Iowa

Not my country but what the hell. Ian’s comments as a Iowa leftie lad in NYC are interesting as are Michael’s, the Newf of Atlanta. Michael has pointed out the angry-man thing about Dean while Ian speaks of electability. I cannot for the life of me ever imagine an NDPer as US president – that is really what Dean is: early against the war, early pro civil unions for homosexual couples. Like Hollywood, Vermont is a foothold of Canadian infiltration of the USA. Good for us. Bad for Dean. Plus he looks like a Muppet extra, the guy at the other table not given interesting features, the guy with the fly in his soup.

Compare Edwards. No gaggle of techie dreamers around him either as “journalists” or groupies. He points out that he is electable in the southern states (key #1) and he speaks well (key #2) and he stands for being nice (…hmm…). The trouble with Democrats outside of the Brooklyn bench is that they do not know how to put the boot in because they stand for not putting the boot in. Edwards strikes me as a guy who can’t put the boot in.

Kerry won but he won’t win. Too many Kennedys.

So on to New Hampshire. For a election junkie such as me, the USA and its absolutely nutty voting system is a gold mine for graphical analysis of statistics which really come to nothing in themselves. Charts. Charts and talking heads. Wolf Blitzer saying things like “I don’t know anything about that, Phil, but I can confirm that CNN is predicting Dean will finish third. Dean will finish third” about 45 minutes after Dean confirmed he was finishing third.