Iowa Caucuses

One of my colleagues asked me yesterday for my predictions. I went with Huckabee and Clinton. Well, Huckabee did extremely well for the reasons I cited, but Clinton was outdistanced by both Obama and Edwards. The source of this miscalculation? I expected women my mother's age to turn out for Clinton in droves. Instead, I think many of those women turned out in droves for Obama along with first-time caucusers my age. John Edwards' advantage was to be the second choice. He may find himself on the vice presidential ticket very soon.

While the result among the Republicans is a good indicator of what the heartland base of the Republican Party is looking for in a presidential candidate and is therefore no surprise, Clinton's third place finish is a historically significant result. I didn't read the New York Times Magazine article about "Clintonism" that appeared a few weeks ago, but I think we should read these results as a prairie-style rejection of the centrist strategy of the Democratic Party. Iowa Democrats disliked the 2004 campaign, for instance, where John Kerry tried to outdo the President's hawkishness and gave voters little confidence in his ability to fix the economy, which was as deep a concern as the war. Most of the Democratic base would have preferred that Kerry prosecute the President for his incompetent prosecution of the war. He would have lost but at least lost with integrity.

Now both Obama and Edwards represent a more leftist economic strategy even if their foreign policy strategy still seems ephemeral. One other idea to consider is whether Obama had a particular Iowa strategy due to his political origins in neighboring Illinois (southern Illinois isn't much different from Iowa after all), but I think such a hypothesis will require more detailed investigation that I've had time for. Now on to New Hampshire where the party's centrist strategy will try to reclaim power through the famously independent New Hampshire voter.

(20080104.1)