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It's on!

by svip at 04-01-2008 19:42

Yesterday - sort of - the state of Iowa voted for which candidate from each of the American political parties they would like to see as their candidates for president in November. I know the US have more than just two parties, but you never hear about them. Curse the two-party system!

Enough friendly banter though. However, the winners was - not surprisingly in my opinion - Obama for the Democrats and Huckabee for the Republicans. Now now, I know that both started out as underdogs, but came up and scored on the rebound.

Obama has a clear advantage over his "rivals"; Edwards and Clinton, he has little past. He was not in the Senate to vote to go into Iraq, Edwards and Clinton were. And especially Clinton have been criticised for voting yes on that issue. It was one of those things that made Kerry loose the 2004 elections, some suggest.

But Obama also reaches out more to the younger generations and those who usually go for the independent candidates, which remarkably seems to be a majority on the Democratic side in Iowa. Similar Huckabee sort of does the same on the Republican side. And of course, it helps that he is religious for the religious right in the Republican party, which plays an important part for the Republican side.

Of course, the most interesting thing about the Iowa primary vote is the losers. I know, I know, Chris Dodd did not seem to have it all working out, and sadly he did not get far in the Iowa primaries, almost as if they left him in the car park (The Daily Show references, if any of you caught it). Rudy Giuliani also suffered major defeat, but not as much as expected. Update: I previously stated that Giuliani got more votes than Ron Paul, this however is wrong. He got less than half as many. My apologies. Wikipedia knows best.

Mitt Romney and John McCain were also trailing, though, the McCain crowd were glad that he did better than Romney. Sometimes, it just works that way, I guess.

As for the Democratic side, the thing that surprised me the most was the fact that Edwards got more votes than Clinton. I presume Clinton simply has too much past.

Like a quote I once read said; "experience is our largest obstacle."

And while we are at it, New Hampshire may prove differently. Maybe Huckabee and Obama just got lucky in Iowa, who knows?