Hillary's steady gains in Iowa

If you look at the early voting/caucusing states, one thing is clear. Hillary is the clear leader in most of them.

When it comes to Iowa, though she isn't yet leading yet in most polls, she is steadily gaining. I think it is most helpful and relevant to watch the same polling orgainzation over time to see how the candidates are trending.

Strategic Vision has been polling Iowa regularly this year. They have 5 polls to compare. Here is the data:



Having watched all three debate/forums it pretty clear that the more people see Hillary Clinton, the better they like her. I can't say that I'm one of the converted, I have always thought Hillary is great and have been a supporter from the beginning. It's good to see that more people are coming to see the person and candidate that I've seen for years.

Iraq's Civil War

When we talk about Iraq’s civil war I think it’s important to put it into perspective. Do the Iraqi’s really even want a united Iraq?

If you take a minute to look back at our civil war you will see some striking data. In 1860 the US population was about 31,400,000; just a bit more than Iraq’s is today. Our civil war lasted four years and we lost 618,000 soldiers in that war. Our country was nearly torn apart and the cost was immense to hold the United States together. Are the Iraqi people willing to preserve their country? This civil war is now theirs to decide. Do they hold the country together or does it split apart? That’s a question only the Iraqis can answer. Just as only American’s could answer that question back in the 1960’s.



We need to leave Iraq to the countrymen who live there and let them decide the future of their country just as we did some 140 years ago. We shed hundreds of thousands of our son’s blood in our civil war; Iraq may well do the same. The point is this is their country, their civil war, and their decision to make.

Edwards and Money

Edwards seems to be losing ground in the money race. That is, if his campaign is telling the truth. I know it's tacky that it takes money, and lot of it, to run for President. I also know it's true for this election.

I can't see how he competes successfully for very long if he can't put up adds and run a well funded ground game. I also wonder about his base if they aren't donating in numbers big enough to keep him competitive.

As for Obama and Clinton, they are both sure to come in near or above $30 million. It's going to take a truck load of money to run a campaign this long and go into so many states heavily so soon.

July 15th ought to be interesting.

Take Back America Forum

I saw the speeches of Barak Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton. I think they all were quite persuasive and had lots to say. I want to focus for a minute on the booing during Hillary's speech.

I find it interesting that the Right Wing noise machine makes much of it - and of course lies about what actually happened. The truth and the right wing have clearly never met one another. What's equally interesting is the fact that the Left Wing noise machine mostly in the form of blogs has made much of it too.

To my way of thinking, if Hillary is ticking off/offending/worrying both the Left Wing and the Right Wing she will sound pretty darn good to everyone else who lives in the middle. And that is a big percentage of the electorate. I hope she keeps bothering both ends of the political spectrum; it will means she has ideas and positions that are in line with most of the country.

Clinton tied with Giuliani/Romney in Texas

Here's the link to the article:
Is Tesax turning blue?


This gist of the story is this:

Texas hasn't gone Democratic in a presidential race in more than three decades. But the survey shows Republican contender Sen. John McCain essentially tied with Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton among registered voters, with McCain at 36% and Clinton at 35% in a head-to-head contest. Republican Rudy Giuliani and Clinton also are essentially tied, at 32%-31%.

The telephone survey of 1,002 adults was taken from April 26 to May 7 by the Texas Lyceum, a nonpartisan civic group. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. An executive summary of the report is available here.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama fared less well than Clinton, though more voters were undecided. McCain beat Obama 32%-25%. Giuliani defeated Obama 32%-22%.

This means a couple of things to me.

First, Texas is in play right now. Hopefully it stays that way. It also means the Dean 50 state strategy seems to be working. At the very least the Rep candidate will have to spend money in Texas to win/compete.

Second, it shows that Clinton is more competitive in a red state than Obama. I think that's because she is seen as more moderate. She also has a pretty strong hold on the children's issues which speak strongly to women.

Third, if this is a trend rather than some blip, it portends extremely bad things for the Reps which warms my heart.


I know we all have our favorites - mine is Clinton - and feel strongly about our candidate. I hope we can focus our energy on what our chosen candidate stands for and makes us want to vote for them and spend a lot less time denigrating the others. At the end of the day there will be only one person who wins and I will support that person because we need a Dem in the White House. All of them are head and shoulders above the Rep choices and all will protect the Supreme Court from further movement to the right.

Hillary on the Palestinian fiasco

Clinton was asked about her thoughts re: the attacks by Hamas on Fatah in Gaza. Here is a portion of the article:

" Democratic Senatorial Candidate Hillary Clinton told the Post Wednesday that when it came to the means of strengthening Fatah in its struggle with Hamas, she was "going to leave those decisions to the Israeli government." She was speaking after making remarks at an Orthodox Union luncheon in Washington warning of the danger a Hamas victory would pose for Israel and the region.

"We've got a situation here where it's almost ironic that people are rooting for Fatah. This is something that I don't think any of us ever would have foreseen," Clinton told the OU audience.

"The civil war in Gaza, which has the potential of spreading to the West Bank, has the potential of bringing Hamas to power with a much stronger position than it currently has. I think that is deeply disturbing."

She continued, "If Hamas emerges victorious in this civil war, we'll have a whole new set of issues that we'll have to figure out how to deal with. That is not good, obviously, for Israel, but it's also not good for Egypt. It's not good for Jordan." Clinton did not outline any specific action plan, other than ruling out any contacts with Hamas.

"There should not be any effort to, certainly recognize, or even deal with Hamas until it renounces violence and recognizes Israel's right to exist," the New York senator said. "

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/Page/IndexPhoto&cid=1123495333335

I think these comments pretty clearly point out the very bad state we find ourselves in now. The options for this country are quite small at this time and we can thank the monumental failures of the Bush so-called foreign policy for this.

I honestly don't know how our country can do much at this time.