The Caucus

[ericcoleman]

I was at a caucus last night ... interesting ... Edwards surprised everyone ... of the 10 delegates we had in our precincts it laid out 4 for Kerry 4 for Edwards and 2 for Dean and only 1 person showed up for Kucinich and Gephardt ... the Kucinich supporter went to Edwards ... I'm not sure about the Gephardt supporter ...

Gephardt ran his campaign here like Lee Atwater wrote it ... it was a very good feeling to watch him go down in flames ...

Kucinich is done ... I do think that he should be in someones cabinet ... he needs to be somewhere where he can do something with is ideals ...

My thoughts ... there was one ad that lost it for Dean ... he went after the other candidates for the first time and the ad pissed everyone off ... he has the money to make it through super tuesday so he isn't out yet ... he needs to make a strong standing in NH ...

Edwards has the real momentum now ...

Only one dem who has won Iowa has gone on to win the nomination ... Carter ... (although the wife seems to think that Clinton won ... I'm not sure ... I think it was Harkin)

It was interesting ... and very fast (unlike 4 years ago) ...

The wife is a delegate ... I'm an alternate ...

Comments

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

One question I have about Edwards; how much of his support came as a "second choice" candidate?

[ericcoleman]

A fair amount I think ... Julie counted 6 people who were locks as Dean supporters a week before ... who went over to Edwards that night ...

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Ouch for the Deanies! Any reports as to why the switch?

[ericcoleman]

Several theories

Dean ran a very nasty ad about the other candidates the week before the caucus ... one of the the local stations ran something twice every hour for a week that was basically a negative ad about Dean on a comment he made about the Caucus's 4 years ago ...with a comment from every other candidate ... and no rebuttal from Dean ...

But I think it was Dean's ad ...after running a very positive campaign he stooped to Gephardt's level (whose mailing campaign here might as well have been written by Lee Atwater) that did him in.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

As I said elsewhere, part of the primary process is showing the ability to learn under duress. If Dean comes out of this the better for it, great. If he retreats into a world of petty bickering, well... someone else will likely be the standard bearer for the Democratic party

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Clinton didn't do Iowa.