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Some thoughtful commentary from our British cousins.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/usel...abama.html#more
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Final thoughts as we sift through the confetti and the wreckage of the first contest of the 2008 election.
For the Democrats, Obama's victory (by about 38 per cent to Edwards' 30 and Hillary's 29) is well enough outside the three-way tie scenario to be truly significant. Change was the message, according to the entrance poll, from an astounding turnout of Democratic voters and they think - quite reasonably - that Obama, fresh and new, and not Hillary or Edwards, is the one to deliver it.
This was a body blow for Hillary. The spin was that she was always going to have a tough time here and that was true. For a while back in the spring her campaign even pondered pulling out of Iowa. Her husband, remember, didn't really run here in 1992 and there was no Democratic contest in 1996.
But she did run and she ran on a fairly simple premise that she was inevitable. If you run as inevitable and lose you really lose.
And yet. It's only one contest. It's only Iowa. She will now unleash some furies in the next four days in New Hampshire, where voters do not necessarily follow the Iowa line. If she wins there she evens the contest and it's all to play for in Nevada (where she should win) and South Carolina and beyond.
But she is in the fight of her life now.
A brief word on Edwards. He needed to win here and he was a distant second. He won't quit immediately but he faces almost impossible odds. The next big question for him is when to pull out and to whom he should throw his valuable support.
On the Republican side Huckabee was a big winner but Romney was a bigger loser. Like Hillary, Romney was a frontrunner with all the advantages and resources that entails. But he got soldily beaten by an upstart. His nightmare scenario was a poor second here and to have McCain - his main rival in New Hampshire - run a strong third. In the event McCain seems to have tied for third, but the result is still very ominous for Romney.
Huckabee now has to prove that he is not just a likeable guy with a floating subliminal cross over his shoulder. Evangelicals pulled him to victory here but they won't do it in New Hampshire. Still, he only needs a respectable showing there now and have McCain beat Romney, which would probably finish Romney - and turn it into a two man fight through the primaries with McCain.
Which leaves McCain. The man written off for dead two months ago is on the march.
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"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."
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