have been a better strategy to skip Iowa, keep the resources and get a head start on her rivals in New Hamphire considering the history.

Then there is this interesting breakdown of number from Rolling Stone's Tim Dickerson via Pensecola Beach Blog:

"He edged her out among Democrats 32/31, and cleaned her clock among independents (44/17) and wayward Republicans (41/10). He beat her among people making less than $15,000 (37/30) and more than $100,000 (41/19). He beat her among health-care voters (34/30) and suburban voters (30/25).Most astounding
however, he beat her among her core supporters, women, by five points. What more can I say than — in a night of mind boggling statistics — that that’s the stat of the night.A black man did this. In a state that’s 96 percent white. This is truly a historic night in America."

As Beach Blogger notes Hillary was beat out by Obama "eight ways to Sunday."

It's not over yet and anything can happen. The fact of the matter is Obama still only beat Hillary by 1% when independent voters are removed from the totals. That means Obama still has work to do and who knows how New Hamphire will react.
As a supporter of former Sen. John Edwards I really took to heart something diarist andydoubtless over at Daily Kos said in the aftermath of Iowa:

“I support Edwards. I rejoice over Obama”

Sentiments that could not have been better said.

Is this a great country or what?

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.