It's official: Obama, Edwards, Hillary

The final tally:

Obama : 37.58%
Edwards : 29.75%
Clinton : 29.47%
Richardson : 2.11%
Biden : 0.93%
Uncommitted : 0.14%
Dodd : 0.02%
Precincts Reporting: 1781/1781
SDEs Reporting: 2500.00/2500

Source: Iowa Democratic Party

Candidate numbers reported here are in State Delegate Equivalents only. These are the State Convention Delegates a Presidential candidate can expect to have at the 2008 State Convention based on the number of County Convention Delegates he or she earned in each county. Read More......

Hillary came in 3rd, but she still got almost twice as many votes as Huckabee

Huckabee won Iowa with nearly 36,000 votes.

Hillary lost Iowa, and came in 3rd, with 29% of the vote. A projected 220,000 people turned out to vote in the Democratic caucuses, meaning Hillary got 29% of those voters, or an estimated 63,800 - nearly twice the number of votes that Huckabee got. (Actually, the Des Moines Register's latest numbers show Hillary getting just over 67,000 votes, so I was right.)

So our 3rd place candidate beat their first place candidate by almost a factor of two. Not sure what it means, but it's funny as hell. Read More......

The results: A great night for Democrats after all

What a night. And, as Ben Smith at the Politico notes, the Des Moines Register pollster was right. Obama won by 7 points, exactly as the poll predicted. Turnout was huge for Democrats, far surpassing the Republicans:

Projections showed a turnout of 220,588 for Democrats, compared to 124,000 who participated in 2004. Most projections had estimated turnout would be about 150,000.

Turnout was also up on the Republican side, where projections showed about 114,000 people taking part.

On the Democratic side, change won. Real change - neither Obama nor Edwards are considered establishment figures (though Edwards obviously isn't exactly some yokel just come to town). No doubt this was a huge win for Obama -- and correspondingly, a devastating loss for Hillary Clinton. There is no other way to spin it. Her campaign was built on inevitability -- and she simply wasn't in Iowa. Obama and Edwards had to run against the Clinton machine -- and it was (is) a machine. Bill and Hillary and all their friends, very powerful friends, put everything into this campaign. And tonight they lost.

On the Republican side, turmoil reigns. There is no way the GOP powers that be will ever let Mike Huckabee be the nominee. All the so-called Republican frontrunners tanked. How about Rudy coming in sixth? Romney got nuked. Thompson is a joke and McCain looks hapless.

As predicted, this was a great night for Democrats. Read More......

Obama and Huckabee win Iowa

Obama : 37.57%
Edwards : 29.76%
Clinton : 29.46%
Richardson : 2.11%
Biden : 0.93%
Uncommitted : 0.14%
Dodd : 0.02%
Precincts Reporting: 1780/1781
SDEs Reporting: 2498.33/2500

Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs) - i.e., percentage of total delegates being decided this evening. Candidate numbers reported here are in State Delegate Equivalents only. These are the State Convention Delegates a Presidential candidate can expect to have at the 2008 State Convention based on the number of County Convention Delegates he or she earned in each county. Source: Iowa Democratic party.



Interesting, 57% of Obama's support was people aged 17-29. 51% wanted "change."



NBC and CNN are both calling Iowa for Obama, CNN is projecting Huckabee as the winner in Iowa, Romney will place second.

GOP Results - 25% reporting
Huckabee 34%
Romney 25%
Thompson 14%
McCain 13%
Paul 10%
Giuliani 4% Read More......

An update from Iowa

Marc Laitin is at the Democratic caucus at a school in Johnston, Iowa.

Turnout is very high...795 people. Marc's been told that's up from 86 in 2004.

Obama had 318 supporters. Clinton was at 185. Edwards came in at 145. No one else was viable.

Here's what it looks like:

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MSNBC early numbers, maybe

MSNBC/NBC (or whoever they really are) just said that initial "entrance poll" numbers show Huckabee and Romney in a race for first among the Republicans, and Clinton and Obama battling for first place among the Demcorats. Not really news, any of that. Read More......

It's starting

The caucuses are beginning in Iowa. Real voters are arriving at the caucus sites. Democrats will officially start their meeting at 7:00 PM. Central Time. It will take awhile to sort out the tallies...with first votes, then second choices.

We'll probably know the Republican results much earlier. Their process is pretty straight forward. They show up and vote.

John and I will be liveblogging through the night. There will be a lot anecdotal information through the night. Read More......

Mitt Romney let 118 killers and rapists go early

The GOP curse of the 2006 elections, scandal after scandal after scandal, shows no signs of relenting. This just in from the Boston Herald, Mitt's hometown paper:

Some 118 killers and rapists were sprung early from prison under former Gov. Mitt Romney’s watch even as he has expressed outrage on the presidential campaign trail over a judge who freed a violent ex-con now accused of killing again.

The inmates released under Romney, a Herald review found, were allowed to walk out the gates by the Department of Correction by claiming so-called “good time” that in some cases substantially reduced their sentences.

Ninety-five of those inmates were convicted of manslaughter, 20 were locked up for rape and three were juveniles convicted of first-degree murder, records show.

But there's more. Remember Romney whining a few weeks back about a convicted criminal who was released in Massachusetts by a judge? Well, it seems Romney refused to take action while he was governor that could have kept the criminal behind bars. More after the jump...:

Last November, an outraged Romney demanded Judge Kathe Tuttman resign for releasing Tavares - who had just served 16 years for slashing his mother to death with a carving knife - over the objections of Worcester prosecutors who warned her of his violent history.

But the state probe first reported by the Herald showed that the DOC [Department of Corrections] under Romney failed to act on disciplinary matters against Tavares, a move that could have kept the killer behind bars nearly a year longer....

Tavares was released early by claiming automatic good time. A probe by Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration found that Tavares should have lost 360 days of that time because of assaults on prison guards that were never punished under Romney.

Read More......

Whatever happens tonight, it's going to be better on the Democratic side

The media has been in a pre-election frenzy today. I've been in that same mode -- constantly rooting around for any nugget of new information. Basically, it's down to turnout. It's that simple. Get your people out, you win.

Given the caucus system, where the whole concept of "one man, one vote" is completely undermined, a very small number of people (who can actually show up) make the difference. So, it's hard to tell who is going to win on each side. If I had to guess -- and it would, of course, be just a guess, I'd say Obama wins, followed by Edwards and Clinton. On the GOP side, Huckabee, followed by Romney, then McCain a distant third.

But the most important take away is the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. There is genuine enthusiasm and excitement on the Dem. side. So far, no really negative campaigning -- and most Democrats could be happy with any of the choices.

On the GOP side, no one is happy. The negative campaign ads and dirty tricks are in full swing. It's great. They all seem to hate each other. Really hate each other.

We'll be liveblogging tonight. And, tomorrow it's on to New Hampshire -- and painful spin from all the campaigns who did not win. Read More......

Does anyone really trust him to tinker with economy?

Any new plan that is launched to help the sagging economy ought to have very solid Democratic support or else it needs to be canned. We're in this mess - probably a recession already - because of Bush so any proposals that he offers have to be considered tainted. I don't trust Paulson either because he's only going to whip up something that somehow bails out his old friends on Wall Street. The Democratic candidates need to be vocal on any new plans coming out of the White House. To stand on the side will be much too risky because the next president will have to live with George's failures.

On Friday the new jobs report arrives and it is rumored to be ugly. This is what happens when we allow a complete idiot to run the show. Read More......

Will DOJ go after Cheney in CIA torture tape scandal?

Perhaps the operative question is "should they." I really have no confidence that our criminal justice system will hold any Bush official responsible for any crime, no matter how grave. But our man Froomkin makes a good case for why they should, starting with Cheney. Read More......

Oil continues to test the $100 mark

For the second day in a row, oil hit the $100 point and today it broke through as high as $100.09 per barrel. While it may not have much of an impact on buying habits in America (that figure is probably closer to $120 or $130) breaking through a support level is big news. We may have a few more tests around this number but if it keeps testing and solidly breaks through, $120 may not be that far away.

Mission Accomplished. Cheney and the GOP special interests are enjoying the profits of their deep investments. For them, life is good. Read More......

Thompson's already failed campaign could be the first casualty of Iowa

Whatever. The punditry loved, loved, loved the idea of Fred Thompson coming in to save the GOP. Ha, that worked:

Several Republican officials close to Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign said they expect the candidate will drop out of the race within days if he finishes poorly in Thursday’s Iowa caucus.

Thompson’s campaign, which last spring and summer was generating fevered anticipation in the media and with some Republican activists, has never ignited nationally, and there are no signs of a late spark happening here in Iowa, where even a third-place finish is far from assured.

Read More......

Richardson rumored to be throwing his support behind Obama too

Just a rumor, Richardson's folks are denying it, but if true could be very important for Obama this evening. Read More......

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? "Fabulous!"

Guess which right-wing political guru gave the above answer to Vanity Fair. Find out who after the jump :-)

Yes, it's our boy, Karl Rove. And to Vanity Fair's credit, here is how they describe him: "A principal architect of the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush." I'm guessing they didn't tell Rove that's what they were going to say when he agreed to the interview. Read More......

Bill Kristol at the NYT and Barack Obama at the Drudge Report

A pair of stories caught my eye today, and I'm not sure I care about either one.

The first bit of news is that conservative pundit and writer Bill Kristol is going to be a weekly op ed columnist at the NYT. The second story is that some Barack Obama ads popped up on the conservative Drudge Report Web site (though it's not clear that Obama actually ordered the ads - lots of times, ads just pop up because they're running on thousands and thousands of sites, and Drudge's just happens to be one buried in the mix).

So the question looms: Is it wrong for the Times to hire Kristol, and for Obama to (maybe) advertise on Drudge?

First, Kristol. Unlike FOX News, an arm of the Republican part that only hires liberals who don't come across as fierce as their conservative counterparts, the real "media" in America tries (or thinks it's trying) to be objective, even when it ends up skewing too far to the right (but that's for another day). So why shouldn't the NYT hire both conservative and liberal op ed columnists? And in fact, it always has. Some say that Kristol is particularly bad (and wrong about everything, including the war) and thus doesn't deserve a slot at the greatest of newspapers. Really? He's worse than Novakula? Than Krauthammer? Than George Will? Than Coulter, who is syndicated around the country? Than the LA Times hiring Jonah Goldberg (whom I sat next to once on CNN and is no Bill Kristol)? What conservative pundit does merit writing for the New York Times? They gotta hire someone, and they're all equally bad. I just can't get that worked up by a real newspaper hiring a conservative pundit to write as as a conservative pundit. Having said that...

More on the NYT and Kristol, Obama and Drudge, Newsweek and Markos and Rove, and finally Hillary's own conservative ad buy, after the jump...

...did the Times also announce the hire of a new liberal op ed writer, to balance out Kristol, or are we yet again seeing the mainstream media move more and more conservative in the vain hope that eventually the right-wingers will stop beating them up (and calling them "liberal") if only they bend over far enough? This is what the Washington Post did a few years back when it inexplicably hired a right-wing blogger to write an online column that was intended to be a view from the right, but they didn't at the same time hire a liberal blogger to right a view from the left. No one at the Post, including their somnambulant ombudsman, could fathom why folks might get upset about adding a self-declared right-wing opinion column to a Web site that had no self-declared left-wing opinion columns. Republicans have so played the media refs that the media is not only NOT liberal, it's not longer objective. Our press tries so hard to play fair, it now often plays foul. If the Times is only hiring Kristol to address some conservative furor over the Times' liberalism, then the newspaper is in for a big surprise. As Democrats in Congress have learned only too well the past year, give in to bullies and they'll kick even more sand in your face the next time.

This all reminds me of the criticism of Newsweek for hiring Karl Rove and blogger Markos Moulitsas of liberal blog Daily Kos as regular political opinion writers. Some folks on the left freaked that Newsweek would hire arch-conservative Rove, and others on the right (mainstream journalists, among others) fretted that Markos wasn't a real journalist. Yes, well duh. He wasn't hired as a journalist, he was hired as a political partisan, which he is, to write partisan opinion pieces. Say what you will about Rove or Markos, but the notion that either of them wouldn't be an interesting addition to a partisan political discussion is absurd. And in any case, Newsweek did it right - they hired both at the same time.

Which takes me finally to Obama and the Drudge ads. If Obama thinks it helps him to advertise on Drudge (and it's not clear he even did), why should I care? Yes, I'd like Obama to buy a few ads on AMERICAblog too, but does that negate him buying ads on right-wing sites? Hell, I'd like Ron Paul to spend some of his $20 million on AMERICAblog (Ron, call me). And let's not forget that Hillary bought her own little spate of ads on conservative blogs months back. Read More......

Republican economic policy takes its toll, again

Last year the US economy crashed through to numerous record lows. The greenback bounced on lows not seen since the Nixon years (the trend continues in 2008), the price of gas both per barrel and at the pump hit new highs, discrepancy between rich and poor increased, health care costs jumped yet again and housing collapsed to lows last witnessed under Bush I. As we enter 2008, the first day of trading on Wall Street was the worst in 25 years. On the same day, gold hit an all time high and oil crossed the critical $100 per barrel mark.

Whichever that Democrat wins the nomination needs to remind the public over and over and over, just how poorly the GOP managed the economy. A few well placed special interests prospered though the broad majority have been left behind. For decades the GOP told everyone who would listen that they knew how to run the economy. The results across the board have been terrible and not up to the standards that we ought to expect for a great country. Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Well, it's here. Caucus day in Iowa.

Real people start deciding who will be our next president.

Start threading. It's going to be a busy day. Read More......

Why does Bush want to help China and hostile nations?

I understand the commercial benefits to American companies, but why does Bush want to provide high tech help to China, who may then sell to Syria and Iran? Is Bush on America's side or not? How does this sale benefit the country and our long term national security? More on the Bush change, after the jump.

Six months ago, the Bush administration quietly eased some restrictions on the export of politically delicate technologies to China. The new approach was intended to help American companies increase sales of high-tech equipment to China despite tight curbs on sharing technology that might have military applications.

But today the administration is facing questions from weapons experts about whether some equipment — newly authorized for export to Chinese companies deemed trustworthy by Washington — could instead end up helping China modernize its military. Equally worrisome, the weapons experts say, is the possibility that China could share the technology with Iran or Syria.

The technologies include advanced aircraft engine parts, navigation systems, telecommunications equipment and sophisticated composite materials.

The questions raised about the new policy are in a report to be released this week by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, an independent research foundation that opposes the spread of arms technologies.

Read More......

Too many good choices today?

Each of the leading Democratic candidates have qualities that I really appreciate. Of course, I also really appreciate the bizarreness of the GOP choices, who almost daily deliver something bizarre that has to be damaging their chances later in the year. Decisions, decisions.

If conversations with undecided Democrats here were turned into a play, it would consist of the same dialogue repeated over and over again, with slight variations:

Q. Are you leaning toward any candidate?

A. Well, I really like (Voter mentions one). President Bush has led this country in the wrong direction, and he (or she) could be the best person to fix it.

Q. You sound pretty committed.

A. Heavens, no! I might vote for (Voter mentions one or two other Democratic candidates)...

Read More......