I want a candidate to email me with the subject line: "Turn OFF your television"

Oh I also wouldn't mind us getting out of Iraq sometime BEFORE the apocalypse

BUUUuuuuUUUUT if I can't have a Kucinich/Richardson white house then I'll take your little rock-star over those fucks that voted for this war.

Not to mention that hack that ruined Law & Order.

apparently an Oprah Whinfrey/Chuck Norris ticket would be unbeatable.

oh yeah- "IOWA [HEART] HUCKABEE"

am I the first to make that joke? damn.

Does anyone else notice the similarities of rhetoric between Barack Obama and Tom Potter when he was running for mayor a few years back? I.e. big, vague ideas about community and moving forward and such but really short on the details end.

I mean, I understand he's got a fleshed-out platform but people vote because of what they hear not because of treatises on a campaign website and politicians are aware that verbal promises carry more water than written ones.

And why Edwards looks so much better right now.

"But Obama isn’t political in the traditional sense. His campaign has captured young people. It’s got people who’d given up on politics making donations."

i'm going to guess that 4 years ago today you'd be saying the same thing about howard dean.

Given the responses here, lets just be thankful Oregon doesn't matter in the primary.

Obama might be hopeful or have big ideas, that is a bad thing? I would hardly compare the guy to Tom Potter. C'mon! What an insult.

BTW, Made my first monetary donation to a political candidate last night. Obama has my money. Last thing we need is Edwards' blandness or Hillary's plan for imperialism.

Ragold makes the most sense here. I agree, Obama is vague and it's what makes me uncomfortable. the idea that he's 'unbeatable" at this stage in the game is also ridiculous. Maybe Matt, being the foriegner he apparently is, hasn't paid enought attention to American presidential campaigns.

I posted a comment last night way down the page, but I'll repeat it here:

Americans don't elect presidents with names like Obama, or Rudy Guiuliani, or Mit fucking Romney. What's a mit, anyway. We elect presidents named, George and Tom and John and Bill and Richard. Lyndon was pushing it, but with a good solid American last name like Johnson, he pulled it off. Do you really think there would ever be an American president named Adelaid Stevenson (how the hell do you spell that, anyway? and therein lies the problem)

The only Democratic candidates with a chance at being president are Bill Richardson, John Edwards, and maybe Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd, Hillary could do it, but the name Hillary is a little whitebread. Kucinich is out. Do you see that?

So, my prediction is that you better note rule John Edwards out. He's the only front runner with an absolute plan to pull troops out of Iraq within a short timespan, which could also be his undoing, and ya all better remember that whoever gets the Democratic nomination then has to get at least 51% of the country to vote their way. Can Barak do that? Not with that name...

I like Obama as a person, but I am not voting for someone to sound good and heal the country. I want to elect someone who will be just as strong an advocate for my interests as George Bush is for his tax adverse millionaires. Am I too cynical for the politics of hope or do other people feel me?

I dunno' Jan. What if Americans are so underemployed, war weary and broke to the point where they've started reading the news? Iowa just showed the nation where we're at. We're just too screwed right now to be our usual petty, arrogant selves and last names be damned, we need a bail out.

What does it for me about Edwards is he seems to be the most willing besides Kucinich to increase the top income tax bracket to something we had before Reagan (I can hope for Truman/Eisenhower era rates but we're a long way off from the 90% millionaires used to pay). I also think he'll spend the money competently on social programs... not that I doubt the other candidates are capable of this to varying degrees, just that they'd have a lot less money to work with.

In Choire Sicha's final post on Gawker he summarized seven years of the NY Times Metro Section. On 9/4/05 he pulled this quote,

"The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make - $365,826 compared with $7,047 - which is roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia.... In 1980, the top fifth of earners made 21 times what the bottom fifth made in Manhattan, which ranked 17th among the nation's counties in income disparity.

By 1990, Manhattan ranked second behind Kalawao County, Hawaii, a former leper colony.... The rich in Manhattan made 32 times the average of the poor then, or $174,486 versus $5,435."

That's what it's all about for me.

Well... hopefully when Barack crushes Edwards in the primaries, everyone will do the right thing and vote for Obama when November rolls around.

Usually the people who accuse Obama of being vague have not really heard him speak or read his books. "The Audacity of Hope" is excellent as is "Dreams for My Father." If you think he's nothing but a spin doctor you really should read "Dreams for My Father" which was written and published before he got into politics--when he was the President of the Harvard law school and still in his early 30s. Its an unflinching look at his childhood, his search for identity, his anger at his father (who was Kenyan) and frustration of being black in America. It was the 70s and 80s and he is honest about how his anger and search led him extremes--drugs etc until he finally came to terms with his father, his role, his decision to go to college etc etc. He also worked as a community organizer in Chicago and there are some amazing tales of struggle and triumph. My point is that he is genuine. He doesn't try to make himself seem like something he is not. Its worth reading even if he wasn't running for president.

Ok, not I'm off my soap box:)

Did somebody just say "being the foreigner he is" and assume therefore I must be ignorant? Wowee.

It's true. But wowee.

Why is "Kucinich out"? Why do people keep saying that? He doesn't HAVE to be out, you know.
It's become the latest self-fulfilling prophecy of a generation of FAKE liberals, unwilling to believe what they say they do.

Please please PLEASE don't let there be a sudden backlash against Obama just because he's popular now. This isn't the new Arcade Fire album, it's the fucking presidency. It is NOT your sacred duty to declare everyone and everything "overrated" just to prove how discerning your taste is. We get it, you're a connoisseur of all things. Now shut up and order something, will ya?

I'm delighted Obama won. Shocked, quite frankly, but delighted. The prospect of voting for a corporate shill like Hillary or a disingenuous used car salesman like Edwards doesn't thrill me at all. Obama is the only viable candidate who seems to actually believe what he's saying.

Actually, now that I think about it, the same can be said for Huckabee. Granted, what he believes is a little wacky, but he really does believe it. I think THAT'S what people are voting for: a lack of fakeness.

Agree with #12---if you look at voting records without revealing names, you'd come out with Kucinich on top in most cases. See, he apparently actually reads legislation before voting on it.

If Americans would get their heads out of their asses and vote for someone who stands for something...
nevermind, I'm daydreaming again.

Let's just let the mainstream media choose for us.

Before there was the indie music backlash there was the political backlash. But that's not what's happening here. This is not Howard Dean in 2004.

One of the few great things about the primaries is people get a long time to look at candidates in the presence of a variety of constituencies and I, in particular, will be critical of the frontrunner if I there's something better out there. And right now there is.

Jan may have hit on it somewhat, B. Hussein Obama will never be president of the United States.

Jan may have hit on it somewhat, Americans will never elect B. Hussein Obama president of the United States.

So then why did Obama win big in Iowa DK? Iowa has a reputation for being lilly-white and scared of turr' from the middle-east. Hmmm... maybe it was his message. Or maybe it had something to do with voting against the war? But wait, those are superficial reasons....(gawwd)

I didn't say he was not likable to Democrat caucus voters.

True, but do you really think it's the name? I mean, the people who won't vote for Obama surely have better reasons than that. I just don't think America can afford to be very stupid right now and more and more Americans have become politically active out of a sheer yearning to return to the meaningless bullshit lifestyles that we've become accustomed to. Of course, then there's Huckabee...

Gawd, Obama wasn't in the senate at the time of the Iraq War resolution. the only two people who are running that VOTED against the war are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

Oh, I think it has more to do with who DID vote for the war PR, like that slicked up car salesman Edwards who just wants to say "My bad,I voted for the war"and leave it at that. Apparently, Iowa won't leave it at that and neither will the rest of America.

Obama did speak out against the war from the very beginning.

Obama doesn't care what any of us say. He's winning, that's it. Fuck the haters.

Look, Kucinich is probably the best guy for the job, but he's out because you can't spell or pronounce his name. And Ron Paul is out because he's got two first names. It would be like voting in a billy bob and you know that's not happening.

I'm telling you people, you gotta get with the name theory. Do you really think someone named Condoleeza is going to be president? Come on. You can have a name like Benazir and be presidenst somewhere, but not here in the good ol' US of A.

But on a more serious note -- not that my name theory is not serious -- but this is for Matt. Before you get your little panties all in a bunch for Barak, let's look at the numbers. Among DEMOCRATS who voted in the caucuses in Iowa, their votes put Obama, Clinton and Edwards pretty much in a three-way statistical dead heat.

Matt, it ain't over till the fat lady sings, or all the nasties come out of the closet along the primary road. You might find out in a month from now that Obama is a pig fucker (I stole that from Lyndon Johnson). Would you vote for him then? Maybe you would, being a foriegner and all, but we Americans don't vote for pig fuckers -- unless their last name is Bush, or course.

1. Obama is a cheer leader.

2. So he won Iowa. Big damned deal. Bill Clinton (if I'm remembering correctly) didn't win shit but South Carolina and still became president.

Talk about jumping to conclusions.

I've taken the quiz - my views are closest to Kucinich. But the guy as president? Really? The same guy that ran CLEVELAND into the ground when he was mayor as president of the United States?

No Thanks.

When I'm looking for a presidential candidate, I want someone who I agree with, sure, but more importantly someone who is up for the job. For me, that is Barack Obama.

Talk about your in-depth political analysis, "people with funny names can not be president (of th U.S.)" You are absolutely right. There'd never be a U.S. President named Zachary, Millard, Grover, Herbert, Calvin,or Dwight.Yeah, now for the adults; Right now, any sort of democrat with half a brain should be thinking more about what's going to motivate all those folks in the red states, than about why Kucinich is doing so poorly. We need to see through the eyes of those homophobes and evangelicals and identify who to them represents the lesser of three evils.More importantly, we need to identify which of our candidates who is least swift boat-able (Obama). Then we need to go on the attack. We need to be counting how many times Giuliani says 9/11 in a minute, and we need to be shouting from the rooftops that Huckabee wants to teach creationism in public schools. Then, we need to make public Mitt's views on polygamy. Or, we could just continue to bicker and repeat 2004. Yeah, that sounds easier.