“The 2008 Democratic primary race illustrated how, first and foremost, America is a grand spectacle of democracy. … The primaries cost one dearly. They are reserved for highly-trained athletes capable of committing themselves to a quasi-permanent campaign. But they have served to give America some of its biggest stars, like Ronald Reagan who reinvented conservatism to Bill Clinton who introduced a “third way.” And tomorrow …”
DES MOINES, Iowa - The rising Cedar River burst through an earthen levee Thursday just outside Cedar Rapids, and at least 10,000 people there have been ordered to evacuate, officials told NBC News.
Power is out for most of downtown, complicating rescue efforts, city spokesman Dave Koch said.
Cedar Rapids firemen have been organizing boat rescues of stranded residents, Koch added.
The new evacuations follow a 150-foot breach early Thursday in an earthen levee.
Mark Penn, the chief strategist who did more than anyone to kill Hillary Clinton’s campaign, is copping a plea. In today’s New York Times, he explains that “it wasn’t the message–it was the money” (the lack of it, he means) that did her in.
After the Bay of Pigs, JFK cited the old saying, “Victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan.” But Penn’s paternity of Clinton failure’s is too well-established for denial, so the next best thing is to claim that the foundling died of malnutrition.
Aside from Penn’s own culpability in misspending the campaign funds, starting with the decision to ignore Iowa until it was too late, his fingerprints are on everything that went wrong–from the hubris of acting as if the nomination was a done deal to not seeing that the race was about change rather than experience (”ready from Day One”).
It was only when Penn was fired in early April for embarrassing the candidate by meeting with Colombia’s ambassador to the US about a bilateral free-trade agreement, a pact Clinton opposes, that she started winning primaries and closing the gap with Obama.
Early in the campaign, someone had to explain to the genius that primary delegates are awarded proportionally, not “winner take all.” This did not daunt Penn, who discovered “soccer moms” (talk about sexism) during Bill Clinton’s reelection and makes a specialty of slicing and dicing voters into demographic slivers such as “young knitters”, “extreme commuters”, “tech fatales” (women who like technology) and “powerful petites” (women who are small and proud of it).
Now he can discover a new population subset–moronic manipulators.
The largest portion of the Clinton campaign’s unpaid debt is owed to Penn. They should demand a discount, and Barack Obama should look for a way around the financing rules to send him a check as a thank-you.
First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy. Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail. I am not sanguine. People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot. We’ll see.
But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through. Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her. She is indomitable. I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats. Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.
Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it. Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.
It seems that just about everyone, both here and abroad, have concluded that the Clintons have been wrongfully manipulating the issue of race. But according to this op-ed article by columnist Rik Kuethe of The Netherlands’ Elsevier, widespread realization of this is unlikely to stop this anti-Obama plot from working. Kuethe writes unapologetically, “the Clinton couple, one of the most powerful political machines America has ever seen, is making sure that Obama’s blackness gets rubbed into the electorate like its shoe polish.”
By Rik Kuethe
Translated By Meta Mertens
January 28, 2008
The Netherlands - Elsevier - Home Page (Dutch)
It’s not young Senator Barack Obama ensuring that race remains an election issue. That’s the work of the Clintons, as it suits them in view of Super Tuesday.
Barack Obama’s won a resounding victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary. He received 55 percent of the vote against his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, who won 27 percent. And at the start of the month [January], Obama scored his first win at their first showdown in White Iowa.
Americans are easily susceptible to something new. Many, including John F. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline, consider this “lemon-fresh man” to be in an excellent position to win the Democratic nomination.
Whether he succeeds will be decided on Tuesday, Feb. 5 - otherwise known as Super Tuesday - when 22 states hold their primaries simultaneously. The chances that Obama will come out the victor, however, are small.
SNOW WHITE
The young Senator from Illinois says time and again that these elections are not about race. Quite apart from the fact that he had a mother who was as white as Snow White, he certainly means what he says. He also has an interest in keeping it so.
But more recently, the Clinton couple, one of the most powerful political machines America has ever seen, is making sure that Obama’s blackness gets rubbed into the electorate like its shoe polish.
January 15th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Democratic Senator New York Hillary Clinton has pulled way ahead of Barack Obama in national polling in the 2008 Democratic nomination race amid a “dramatic shift” of black voters towards Obama — and Clinton likely won her surprise in New Hampshire by her organization getting massive numbers of “old line” Democrats out to vote on voting day, Gallup Polls’ editor-in-chief said in a bloggers conference call today.
Meanwhile, Gallup Editor in Chief Frank Newport said in the telephone interview, polling shows the national atmosphere now is less hospitable for a third party run by someone such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg than it was for Ross Perot in 1992.
And on the subject of “change?” According to Newport, new polling shows people don’t want a systemic change in Washington but by “change” mean “solve our problems. Fix the Iraq war. Fix health care. Fix immigration.”
His key points:
(1) There was a massive actual turnout in New Hampshire with 70,000 additional voters going to the polls and Clinton apparently won the ground war. Gallup’s polling, which did not go all the way up to election eve, showed Obama’s voters fired up. Obama was ahead among likely voters. But more voters showed up at the polls, and it is believed that the Clinton camp got old-line Democrats who might not have been as fired-up about Clinton — but they got them to the polls.
Gallup is now re-interviewing all of the people interviewed to find out who they actually voted for and why.
Newport believes “real world events” such as the Saturday before the vote debate in which Clinton was pounced on by Obama and former Senator John Edwards and gave a tough response to questions, plus her famous crying video, likely played a key role.
(2) Present polling suggests this isn’t the best year for Bloomberg to run, since it shows voters are generally pleased with the menu of candidates from both parties. “It is not propitious for Bloomberg, really, as much as it was for Perot in 1992, he said.”
(3) Interest in this election is MUCH higher than normal. “There is a very strong level of interest. Eight percent of Americans could say without printing — no hints — that they knew Obama had won the Iowa primary. That is an extraordinary high level of knowledge,” he said.
(4) There has been a “dramatic shift” in black voters away from Clinton to Obama.
(5) In the New Hampshire polling, he said, Gallup didn’t poll up until election eve. Gallup may have to poll up to primary eve in the future because New Hampshire showed that. if there is a high turnout, it could greatly impact polls that were completed a day or a few days before.
(6) Voters ARE influenced by the results of the state primaries and caucuses. “If candidate wins, some of them will say ‘Oh, then maybe I’ll change my allegiance.”
(7) Gallup polling right now shows about a 14 percent advantage nationally for Clinton over Obama — a sudden change. After Iowa, Obama had surged in the polls — but trending has suddenly shifted again Clinton’s way.
TMV Editor’s Note: Part of this post had been up earlier, unfinished and not totally corrected and then there was a major technical glitch on TMV which could be seen in a massive design problem. Due to that glitch, this post was up on the site uncorrected for nearly 30 minutes. We regret the inconvenience to readers.
January 12th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Isn’t this the kind of thing Democrats (and we’ve done posts on it and decried it) denounce when Republicans do it to keep Democratic voters away from the polls?
Nevada’s state teachers union and six Las Vegas area residents filed a lawsuit late Friday that could make it harder for many members of the state’s huge hotel workers union to vote in the hotly contested Jan. 19 Democratic caucus in Nevada.
This is ANOTHER one of these stories that has a strange coincidence: if you read it, there is a link to supporters of New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Read on:
The 13-page lawsuit in federal district court here comes two days after the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada endorsed Senator Barack Obama, a blow to Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama addressed the Culinary Union at their hall earlier Friday.
The lawsuit argues that the Nevada Democratic Party’s decision, decided late last year, to create at-large precincts inside nine Las Vegas resorts on caucus day violates the state’s election laws and creates a system in which voters at the at-large precincts can elect more delegates than voters at other precincts. The lawsuit employs a complex mathematical formula to show that voters at the other 1,754 precincts would have less influence with their votes.
And — here we go again — here’s yet another coincidence. It appears that some of the folks involved support the campaign of New York Senator Hillary Clinton:
The at-large precincts are being established because thousands of hotel workers cannot leave work to participate in the midday caucuses in their home precincts. The Nevada State Education Association has said it would not endorse any Democrat, but some of its top officials have endorsed Mrs. Clinton. The association’s deputy executive director, Debbie Cahill, for instance, was a founding member of Senator Clinton’s Nevada Women’s Leadership Council.
“This could shut down those precincts in the casinos and keep culinary members from voting,” said Jon Ralston, a political pundit with The Las Vegas Sun, who broke the story on his blog. Mr. Ralston said it is unclear whether there are ties between the lawsuit and the Clinton campaign but, he predicted, “Even if they’re Hillary supporters, the campaign’s going to say they had nothing to do with it. It is unclear when the court will hear the matter.
FOOTNOTE: I’m an independent voter registered here in CA. I just got my absentee ballot. I can and will vote in the Democratic primary. I want to see elections that are UNFETTERED by coincidences such as:
Are the U.S. primaries, ‘just vulgar mud fights with rules so complicated that they could have been invented by the NFL?’ Such is the verdict of the editorial board of The Netherlands’ leading business daily, the NRC Handelsblad …
EDITORIAL
Translated By Jan de Nijs
January 9, 2007
The Netherlands - NRC Handlesblad - Original Article (Dutch)
For most American primary voters, it’s advantageous that none of the candidates in either party have yet to wrap up their respective nominations. For both Democrats as well as Republicans, the results from the New Hampshire primary differed from the Iowa caucuses. The result is that these tiny states will not play a decisive role for the rest of the country and the majority of the electorate will now have an opportunity to choose. Read the rest of this entry »
January 10th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
NOTE: The Moderate Voice from time to time runs Guest Voice posts by readers who don’t have their own websites or some people who who want to present their viewpoint or just another perspective to TMV’s highly diverse readership. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
This Guest Voice column is by Bloomsburg University journalism professor Walter Brasch.
The Disconnected Media
by Walter Brasch
Add pundits, pollsters, and the press to the list of losers in the New Hampshire primary. They weren’t on the ballot. They didn’t vote. And they didn’t get it right.
For the Democrats, Sen. Barack Obama, fresh from victory in Iowa, was supposed to cruise into a double digit win in the Granite State. Sen. Hillary Clinton, at least if anyone believed the media, was going to be flattened by the Obama steamroller that was chugging to dominate all primaries.
In the Republican primary, Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucus, wasn’t expected to be at the front of the pack, but he and Mitt Romney were going to go head-to-head. Sen. John McCain, according to most of the media, would go down in flames, forced to give up what he hoped was a comeback.
The voters thought different, giving Clinton and McCain “surprising” wins. At least it was “surprising,” according to the media, which over and over proclaimed their wins as “surprising,” a desperate effort to give a plausible reason for having been wrong.
The TV media, with journalists an almost extinct minority among what passes as their news staffs, think the best way to cover the primaries is to display 15 seconds of a candidate’s visit to a doughnut shop, and then shove in another 45 seconds of public comments about the candidate who said the same thing at 10 different stops that day. Print media reporters spend as much as three minutes with a potential voter, condensing the comments to fewer than 20 words. For variety, the reporters quote not only each other but also the pride of pollsters who hover like trash-dump flies around political campaigns and the media circus.
Smugly, the corporate mainstream media believe they are telling the people what they need to know to defend and preserve democracy—and the millions in advertising revenue. When not watching, eating, or sleeping with the candidates, the media horde eruditely fill air time and newspaper and magazine columns with predictions and mindless discussion, trivializing the race to discuss one candidate’s hair, another candidate’s choice of pantsuits. They make it seem that without hourly ratings and political predictions, American democracy would fall to the terrorists. However, the media’s analyses and predictions may be about as good as those of local weather forecasters and sportswriters.
In her victory speech, Sen. Clinton said she listened to the people of New Hampshire and found her voice. Maybe the media need to spend less time with the candidates and more time with the people, and just listen to them, to try to understand them, their needs and problems, rather than see every carbon molecule as a potential seven-second sound bite or indistinguishable statistic.
Perhaps, then, we might accept the media as having some credibility.
Dr. Brasch is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, a former newspaper reporter and editor, and author of 17 books. His latest book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush. His website is www.walterbrasch.com
January 8th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
In the end, polls leading up to the New Hampshire primary vote showing a double-digit lead for Democratic Senator Barack Obama were wrong — and Senator Hillary Clinton scored an upset victory — once again tossing the (new) conventional wisdom out the window and creating a new political dynamic.
And so the stage is set for a battle royal — one likely to go the distance:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won New Hampshire’s Democratic primary Tuesday night, pulling out a stunning victory over Sen. Barack Obama in a contest that she had been forecast to lose.
On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and climbed back into contention for their party’s presidential nomination.
Obama had beaten Clinton, who has been the national front-runner, in the Iowa caucuses last week, and he had appeared to be poised for victory in New Hampshire with tracking polls showing him surging into the lead.
But with 63 percent of Democrats precincts reporting Tuesday night, Clinton had 39 percent of the vote to 36 percent for Obama, who is seeking to become the nation’s first black president. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina trailed with 17 percent.
Polling place interviews showed that the female vote — which deserted the former first lady when she finished third in last week’s Iowa caucuses — was solidly in Clinton’s New Hampshire column.
The former first lady also was winning handily among registered Democrats. Obama led her by an even larger margin among independents.
CBS News also has declared her the winner — and noted that the returns even surprised the Clinton camp:
Clinton, the former first lady who finished third in Iowa, was mounting an unexpectedly stiff challenge to Obama in the nation’s first primary. Polling place interviews showed that the female vote — which deserted the former first lady when she finished third in last week’s Iowa caucuses — was solidly in her New Hampshire column.
Clinton also was winning handily among registered Democrats. Obama led her by an even larger margin among independents.
She had 39 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary to 37 percent for Obama, who is seeking to become the nation’s first black president. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina trailed with 17 percent.
Despite running a distant third to his better-funded rivals, Edwards had no plans to step aside. He pointed toward the South Carolina primary on Jan. 26, hoping to prevail in the state where he was born - and where he claimed his only victory in the presidential primaries four years ago. Clinton’s performance, based on the early returns, surprised even her own inner circle.
The question is now being asked (we asked it much earlier): could the widely-publicized incident of Ms. Clinton choking up have played a role in an election result not mirrored in a slew of pre-election polls?
Stay tuned…
There were echoes in his Iowa victory speech Thursday night that may come from the influence on Barack Obama of the man who worked with JFK on “Profiles in Courage” and his Inaugural Address in 1960.
At 79, Ted Sorensen has been out on the campaign trail, introducing Obama and comparing him to the President he served almost half a century ago.
“Obama is older than Kennedy was when Kennedy ran for president,” Sorensen has been pointing out. “He’s had the same experience in the Senate as Kennedy had when he ran for president, and he’s had the same opportunity to view the country from abroad as Kennedy did when he ran for president.”
Sorensen, who doesn’t see well now and needs help getting up to speak, tells crowds, “Don’t worry about my eyesight. I have more vision than the President of the United States.” Read the rest of this entry »
Is the greatest value of the Iowa caucus results the fact that now, the race has been rendered exciting enough to hold the attention of easily-distracted Americans? According to this op-ed article from Pascal Richie of France’s Rue 89, ‘The campaign now promises to be as exciting as some of the best Hollywood thrillers, which is useful in a nation where national politics interests few citizens.’ He goes on to say, ‘Another excellent service rendered to the country by the people of Iowa: placing a Black man, right from the outset, in the lead of the Democratic race. Given the history of the United States, this is an “earthquake.”‘
By Pascal Riché, Translated By Sandrine Ageorges, January 4, 2008
France - Rue89 - Original Article (French)
Obama among Democrats, Huckabee among Republicans. For people into American politics, the victory of these two men at the Iowa Caucus is a feast.
It’s a mixture of pleasure and surprise, the joy to see the “capable” ones in politics taking a slap in the face (Clinton, Romney), the excitement of novelty, and the tempting promise of a suspenseful race …
Among Democrats, the race is far from over for the Black Illinois senator: he must still reckon with Hillary Clinton, the Senator from New York who brags about being the most “electable” (and for being the most serious contender) and to a lesser extent, the former senator from South Carolina, John Edwards (who came in second place in Iowa), the favorite of the left-wing of the party who has the advantage of having roots in the South.
Among Republicans, Huckabee can boast of having seized - in the snows of Iowa - the Grail that American political scientists call, “the mo.” Read the rest of this entry »
Is Barack Obama comparable to some of America’s greatest presidents in terms of the level of inspiration he inspires? Continuing a wave of worldwide acclaim, this op-ed article from Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau points out that in the United States, hope and optimism are far more than simply a ‘political side dishes’ - they are the ‘internal engine and power source of the nation.’
“In the United States, hope and optimism are more than just political side dishes. They are the internal engine and power source of the nation. … Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy: Hope is the magic potion administered to the nation at its darkest moments.”
By Dietmar Ostermann, Translated By Ulf Behncke, January 6, 2008
Germany - Frankfurter Rundschau - Original Article (German)
It can be no coincidence that the two victors in the U.S. state of Iowa had the same message: “CHANGE” transformation, alteration. Like a thunderbolt the word is now being heard across the land. Right at the beginning of this long presidential election campaign, Democrats and Republicans alike have voted for those candidates who most embody a new beginning.
Among the Democrats, that candidate is Barack Obama, the young and promising man with an incredible biography, great charisma and an intuition about the desires and longings of the people. Not that his policies or promises differ all that much from “Iowa-loser” Hillary Clinton. Read the rest of this entry »
January 6th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
This Guest Voice column is by Patrick Edaburn, an attorney who is a registered Republican but concerned over the influence of the hard right on his party and the influence of the hard left on the Democratic party. He is assistant editor of the centrist blog Central Sanity. This is the first of two parts. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers.
What Is A Moderate To Do?
By Patrick Edaburn
As we head into Election 2008 it is time for everyone to start to consider who they will vote for in race for President.
As a moderate I have given this considerable thought and have come to some rather depressing conclusions regarding the options available to those of us in the political center.
I had hoped to finish this post prior to the Iowa caucuses but between work and the holidays things got a little bit away from me, though upon reflection it might have been a good thing as the voters are helping to winnow the field a little bit.
Whenever I am trying to decide who to vote for in a primary, particularly in a Presidential contest, I consider several factors. The most important of course is ideology, which candidate or candidates best match a centrist viewpoint.
Also important is the character of the candidates. Do they seem reasonably honest and trustworthy ? I realize that some people don’t put this as a key factor but if you are basing your vote on what the candidates views are you need to know if they can be trusted to stick with what they say.
A final factor to take into account is viability. While it is most important to look at the views of each candidate, it does little good to back a contender who has no chance of winning. It might feel good for a while but often it can lead to a reasonably good candidate who might be your second choice losing to a really bad one.
In applying this test to the Republican and Democratic contenders I find myself unable to really find a good candidate and the results in Iowa aren’t helping things.
Since I am a registered, if somewhat disenchanted, moderate Republican, I will start my analysis with the GOP field and then move on to the Democrats.
REPUBLICANS
Looking at the current crop of candidates, there are a few who I have to eliminate right off the top as not being realistic contenders.
Duncan Hunter is a nice man and a fellow Californian, but he is not going to win the nomination, and indeed is likely to drop out in the next few days. As to Alan Keyes, not only is he unrealistic as a candidate he is rather radical (some might even say insane) with his political viewpoints.
Ron Paul is an interesting candidate to analyze. He has gained quite a lot of support on the internet and as a result has gained quite a bit of media attention. He may very well be a contender for a third party run for President. But I think even he accepts that he is not going to be a serious contender for the GOP nomination. As I write he is a distant 5th place in Iowa.
Assuming he makes it further in the primaries his positions are far too hard line (interestingly both to the left and the right depending on the topic) for a moderate to support him.
At one point Fred Thompson looked like a real serious contender for the conservative wing of the party and he has managed a third place showing in Iowa. But he had banked his whole campaign on Iowa and is in single digits in New Hampshire. There is only room for one conservative alternative and at this point it looks to be Huckabee.
Thompson is a nice enough guy but he is as conservative as Huckabee and has been just awful on the campaign trail.
In Barack Obama more than a flash-in-the-pan? According to this op-ed article from Germany’s Die Welt newspaper, ‘it’s still far from proven that his ‘Wind of Change’ carries more than pathos and, above all: that behind him hides something of real substance.’
By Thomas Schmid
Translated By James Jacobson, January 4, 2008
Germany - Die Welt - Original Article (German)
With Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee, the Iowa primary [actually, it was a caucus] chose two candidates who embody the word “outsider.” Both claim to be closer to the people that the political machinery. Obama’s success was surprising. But whether there is something substantial behind that success must still be demonstrated.
The United States has an extremely complicated procedure for selecting presidents. It requires the candidates to have not only tremendous physical strength, but great wealth to mobilize. One must also be able to operate amidst great volatility: Those who have good prospects today may loose them the next morning. Timing and luck are both crucial.
The voting in the small state of Iowa, which is populated almost exclusively by Whites, has resulted in a very tangible surprise. At first glance it looks as if Democrats and Republicans, in Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, have two winning candidates who embody the most esteemed American tradition of being political outsiders: They are two figures who come from outside and claim to be closer to the people than the political apparatus - politics in the garb of anti-politics.
As always in America, there could be something to this. But there is something else astonishing here: Read the rest of this entry »
January 5th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
EDITOR’S NOTE: The headline of our post on the Zogby poll and the lead paragraph were wrong due to part of another post not being properly erased, although the rest of the post was correct. The poll shows Senator John McCain and NOT former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney holding on to their narrow leads.
The Moderate Voice apologizes for and regrets the error. Here’s the proper version:
A new Zogby poll shows Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton and Republican Arizona Senator John McCain in the lead in their parties’ respective primaries in New Hampshire — but the two front-runners are ahead by such narrow margins that Tuesday night could again be a night of surprises:
Republican John McCain lost a little ground to Mitt Romney, as Mike Huckabee picked up some ground on the momentum of his victory in the Iowa caucuses. Democrat Hillary Clinton held even and retained a slight edge against the advancing Barack Obama in the wake of Obama’s win in Iowa, the latest Reuters/C–SPAN/Zogby telephone tracking poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters shows.
Democrat John Edwards also remained steady at 20%, well back of Clinton but within striking distance. But partial polling after Iowa suggests some slippage may be in the offing for both Clinton and Edwards.
On the Republican side, you have see:
McCain at 32 percent
Romney at 30 percent
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 12 percent
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at 9 percent
Rep. Ron Paul at 7 percent
Former Senator Fred Thompson at 3 percent
Rep. Duncan Hunter at 1 percent
On the Democratic side you see:
Clinton at 32%
Obama at 28 %
Former Senator John Edwards at 20 percent
Gov. Bill Richardson at 7 percent
Rep. Dennis Kucinich at 3%
Senator Joe Biden at 2 %
Senator Chris Dodd at 1 %
The details are eye-opening:
McCain’s lead continues to be based on the strength of support among independents, where he holds a 42% to 29% over Romney, with no other Republican winning more than 10% support among this group. Among moderates, McCain’s edge dropped from 53% support to 48% support after yesterday’s polling was added to the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby three-day rolling average, while while Romney also lost some ground, dropping from 24% to 22%.
So McCain is the favorite of independents.
Meanwhile, Romney’s edge over McCain among mainline conservatives – the largest voting bloc in the GOP - increased from one to five points.
It sounds like conservatives are settling on Romney to stop McCain — and Huckabee. Or are they?
Huckabee’s bounce from the Iowa victory comes among those who consider themselves “very conservative,” where he jumped from 21% to 28% when just yesterday’s post-Iowa caucus polling is folded into the mix. However, Romney still leads in the category with 33% support. McCain wins 20% among the very conservative.
So in New Hampshire, at least, it doesn’t seem as if conservatives are totally listening to talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the GOP establishment, which wants to stop Huckabee.
There are some other details in this poll, including about the Demmies. But here’s the most interesting:
While 64% of likely voting New Hampshire independents said they were planning to vote in the Democratic primary, about 36% said they would vote in the GOP contest – an 8-point swing in favor of the Democrats compared to just one day earlier.
As in Iowa, younger Democrats favor Obama over Clinton, but his advantage is not now near where it was in Iowa. Likewise, Clinton retains an Iowa–like edge among older voters, but she also has a smaller edge here than in Iowa. Edwards is a solid third in all age groups.
So if you look at the trending, the rhythm and the ongoing narrative of media coverage, it suggests that it’s unlikely New Hampshire voters will vote to stop Obama. More likely, it’ll either be a nail biter or they’ll vote for Obama.
A Clinton loss in New Hampshire looks likely if you pencil in these factors.
On the Republican side, the story continues to be Romney more so than McCain. He has not just not gotten endorsements in the state, but the state’s newspapers have denounced him for essentially being dishonest and changing so many of his positions (well, this is the year of “change”).
Will that override the desire of some voters to stop Huckabee? You can see by info in the poll that conservatives are split. Huckabee is too far down in the polls to likely pull this one off.
Whoever wins the GOP primary in New Hampshire will be the anti-Huckabee candidate — and will likely get support from the Republican establishment to squelch the Arkansas Governor’s challenge to the GOP’s party and ideological elite.
![[Excelsior, Mexico]](http://www.exonline.com.mx/XStatic/excelsior/images/espanol/carton_gregorio_0502.jpg)
![[The New Zealand Herald, New Zealand]](http://worldmeets.us/images/obamawhitehouseblack_nzherald.gif)
![[The Times]](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00262/TTM071501CC385_262488a.jpg)
![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://worldmeets.us/images/obamalincoln_telegraph.gif)
![[Het Parool, The Netherlands]](http://worldmeets.us/images/hillaryiowa_hetparool.gif)
