What does Iowa mean?

Not much. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd realized the inevitable and dropped out. Duncan Hunter did not, and stays in the race, despite the fact that his core constituency is a few hundred thousand drunken Southern California rednecks (descendants of the Okies who migrated there during the Dust Bowl) who want Duncan elected 'cause he'd let them shoot Messicans ("Mexican: The ultimate big game! Mount a Mexican head on *your* wall! Apply at Duncan Hunter Expeditions, San Diego, CA!").

On the Republican side, the nutty Baptist preacher from Arkansas has the establishment candidates running scared. No telling what's going to happen there. On the Democratic side, it was once again proven that a gigantic machine working Iowa doesn't do ya any good at the end. It didn't help Howard Dean, and it didn't help Hillary Clinton, both of whom poured tons of money and hundreds of volunteers into the state and came out with cream pie smeared all over their face. It does help Obama and Edwards, who came out #1 and #2 respectively, surprising for Obama considering the nearly-all-white electorate in Iowa. As for Dennis Kucinich, he told his supporters to vote for Obama. Given that Obama is only barely to the left of Hillary Clinton while there's pretty much nobody to the left of Dennis (and Edwards is the closest on his right), this was pretty astounding. Edwards might have come closer to Obama if Dennis's voters had gone to Edwards instead. Dennis is playing a cynical game of pumping up the candidate who is least likely to threaten him in the New Hampshire primary, but it looks more like he just managed to destroy any support he had altogether. I know that in the future my money is heading Edwards's way, and as for Kucinich, if the nomination is settled by the time the California primary gets here I might vote for him just to send a message to the rest of the candidates that they're too right-wing, but otherwise... no.

So anyhow, "Anybody but Hillary" continues to be the Democratic thing. Between them, Obama and Edwards showed that a solid majority of the party (at least in Iowa) is no fan of the lady. We'll have to see how that translates to other states though, since Iowa is hardly a cross-section of America...

And that's this day's report from the Two Year Root Canal (TM by Mimus Pauly). I now return you to your everyday penguin rantings.

-- Badtux the Gratuitous Politics Penguin