Iowa Madness

Folks, one state had its caucuses  One rural state.  One disproportionately white state.  If you haven't already, you need to reject the idea that the results give you extremely significant results, because this is only the case if the media says it is and if people, in turn, accept this nonsense.  Unfortunately, people will probably read quite a bit into it -- especially because there is a very nice storyline about both Obama and Huckabee upsetting frontrunners -- but we shouldn't lose sight of how absurd it is to engage in the exercise of overanalyzing these results.

It is not the case, as David Axeldrod says, that "there was a hunger for change in this country."  At best, there was "a hunger for change" among Iowa Democratic caucusgoers.  "The country" appears to have a different view of things for the time being.  And HRC's "experience" was not "decisively rebutted by the voters."  It was rebutted by Iowa Democratic caucusgoers (and hardly "decisively" at that).

There's no point linking to more because you're going to see it everywhere, even from writers who should know better.  The complaint here is about precision, about accurately describing the events that just took place, and about hoping (in vain) that we can prevent the insanity of the primary season from further enveloping us.

And for the record, I'd be happy with any of the three three top-tier Democrats winning the nomination, so this isn't a gripe about the results.  But Obama supporters beware: There's a media narrative that often follows The Surprise Upset -- and it's The Flame-Out.

Comments

[ikl]

Let's not be silly. This was a great win for Obama.

Whether or not it is a good idea for Iowa to have this much significance (as a partisan, I'm not really against the Dems testing their candidates in swing states like Iowa and NH), this is really important. All of of the campaigns put lots of time and money into Iowa and Obama came out on top. This doesn't settle the race, but it has a lot of significance. And given the investment, so it should.

[Lisa Simeone]

Thank you, Ankush. At last, a voice of reason.

[low-tech cyclist]

Regardless of the story line, I see Obama's and Huckabee's wins in Iowa as fundamentally and widely replicable by both candidates.

Iowa's a more rural state than most, whiter than most, and it's an older state than most. Obama's supporters tend young, tend urban, tend educated, and of course he'll do well among blacks. If Obama can win in Iowa, he can win in most places. And he's spent millions on having an organization already in place in the Feb.5 states to do so.

I say that if Clinton can't slow him down in NH, he'll freakin' roll. If you're Mark Penn, it's time to throw the kitchen sink at NH, because if you can't stop Obama there, your chances of doing so later are exponentially worse.

On the GOP side, the Huckster's win in Iowa should be much more replicable than St. John's likely win in NH.

In New Hampshire, McCain will be able to tap into an unusually secular Republican demographic, plus he'll be able to cop a decent share of NH's large group of independents - although it'll be a 3-way tug of war for them with Obama and Ron Paul.

As I understand it, there are a limited number of states where independents can vote in party primaries. (Luckily for McCain, one of them is Michigan, which (a) is next up after NH, and (b) only kinda sorta has a Democratic primary on the same day.)

But getting back to Huck, I don't see that Iowa's all that much more evangelical than most states. It's not Bible Belt, and the evangelical minority is an intraparty majority, or close to it, in most places. I'd say that, excepting the Mountain West and Pacific Coast states, plus New England, New York, and New Jersey, there are plenty of the same kinds of voters who voted for Huck last night.

I see Huck doing well in the South (of course) and border states, the Midwest, the Great Plains states, and even Maryland and Pennsylvania. The 'stop Huckabee' movement, whether Mitt or McCain is at its head, will do well in the Pacific and Mountain West states, New York, New Jersey, and the six New England states.

I like the Huckster's chances. But win or lose, I'm relishing the prospect of a GOP civil war with a Royalist v. Roundhead dynamic.