{"id":1570,"date":"2008-01-03T21:34:20","date_gmt":"2008-01-03T21:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2008-01-03T21:34:20","modified_gmt":"2008-01-03T21:34:20","slug":"contemplating-the-caucuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1570","title":{"rendered":"Contemplating the Caucuses."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m trying not to get all worked up about next year’s election, since the last time I was thoroughly excited about an election – ahem – things didn’t go as I’d hoped. However, I’ve still got enough political interest left to have me keeping an eye on the Iowa caucuses<\/a> tonight, which, for those of you who don’t follow politics that much, often serve as a sort of canary in the coal mine for who’s going to land the nomination for each party. Consider the previous winners of this particular contest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Democrats<\/strong><\/td>\nRepublicans<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2004 John Kerry<\/td>\n2000 George W. Bush<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2000 Al Gore<\/td>\n1996 Bob Dole<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1992 Tom Harkin<\/td>\n1988 Bob Dole<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1988 Richard A. Gephardt<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1984 Walter F. Mondale<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

At this moment, ~9:20 PM EST, the Dems are reporting an Obama-Edwards-Clinton neck-and-neck-and-neck race, with results at 33.7%, 31.9% and 31.6% respectively. Total, that’s 97.4%; Bill Richardson’s weighing in with 1.7% and Biden’s at 0.9%, leaving Dodd, Gravel, Ohio’s local loon Kucinich and all others at 0.0%. I hadn’t honestly expected Edwards to be making such a strong showing, but good for him!
\nWhat interests me even more than the Dems at the moment is the Republican race. Mike Huckabee’s been declared the winner already with 35% of the votes, followed by Romney with 24, Thompson with 14.2, McCain with 11.8, Ron Paul with 10.9 and – this is where I cackle with glee – Giuliani with a paltry 3.7%. Why does this warm my heart? Because I’ve found Giuliani’s campaign technique so far to be utterly deplorable, a despicable attempt to capitalize on the loss of American lives during 9\/11. Up until I stopped keeping track, for the majority of his campaign every single one of his speeches<\/i> included some sort of reference to 9\/11. And, by God, I sure hope to high heaven that the next 4-8 years aren’t<\/i> going to be dictated by the events of 9\/11 as the last<\/i> 4-8 years.
\nGod,<\/i> I miss The West Wing.<\/i> I loved Charlie Wilson’s War<\/i> – Aaron, buddy, where are you now that we need you? We’re sorry we turned up our noses at Studio 60!<\/i> Please tell us you got your snarking at the TV industry out of your system and are working on a new political series! We’re dying out here in an arid wasteland of I Love New York<\/i> and other reality dreck! Save us! Please!<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m trying not to get all worked up about next year’s election, since the last time I was thoroughly excited about an election – ahem – things didn’t go as I’d hoped. However, I’ve still got enough political interest left to have me keeping an eye on the Iowa caucuses tonight, which, for those of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-pk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}