Wow…Iowa caucus results…
Dude, color me surprised…but Kerry kicked some ass in Iowa. In the first test on the road to find a challenger to President Bush, Kerry won 38 percent and John Edwards scored a surprise second-place finish with 32 percent of the vote. One-time favorites Howard Dean, the front-runner for months, and Gephardt trailed badly with 18 and 11 percent, respectively.
No telling how Clark would have faired, since he pulled out to focus on NH…but I gotta tell you, I didn’t see a Kerry win coming. Maybe the race for Democrat will be more interesting than media would suggest, although reports suggest that Gephart will be pulling out after his poor showing.
I have said it several times now publicly:
We are about to witness the most goddamned crazy election of our generation. It’s gonna make the 92 election look like a summer picnic. It’s gonna make 2001 look like the first in a series of action movies. And it’s going to fuck all of us up.
Yep. Agreed.
On NPR this morning, the repeated reason given for the implosion of Dean (and Gephardt) was the mudslinging and personal attacks between the two.
Kerry apparently stayed on message and avoided the muck.
If you get a chance, though, try to find audio of Dean talking to his supporters after the results – definitely not a “stuffy, politico-type”. I actually thought to myself “WTF?!?” He ended with a sort of whoop-like battle-cry, not dissimilar to CerealKiller’s “tension breaking” in the movie Hackers.
I wonder what it looked like…
Anyway, muckraking got the best of Dean and Gephardt and focus apparently won the day for Kerry. At least that’s what the radio told me and the radio is always right(heh).
Actually, I think Edwards was the big winner…his second place win was a big surprise. I’d like to see Edwards get some attention…but that could be because he reminds me of JFK in some weird way. I mean, I know JFK died before I was born…but there’s something about Edwards that seems to carry the same cloud of idealism. And you know I love idealists.
Here’s the video of Dean:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/politics/012004-2v.htm