Why did Iowa end up the way it did? Some big themes. Let us examine them.
1) On Obama’s victory — the mirror opposite theory applies. Draw back and take a look at what has happened in this country over the past two decades: the Clintons, Hillarycare, the GOP revolution, Monicagate, 9/11, lies about WMD to get us into a now-despised and never-ending war in Iraq, the mismanagement of Katrina, the constant lies from both parties in D.C. about everything.
A friend of mine draws this analogy: Today feels like 1975-1976 after Vietnam and Watergate. He says, “This nation is as traumatized by recent events as we were 30 years ago.”
So, in 1976, after years of LBJ’s lies about Vietnam and then Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the voters looked for the mirror opposite of these perfidious, duplicitous D.C. insiders.
And they found him: Jimmy Carter.
He was everything LBJ and Nixon were not: an outsider with absolutely no D.C. experience, a smiler, a promise “to never tell you a lie,” and another promise to “have a government as good as the people.”
Never mind that Carter turned out to be one of the worst, most incompetent presidents in our history. We are just talking about the election process and analyzing why Obama did so well.
Obama is indeed the mirror opposite of the Clintons and the Bushes and the rotten D.C. establishment. He is new, fresh, young, optimistic, positive and most importantly of all, he was against the Iraq war from the start. To Democratic primary voters, and to independents, too, this war is an abomination and they want it stopped.
Forget this media nonsense that the war has “receded as an issue.” It has not. It is the biggest issue of the year and will remain so until the 65 percent of the American people who want us to leave get their way.
And they only trust a "pure" opponent of this war to end it: Obama. Edwards and Hillary were both for the war and that has dogged them among the dominant liberal wing of their party.
2) New Hampshire and beyond — Obama will win New Hampshire by a large margin. Those independent voters there will now flood into Tuesday’s Democratic primary and push Obama to another victory.
Afterwards? Will Democrats rally behind either Hillary or Edwards to stop Obama? Or does he cruise to the nomination?
It is hard to believe that Hillary can be the nominee. A full 70 percent of her party is against her.
The Clinton machine may be finished.
Edwards? Do you realize that this is the second time he has run for president, in 2004 and now in 2008, and he has never won even one caucus or primary. Not one!
3) The GOP — Huckabee won mainly because he has great candidate skills and the Iowa GOP is comprised of 60 percent evangelical Christians. And because all the other GOP candidates are fatally flawed frauds who have no business running for president.
But Huckabee, too, is flawed. He cannot and will not, be able to unite the GOP. We are a shattered party. The Bushes — for the second time in the past two decades — have crippled the Republican Party and opened the way for the Democrats to seize full power again in Washington.
The only thing that can save the Republicans is a new candidate, a "Republican Obama," a new, fresh, and not saddled by Bush baggage candidate to appear on the scene. And time is running out for that to happen.
Romney is limping into New Hampshire and will now lose there to McCain.
The so-called mainstream media will back McCain all the way once he wins New Hampshire. They’ll try to make it a Huckabee-McCain Race. The problem is that GOP voters despise McCain and will not vote for him in subsequent primaries. These voters do not hate Huckabee. But they don’t love him either.
In sum, GOP voters remain lost at sea looking for their savior — their Reagan — to ride to the rescue of not only their party, but their country, too.
And in Huckabee, Romney, McCain, and Rudy, none of them can re-unite this broken and dispirited party. They all have major problems; they all are phony conservatives who have switched positions to portray themselves as real conservatives.
4) The general election — the Republican Party faces a huge enthusiasm gap. This was seen in Iowa in the much larger-than-expected-Democratic turnout. New voters did indeed flood the caucuses.
This rarely happens. But it did this time, and that portends badly for Republican hopes in November. Yes, GOP turnout was up a bit, too, but not as much as the huge Democratic turnout. This, coupled with the huge disparity in fundraising and the number of donors, shows that the Democrats are angry as hell and determined to win the White House back.
The Republicans, meanwhile, are divided and dispirited. And Iowa and Huckabee’s rise only makes this situation even more muddled.
Democracy works. The people are now speaking. The media are foolish filters who do not understand what the people are saying, or why. The media, in fact, is part of the problem. That is why ratings and circulation are down. The American people don’t trust either their leaders or their news-providers.
More next week.
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