Bell Curve The Law Talking Guy Raised by Republicans U.S. West
Well, he's kind of had it in for me ever since I accidentally ran over his dog. Actually, replace "accidentally" with "repeatedly," and replace "dog" with "son."

Thursday, January 03, 2008

My First Iowa Caucus

OK,

The real story is the turnout. Both parties set records for caucus turnout in Iowa. You can see numbers here. The GOP had 120,000 attendees beating the previous record of 87,000. The Democrats had 227,000 attendees beating their 2004 count of 125,000.

In my precint, in the first vote we had 661 attendees. In 2004 our precint had 441. Obama got 286 in the first vote. Clinton and Edwards both got about 120 votes. Now, you need 15% support to be "viable" - to get a delegate - in any precinct. In our precinct you needed 100 votes to be "viable" so Clinton and Edwards barely made it. The crowd overall was very young. There were many first time caucuse goers. The Edwards and Clinton groups monopolized all the chairs very early on (their supporters were much older than the average in the room - like 20 years older!). When the dust settled and the non-viable supporters transfered their support, Obama had 6 delegates to the state convention from our precinct, Clinton had 3 and Edwards had 3. In other words, in our precinct, a black man got 50% of the vote from a room packed with people with almost no black people in it.

You can see the results at this link. The link is to the Des Moines Register because all the national media has been reporting what has been going in Iowa so badly that they don't deserve attention. Keep in mind that the national media practically anointed Hillary nearly a year ago. They've been on the Hillary bandwagon from day one. And in Iowa she came in third! Not first. Not second. THIRD! I said on this blog months ago that this was a likely outcome and some said "we'll see." Well, we saw.

Iowans don't like superficial, Machiavellian, over-polished politicians who are playing not-to-lose. That is Hillary all over. Every Clinton event I've been to had Hillary standing up contradicting any number of her previous statements (or statements by Bill on her behalf).

Obama has been consistent in his appeal to hope! And he has been FAR MORE SUBSTANTIVE than the pin heads at CNN have admitted. I've seen multiple events by Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Richardson, Kucinich, Biden and Dodd. According to CNN, Richardson is the "most substantive, the one with experience and the details." Obama, again according to CNN, was very attractive but not good on details. I call BULL SHIT on CNN. I saw an Obama event and a Richardson event practically back to back and the level of substantive detail was practically identical and Obama had been presenting it from very early on (since about August 2007) and presented it with more hope and optimism than Richardson, or any of the others, can imagine!

Where Obama talked about - for lack of a better word - a "City on a hill", Richardson talked about some guy he rescued from being tortured in Sudan. OK, rescuing guys from warlords is good. But I'm not voting for a Green Beret, I'm voting for a President!

A black man just beat a white guy by 8% in one of the whitest states in America. He beat a white woman by 9%. That's historic. Iowa is leading the way. Will American dare to follow!?

As for the Republican winner in Iowa, I've talked to one person who knows his children so well as to have been invited inside the Gubernatorial Mansion in Little Rock. This person said that Huckabee has two sons: John Mark and David. John Mark embezzled funds from the state Young Republicans budgets to buy himself a new Play Station. David was arrested for torturing and killing neighborhood dogs. I should add, that my source was an officer in the state Young Republicans at the time. Huckabee has skeletons that have yet to be revealed.

Rudy "9/11" Giuliani came in next to last with 4%.

Iowans are smart as hell!

10 comments:

Dr. Strangelove said...

Media outlets are reporting that, although Edwards outpolled Hillary by about 0.4% in the local delegate count, the statewide distribution rules will give Hillary 1 more national delegate than Edwards. Can anyone confirm this?

Oh, and congratulations to RbR for correctly predicting Hillary would come in third. Color me "stunned." (Not by RbR's accuracy but by the result.)

Anonymous said...

I also was surprised by the outcome. Although, I do recall saying that we should be careful when national media ordains a winner before a single vote has been taken. That is what they did with GWB and look what happened. No, I think we are going to see many surprises before this election season is up.

Since my man Biden is out, I may have to go back to voting seriously. Such a bummer. I was looking forward to having some fun at the polls.

Dr. Strangelove said...

I am now officially on the fence, torn between Hillary and Obama. Yesterday, Obama showed he can turn out and win the support of Independent voters in large numbers. My heart still says "Hillary" but I want the Democrats to win. If Obama is really more electable... And especially if the Democrats have to face McCain in November... Well, let's see what the rest of the January states have to say.

Raised By Republicans said...

Obama won the "get your people out" contest that usually wins in Iowa. If he can repeat that in New Hampshire he'll be off to the races.

My own precinct had a similar situation to what Dr. S describes state wide. Our precinct split 6 for Obama and 3 for Edwards and 3 for Clinton. But it could easily have gon 6, 4, 2 with Clinton getting 2. The reason it went the way it did was that Clinton's vote count was closer to getting 3 than Edward's was to getting 4. So they got the same number of delegates.

Raised By Republicans said...

Actually, on further reflection, I'm confused by Dr. S.'s description of the vote tally in Iowa. The vote tally was not actual votes but delegates so if Obama got 38% and Edwards got 30% and Clinton 29% then Edwards had to have gotten more delegates.

Dr. Strangelove said...

I should have been more clear. The delegates to the county conventions were the percentage figures reported Thursday night. The national delegate estimates show the extra delegate for Hillary.

It is my understanding that the county delegates selected Thursday night meet in caucuses to choose delegates to the Iowa state convention, which then meet to choose the national delegates. I think these are all pretty much committed/pledged votes, so it is possible to calculate the result. I think some weighting factors in the county/state process give the extra delegate to Clinton. It may just be the same type of rounding that RbR describes, just at the county or state level.

The Law Talking Guy said...

HRC has pledged superdelegates from Iowa - that's the advantage.

Raised By Republicans said...

Ah, the superdelegates. The old smoke filled room crowd. Of course. I've heard that Clinton is way ahead with them.

Dr. Strangelove said...

LTG and RbR are correct that Hillary is believed to be far ahead in the "superdelegate" count. But the delegate discrepancy I mentioned above was for those delegates arising and bound to the caucus vote only.

The Law Talking Guy said...

Dr.S. writes "My heart still says 'Hillary'" This, Dr.S., is where you diverge from the bulk of the Democratic party electorate. Those who favor Hillary rarely seem to do so with their heart. Obama is the candidate of the heart. That is his problem, and why he is making such an effort to look serious now in his public appearances (limited smiling, etc.).

I am wary, of course. Machiavelli wrote that it is better for a prince to be feared than to be loved. Love is fickle, he wrote; fear lasts.