Obama!

AMAZING results from Iowa.  Hopefully this is the start of a landslide all the way to the White House (but I'd even be happy with a narrow victory)!

 

An interesting comment from a friend:

I just listened to clinton's speech.  She mentioned, in a sarcastic fashion, that she was speaking to Democrats and like minded independents and "Republicans who have seen the light."  The way she said it made clear why so many don't like her.  She just turned off half of America with that snide comment and tone.  How can somebody combine such a partisan attitude with triangulating substance?

Here's another comment from Matthew Yglesias's blog at The Atlantic:

Clinton Speech

03 Jan 2008 10:33 pm

This sounds pretty bad to me, especially compared to Edwards' performance. The difference, I think, is that Edwards has a clear cause: his populism. That made for good speeches during the leadup to Iowa, and it makes a good speech in the wake of Iowa. It's a fighting creed. Barack Obama's message, in its different way, also is. But Hillary Clinton, sapped of her aura of inevitability, doesn't seem to have very much to say. Her candidacy is fundamentally about a kind of brokerage transaction; she herself is the logical convergence point for a group of people associated with her husband's administration and she's a competent steward of that network of supporters. But that's not a fighting message, it doesn't leave you with much to fall back on when times look grim.

You could see Madeleine Albright there in the background, but Albright's an eminence grise not someone you go to the mattresses with.

---------------------------

Obama and Huckabee Win in Iowa Vote

By JOHN M. BRODER and ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: January 3, 2008

www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/us/politics/03cnd-campaign.html

Senator Barack Obama won the Iowa Democratic caucuses tonight in a stunning show of strength by a young African-American candidate who was virtually unknown to America three years ago. He defeated Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady, and former Senator John Edwards, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2004 by a substantial margin.