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!