Presidential Misdirection in Iowa

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Presidential Misdirection in Iowa

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Here in SoCal we have been warned for the last week that the clouds
are filling up and are about ready to burst. The weathermen say it is
going to be the worst storm in years (three to be exact) and the rain
is going to start late afternoon on Thursday. Well, heck, that time has
come and gone and the ark I’ve been building the last few days is still
not even damp!

But that doesn’t mean I should scrap my ark and make a cabana
instead. It is going to rain, maybe even pour, either today or
tomorrow. As I look outside right now I can see the writing in the sky;
the clouds are going to open up just like the weathermen predicted.

The rain is just going to come a little later than they thought. And
the same thing is true for the presidential primaries (had you thinking
I forgot what the title of this piece was, didn’t I?). The Clinton
showers will come (so to speak) and Huckabee won’t be in the forecast
for long.

How can I be so sure? Well, yesterday while reading the Wall Street
Journal I happened to notice the title for one of their op eds was
something like “Don’t Give a C*%# About the Iowa Caucus.” Being an
august newspaper I seriously doubt it used profanity in the title but
the sentiment remains the same. The important idea coming from the op
ed was that the last president Iowans picked in their caucus was Jimmy
Carter. Yup, the peanut farmer/almost nuclear submariner. They didn’t
pick Reagan, they didn’t pick George H.W. Bush, or even Bill Clinton or
George W. Bush.

Now, if it doesn’t end up raining where I live I will take that as
an omen that Huckabee is going to be our Jimmy Carter (sarcastic
YEAH!). Or, maybe it will mean that Obama will be Jimmy Carter part
“D’oh”! Basically this means that when everyone goes to bed tonight you
should all be praying for rain in SoCal or else your party risks
nominating a real dud.

If it does rain, and it does look like it will, then we’re going to
at least get semi-competent candidates. Hillary is going to be the
democrat nominee and either Romney, Giuliani, McCain, or Thompson (he
did come in third in Iowa and I desperately want him to win, so I feel
obligated to include him here) for the republican nominee.

All I’m saying is that Iowa doesn’t matter, politically speaking.
The reason why it gets so much attention from the media is because it
is the first primary (caucus, whatever). Little Iowa, representing
approximately 1% of the overall population of the United States, is
hardly a big enough state to decide anything. A couple of the
republican candidates ignored Iowa (Giuliani and McCain). It doesn’t
really matter all that much who the Iowans pick.

Don’t take me wrong, I think Iowa is great, my dad was born there.
It’s just not a big state nor does it have a track record of picking
winners.

All you have to do is look at the Real Clear Politics Average of national polls
to see that the winners from last night are still trailing others in
their respective parties. Hillary has a 20-point lead and Giuliani
still has a slight lead over McCain who has an even slighter lead over
Huckabee.

OK, so you don’t take the national poll as the be all and end all of
presidential primary polling. Well, how about next Tuesday’s polling
from New Hampshire. Again, the Real Clear Politics Average (New Hampshire edition)
shows that the winners in Iowa aren’t the favorites in the next primary
state. Obama is more than six points behind Hillary and Huckabee is
more than twenty points behind both McCain and Romney.

All this breathless coverage is due in large part to the fact that
we get our news 24/7/365.25 (leap year). The cable news channels, your
local channels, everyone on the Internet reporting on the elections all
need to make the news as interesting as possible in order to win market
share. If CNN or Fox News decided they wanted to be levelheaded and
treated Iowa as the lead news story instead of the only news story, I
wouldn’t have to write this piece and calm everyone down a little bit.

I hope that I’ve calmed everyone down and all is fine with the
world. All I can say now is that you all need to pray for rain in SoCal
or else we’re all going to get a couple of duds for our presidential
nominees. BigT