Dover Bitch

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Iowa postscript

DB's brilliant predictions were spot-on:

I will be disappointed with one party's selections and horrified by the other's. Then, I will stop thinking about Iowa.

I'm disappointed that Dodd had such a poor showing (not that I ever thought he'd come away with a significant total). But .02 percent is ugly. The AP story about his withdrawal from the race actually contains more information about him than all the previous stories about the race combined.

Even his (threatened) filibuster of the FISA bill that thwarted Harry Reid's skulduggery for the time being barely netted Dodd any press at all. The system is simply too rigged for a person like Dodd to get the kind of momentum required to make a strong showing in a presidential race. That's a shame, but one I accepted a long time ago.

Obama's win tonight -- and the Democratic turnout -- was impressive. So was his victory speech. I don't have much to add to it that hasn't been said on TV or on other blogs.

On the other side of the coin, Mike Huckabee is a terrible candidate with the right attributes to get support from a certain segment of the nation, one that might be large enough to send him to Washington.

Huckabee is grossly unqualified to be president. There's no denying it. Voting for him because of his religion or his demeanor is inexcusable. Haven't the last seven years taught the Republicans anything?

Besides, Huckabee invented the What Would Jesus Do Loophole: ("Jesus was too smart to [BE IN MY CURRENT SITUATION].")

Memo to GOP voters: You will never, ever have a beer with the next president.

And having someone like this in the White House is just too much for me to fathom:

Five days after the tornado tore through the state, [Arkadelphia, Ark., a] city of 10,000 lay in ruins. The cyclone destroyed an office building, a bank, a pharmacy and 70 other businesses. The electricity was out. The National Guard patrolled the streets. Six people were dead.

In Little Rock, GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee was reviewing a disaster insurance measure that he intended to support when he became troubled: The bill, drawing on centuries-old legal terminology, referred to natural disasters as "acts of God."

In a time of emergency, Huckabee would hold up the measure for more than three weeks to press his personal objection that the Almighty could not be blamed for the region's loss. In the process, he drew damaging headlines and created new strains in his relations with the state's legislature, the General Assembly.

Frightening.

Finally, the television media is as brutally bad as ever. The irony of all these jokers talking about how badly America seems to want change. Howard Fineman said that America wants "a whole new cast."

Yes, and that includes all of you. You don't have front-row seats; you are all part of the same sad show. Today's coverage, with a few exceptions, was agonizing and it didn't even matter what channel my TV was tuned in to. They were all equally bad.

While I'm on the topic... A special "For the love of God, Please Stop!" goes out to Anderson Cooper and CNN for the computer-generated pie chart floating over a hand-held panel and skewing and scaling with every movement, blocking out everybody else's heads.

It made me pine for the halcyon days when Soledad O'Brien shared her time with this guy.

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