Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Results Are Coming In....

Results here as they come in, from the Iowa Democratic Party. I'm flitting around online, from dKos, Open Left, to Firedoglake while listening to Air America for discussion.

Update:

The Results from the IDP update every thirty seconds, and they have a little second by second countdown thingie that is completely turning me obsessive about the whole thing. I was expecting early results to be better for Edwards than they are, turnout is said to be enormous (for Dems, I mean... the Repugs? not so much), including high youth turnout. All bodes well for Obama seems like, but we shall see...

Update:

Kos comments:
Kudos to the Iowa Democratic Party. Their site is kicking ass, smooth, updating quickly with no hangups or lag. [Agreed! --dc] The Iowa Republican Party website has crashed. Incompetent, as usual.

Ha ha.

Update:

Halfway there. Obama has taken the lead and appears to be lengthening that lead a bit, still awfully squeaky close, tho. Over among the Republicans I hear they are calling it for the Jeebusfreak Huckabee. That's your base, Repugs, as Kathy Griffin would say: suck it!

Update:

Everybody is calling it for Obama, and his lead is sure looking substantial this late in the game. I didn't expect him to do so well. The Edwards and Clinton numbers are very close. Doesn't seem to me anybody is out of the race from this result, although I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to discover the corporate media using this as a pretext to declare anti-corporatist Edwards a dead duck, just as I wouldn't be surprised to discover the gossip-columnist media in their eagerness for a "horse-race" making "the story" of Iowa how loser McCain is some big winner, yeah.

Update:

Obama isn't my guy (Edwards is), but I would be lying to deny I feel the excitement and the history happening here.

I wonder if Clinton goes much more negative against Obama at this point -- since her numbers are as surprisingly worse than I expected as Obama's are surprisingly better -- and I wonder what kind of impact it will have on all three frontrunners if she does.

Update:

Very interesting comments by Chris Bowers over at OpenLeft:
Many prominent bloggers said they favored Edwards toward the end of the campaign, and a similar pro-Edwards trend was found in blogosphere straw polls. Three weeks ago, Edwards and Obama were essentially tied in terms of support on Daily Kos, but things broke heavily for Edwards at the end. The main reason, as far as I can tell, was because many of us in the blogosphere finally decided that we liked the anti-corporate rhetoric coming from Edwards, and didn't like the occasional right-wing talking point coming from Obama. [That describes me pretty well -- dc] While that might be how we made our decision, it certainly wasn't how voters in Iowa made their decisions. Toward the end, many Iowans broke for Edwards. It just turns out, in the end, more people broke for Obama.

Obama won tonight because he did something many campaigns have claimed they would do in the past, but never until now had never actually accomplished: he turned out young voters and new voters in record-smashing numbers. This has long been the holy grail of progressive politics, and until now no one had been able to pull it off. Well, Obama pulled it off. That is a remarkable an historic accomplishment. That is why he won….

The youth of America isn't navigating a path between the two parties, they are overwhelmingly siding with one party. What they want is change and youth within the party, not an older generation's status quo. They want a change in America, and a change in the Democratic Party.

Obama represents the change that Democratic youth want, and he does so in a way that neither Clinton nor Edwards could ever hope to match….

I think Obama, simply in terms of his demeanor and his biography, strongly appeals to politicos from a new generation and a new socioeconomic class because he strikes them in some sort of gut, intuitive level as being from that class. Multi-ethnic, post-Vietnam, highly educated, raised in a major urban center -- these are many of the cosmopolitan, self-creating, forward looking aspects of life for many younger professionals….

John Edwards's story of growing up in a mill town when the mill closed seems very, very rustic for a northeasterner such as myself, since our mills closed down sixty years ago to move to places like North Carolina. These rustic visions of America simply are not where people are at these days, especially news junkies and activists within the Democratic Party and the bluer parts of America….

I can't quite put my finger on it either, but the rise of Obama, I believe, is largely based on a new vision of personal identity that will inevitably come to impact our national political discourse. Whether or not his speeches and policy ideas continue to live up to that identity remains to be seen, but it does give him an edge on the rest of older, predominately Baby Boomer field that, generally speaking, will not trumpet their urban or multi-ethnic roots.

Not only does Bowers describe my own hopes and worries pretty well when it comes to Edwards, but I have to say that what he is saying connects up pretty well with what I am hearing from many of my best students when they talk about their feelings for Obama.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

InTrade now gives 54% odds for Clinton to win the nomination, 44% for Obama, 3%.

Anonymous said...

3% for Edwards.

Anonymous said...

Multi-ethnic, post-Vietnam, highly educated, raised in a major urban center -- these are many of the cosmopolitan, self-creating, forward looking aspects of life for many younger professionals

Yes, yes, aspects of life for those "young professionals" but not, you know, aspects of life for the vast majority of people who actually live in the country. Isn't this the whole problem with the Democratic party today? It's become a cult for the ever diminishing tribe of upwardly mobile yuppies while the rest of us spiral into the toilet. Even people like me who thought education was the ticket to a good life are finding this is not the case. Edwards' message is far more apropos to where people really are today that this load of crap which honestly sounds like the kind of self indulgent bullshit boomers used to glory in but now with Gen-X in their place. Perhaps it is now my generation's turn to be self indulgent, self glorifying assholes worshiping our own "lifestyles". That said I'll still vote for Obama if he wins the primary, if only to stop Fuck-a-bee or whatever tie wearing primate the Repigs vomit up.

Dale Carrico said...

Greg -- yes, I agree with almost everything you say. And I happen to remain an Edwards guy, solidly. What Bowers said rings true as a diagnosis -- I didn't mean to suggest I was getting on the train with the Obama enthusiasts. As you say, I'll cheerfully vote for Obama if/when it comes to that, and even for Clinton, comparatively speaking (I mean, to a man the Repugs are, like, Darwin denialists and trying to outcompete one another on who can build the biggest most bad-assed concentration camps for heaven's sake, they're a bunch of dot-eyed fucked-up freaks), but I'm definitely not jumping onto the DLC triangulation train or the let's play nicey nice with the killers train before I have to do, and I still think Edwards would be the better President (although his hawkishness, among other things, has always worried me).