Are we now poised to see in Iowa a classic example of how all of the political prognostication, all of the smug, all-knowing comments of The Elite Talking Heads on television shows and the self-assured comments of blogs (including this one) will be shown to be….”inoperative”…and be hurriedly shoved under the rug as NEW all-knowing and self-assured comments come out?
One thing is for sure: the polls in Iowa are not reflecting a lot of the early scenarios about what was “going to happen” in Democratic and Republican Presidential races that increasingly seem more wide open than even a month ago.
For instance, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is pulling ahead in Iowa, according to a new poll:
Huckabee wins the support of 29 percent of Iowans who say they definitely or probably will attend the Republican Party’s caucuses on Jan. 3. That’s a gain of 17 percentage points since the last Iowa Poll was taken in early October, when Huckabee trailed both Romney and Fred Thompson.
Other poll findings indicate that the former Arkansas governor is making the most of a low-budget campaign by tapping into the support of Iowa’s social conservatives.
Romney, who has invested more time and money campaigning in the state than any other GOP candidate, remains in the thick of the Iowa race with the backing of 24 percent of likely caucusgoers. But that’s a drop of 5 points since October for the former Massachusetts governor.
Mike Huckabee has leaped ahead of Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney in Iowa, seizing first place in a new Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican caucus participants.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s numbers aren’t terrific but then he hasn’t been campaigning in the state.
The point is: Huckabee is on the ASCENT — yet another one of these occasional candidates who come “out of nowhere” — not from fat-cat-rich campaign staffs, approving pieces from top columnists or from slick media operations feeding friendly reporters. He’s catching on because people like him, the more they see him. And now the word is out in the news media: Huckabee is “riding the bounce.”
So how is this met? With SPIN of course. Just read Robert Novak:
Strategists for Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential campaign were actually pleased that fast-rising Mike Huckabee moved ahead of Romney in the Rasmussen poll in Iowa, eliminating surprise if Huckabee finishes first there in the Jan. 3 caucuses.
A Huckabee victory in Iowa would kill Romney’s plans to win the first two 2008 tests in Iowa and New Hampshire, followed by sweeping the board in all other primary states. Instead, the contest for the nomination could extend through the Feb. 5 primaries, with Rudy Giuliani given a chance in the high-population state primaries that day.
(YES, Romney was truly pleased — as pleased as we are in our condo unit to have discovered an infestation of termites…)
And in the Democratic race?
New York Senator Hillary Clinton got booed in Iowa. But although that is now being touted by some of her critics as proof that she is in trouble, the event is more indicative of how some partisans of both parties increasingly will NOT tolerate a deviation from their own purist ideological agendas. Being booed at a campaign appearance does not a loser make.
The POLLS are what Ms. Clinton should be concerned about:
Barack Obama has pulled ahead in the race for Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucuses, while the party’s national frontrunner Hillary Clinton has slipped to second in the leadoff nominating state, according to The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll.
NOT good news for Hillary & Co.
Despite the movement, the race for 2008’s opening nominating contest remains very competitive about a month before the Jan. 3 caucuses, just over half of likely caucus goers who favor a candidate saying they could change their minds.
Obama, an Illinois senator, leads for the first time in the Register’s poll as the choice of 28 percent of likely caucus goers, up from 22 percent in October. Clinton, a New York senator, was the preferred candidate of 25 percent, down from 29 percent in the previous poll.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who led in the Register’s May poll, held steady with 23 percent, in third place, but part of the three-way battle.
The lead change appears after weeks of increasing criticism of Clinton by Obama and Edwards about her position on U.S. policy toward Iran and questions of her candor.
Meanwhile, Clinton has recently begun accusing Obama of inexperience and criticizing his proposal to expand health insurance coverage.
The poll shows what has continued to be a wide gap between the top three candidates and the remainder of the field. The telephone survey of 500 likely Democratic caucusgoers was conducted Nov. 25 to 28 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Iowa City Democrat Katharyn Browne said she abandoned her support for Clinton in the past month and now supports Obama in light of the Iran issue.
So this may be the time when The Smug Talking Heads on TV might want to hide the old videos and instruct producers not use clips of them as boilerplate recaps of what was previously said, columnists might pretend they never called the perceived front-runners the front-runners, and bloggers might want to speed up writing posts so old ones are buried deep in the bowels of their website archives.
What seems clear is that some GOPers aren’t happy with the big brand names so they’re looking for a brand new product — and Huckabee is getting serious consideration.
And it’s clear that Clinton must move beyond the issue of “inexperience” — it has seldom worked in politics (if it did, then Richard Nixon would have elected President in 1960) — and turn her focus more and more to hard-hitting policy specifics and criticism of the Republicans, rather than just trying to beat back Obama’s advance and drive up his negatives.
The old conventional wisdom? Never mind!
And after the vote? Will this STILL be the new conventional wisdom?
Really, no one knows.
But Clinton and Romney (despite what Novak says) can’t be smiling huge smiles today.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.