Mr. Drinkwater Visits Iowa

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[UPDATE: Protesters at Rose Bowl made it to Reuters]

Oh How Timely And Wonderful!

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Hillary Repackages Herself as a Black Man, by Andy Borowitz

In what some party insiders are calling a Hail Mary bid to win Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton today attempted to repackage herself as a black man.

In the wake of her disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, there was consensus among Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides that her presidential bid needed to be rebooted, but few party professionals expected her to change her race and sex with only five days to go until New Hampshire.

According to Clinton strategist Mark Penn, however, Mrs. Clinton’s decision to become an African-American man was thoroughly consistent with her history as a “change agent.”

“Hillary is all about change, and changing her race and sex is just the most recent example of that,” he said.

Speaking at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton thanked her supporters for “keeping it real” and promoted her just-released autobiography, “The Bodacicty of Hope.”

“This election is about whether or not America is ready to elect a black man President of the United States,” she said. “I believe I am that black man.”

Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton was dismissive of rival John Edwards’ comparison of himself to Seabiscuit, remarking that “in addition to being a black man, Hillary has for many years been a world-class horse.”

Mr. Clinton made his comments in an interview on PBS’ “Charlie Rose Show,” in which the former president, looking bleary-eyed and unshaven, touted Mrs. Clinton’s victory in last year’s Belmont Stakes.

Elsewhere, embattled G.O.P. presidential candidate Mitt Romney unveiled a new campaign slogan, “What the Huck?!”

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Check this out - it's called momentum - media feeding frenzy - Iowa pays off

It did for Kerry - he remortgaged his house to make it to Iowa and jumped off from there

Watch money and delegates flow toward the center of gravity

Rasmussen Reports's fresh new poll

Barack Obama, fresh from his victory in Iowa, now holds a ten point lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the race found Obama with 37% of the vote while Clinton earns 27%. John Edwards is the only other candidate in double digits, with 19% support. Bill Richardson is the choice for 8%.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/

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ARG poll looks similar.

I am getting Obama articles all day - not sure what to think.
If he can do it, it will be impressive.

The Obama Phenomenon
By BOB HERBERT

The historians can put aside their reference material. This is new. America
has never seen anything like the Barack Obama phenomenon.
I was surprised all day Thursday, before the results of the Iowa caucuses
were in, by the apparent serenity of the Obama forces here in New Hampshire.
The stakes were enormous, but the campaign staff members and volunteers
seemed as cool as the candidate.

The students, veterans, middle-aged moms, retirees and others working
steadily to make Barack Obama president seemed to accept as fact that the
country is ready for profound change and that their job is to help make it
happen.

"We've been busy knocking on doors, making phone calls, inputting data and
basically just spreading hope," said Kathryn Teague, a 19-year-old who has
taken a year off from Keene State College to work in the campaign.

There is no longer any doubt that the Obama phenomenon is real. Mr. Obama's
message of hope, healing and change, discounted as fanciful and naïve by
skeptics, drew Iowans into the frigid night air by the tens of thousands on
Thursday to stand with a man who is not just running for president, but
trying to build a new type of political movement.

By midnight, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd had been chased from the race; John
Edwards was all but literally on his knees; and the Clintons were trying,
for the umpteenth time, to figure out how to remake themselves as the
comeback kids.

Shake hands with tomorrow. It's here.

Senator Obama's victory speech was a concise oratorical gem. No candidate in
either party can move an audience like he can. He characterized his stunning
victory as an affirmation of "the most American of ideas - that in the face
of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it."

Mr. Obama has shown, in one appearance after another, a capacity to make
people feel good about their country again. His supporters want desperately
to turn the page on the bitter politics and serial disasters of the past 20
years. That they have gravitated to a black candidate to carry out this task
is - to use a term I heard for the first time this week - monumentous.

The Clintons, especially, have seemed baffled by the winds of change. They
mounted a peculiar argument against Senator Obama, acknowledging that voters
wanted change but insisting that you can't achieve change by doing things
differently. Senator Hillary Clinton has had a devil of a time trying to
cope with the demand for change while shouldering the legacy of an
administration that defined the 1990s.

Barack Obama has none of that baggage.

But for all the talk of change, it's just one of the factors driving the
Obama phenomenon. The simple truth is that hardly anyone - in politics, in
the news media or anywhere else - realized what an extraordinary candidate
Senator Obama would turn out to be.

He's smart, hard-working, charismatic, good-looking and a whiz at
fund-raising.

He has an incandescent smile, but it's not frozen in place. He seems
authentic. When he laughs, you have the feeling it's because something is
funny.

People are lining up to believe in him. He has the easy demeanor (in a long,
lanky frame) of someone who's comfortable with himself. Even when he fires
up a crowd, he doesn't get too hot. He has the cadences that remind you of
King but the cool that reminds you of Kennedy - John, not Robert.

If the Clintons are going to stop Mr. Obama, they need to do it now. If he
wins the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, the news media will go nuts and he
will head toward the Jan. 19 caucuses in Nevada and the Jan. 26 primary in
South Carolina (where half the voters are African-American) with incredible
momentum.

I expect that African-Americans, under those circumstance, would view his
campaign with almost religious fervor. All those questions about whether he's
black enough would be history. Mr. Obama would be perceived by many as
within striking distance of the presidency, and there will be very few
blacks in favor of stopping that train.

However this election turns out, Mr. Obama can be credited with a great
achievement. He has drawn tons of people, and especially young people, into
the political process. More than anyone else, he has re-energized that
process and put some of the fun back into politics. And he's done it by
appealing openly and consistently to the best, rather than the worst, in us.

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My friend told me

Huckabee won Iowa with nearly 36,000 votes.

Hillary lost Iowa, and came in 3rd, with 29% of the vote. A projected 220,000 people turned out to vote in the Democratic caucuses, meaning Hillary got 29% of those voters, or an estimated 63,800 - nearly twice the number of votes that Huckabee got. (Actually, the Des Moines Register's latest numbers show Hillary getting just over 67,000 votes)

So our 3rd place candidate beat their first place candidate by almost a factor of two.

The moral of the story - GET OUT THE VOTE.
People my age will vote. Get out the youth vote as well. I've been waiting for this to happen for years.

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Found by Nyc at Daily Kos

Huckabee plays 'Fortunate Son' at campaign rally

I happened to be channel surfing tonight and stopped at C-Span -- mostly because I couldn't stomach the wall-to-wall coverage of Britney's Breakdown.

And there was Mike Huckabee at a campaign rally in a college town in New Hampshire. Except he wasn't speaking. He was playing the bass in a rock band performing for the crowd.

So I'm watching this and not really paying much attention to the song they are playing until it suddenly hits me -- he's playing "Fortunate Son," John Fogerty's 1969 anthem about the unfortunate men who had to fight and die in Vietnam and couldn't get out of the draft by virtue of being a senator's son or a millionaire's son. Not exactly Lee Greenwood singing "God Bless the USA."

quaoar's diary :: ::
If that isn't a direct slap in the face to the Fortunate Son In Chief currently occupying the White House, I don't know what would be.

So I figure there are two possibilities:

Huckabee has no idea what the lyrics mean and thinks it's just a cool Classic Rock song.
Huckabee knows exactly what the song means and is telling the Republican establishment that is in hysterics over his Iowa win to go fuck off. That he is not only burning his bridges to the Bush Administration, but napalming the shit out of them.
I have no idea which is correct, but I have a gut feeling it's No. 2.

If that's the case, it means the Republican Civil War is on.

Pass the popcorn.