The Democratic race — three lawyers
married to lawyers who talk too much
— is tight and volatile
The jittery pack of seasoned political operatives
gazing into their BlackBerrys
doesn’t have a clue which way
the Iowa snowdrifts are blowing
Black Bourgeois Arrogance
Michelle Obama told Vanity Fair that Americans
would have only one chance to anoint her husband,
vowing “it’s now or never” and explaining
“there’s an inconvenience factor there”
and a “really, really hard” pressure and stress
on the family that can only be justified if her husband
can win the presidency and “change the world”
She told a group gathered at a nursing home
that “Barack is one of the smartest people
you will ever encounter who will deign
to enter this messy thing called politics”
Bankable Political Stars
Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama go into tomorrow's Iowa caucuses each with $100m in the bank, easily outstripping all previous records to produce the most expensive election in history.
Much of the money will be used on the 26 caucuses and primary elections concentrated over the next six weeks.
The figures for the last 12 months emerged as a poll published yesterday in the Des Moines Register put Obama on 32%, with Clinton on 25% and John Edwards on 24%. In the Republican race, Mike Huckabee was in the lead with 32%, with Mitt Romney on 26%.
Midnight on Monday was the last day of the fundraising quarter, during which Obama raised $20m.
Although the teams do not have to formally declare how much they raised until the end of the month, both the Clinton and Obama teams indicated they had exceeded $100m (£50m).
The total raised by all the candidates is far and away above that raised in any other non-election year.
George Bush raised $131.8m in 2003 but he was seeking re-election unopposed by Republicans, not part of a crowded field as in this contest.
David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, told his staff that competing in the primary and caucus states up until February 5 would need "at least $100m" and Obama had that at his disposal.
Edwards, who has been squeezed by Obama and Clinton, raised about $4m-$5m.
The spending on this campaign is further increased by financial support from independent groups, the extent of which is impossible to gauge.
Among these groups, one affiliated to the Service Employees International Union has spent $800,000 in the last few days on radio ads for Edwards, while the Club for Growth, which campaigns for lower taxes, has paid out $700,000 on ads criticising Huckabee's tax record as governor of Arkansas.
Emily's List, which supports women in politics, is providing financial backing for Clinton. Iowans who do a Google search for "children" or "weather" or "safe toys" will see a link to a You Go Girl ad paid for by Emily's List.
Clinton's campaign, which is focusing on women, has been issuing scratch cards, with rewards that include mugs and snow shovels.
Normally, with a caucus near, campaign teams at this stage would be concentrating on getting committed voters out, but given the closeness of the campaign and the number of undecided voters, they were still aggressively hunting for new voters.
The Democratic campaign teams are gearing up for the possibility of an inconclusive evening in which no candidate establishes a clear lead.
The Republican race will be equally complicated. Even if Huckabee wins, the result would be diminished by the virtual absence from the Iowa campaign of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, who are concentrating their resources elsewhere.
The Des Moines Register poll, the last by the paper before the caucus, is out of kilter with other polls which show support for Clinton and Edwards rising, with Obama's dipping. But the Register has a lot of influence in Iowa and the poll could boost Obama's campaign.
The Register poll has reflected accurately what turned out to be final outcome in Iowa in the past.
The candidates will make their final speeches tonight at rallies. Huckabee, who has fought an unconventional campaign, is to spend the evening swapping jokes with Jay Leno on his NBC show.The Queen of Diamonds & the Jack of Spades [Original]
Edith Wessel, an 80-year-old white-haired retired nurse, moved slowly up the aisle with her walker after listening to Hillary make her pitch.
She told one of the Hillary volunteers that she had “great admiration” for the senator, but also great doubts about whether her strong negatives would sink her in the general election.
“I can’t understand why people dislike her so much,” Mrs. Wessel said.
The volunteer assured the wavering caucusgoer that the Republicans will slime anyone who gets the nomination and that Hillary has more experience wrestling them than her rivals.
Mrs. Wessel is torn. She likes Obama but worries about his experience. She likes Hillary but worries about her baggage.
The presidential anglers here are dancing on the head of a pin. The Democratic race — three lawyers married to lawyers who talk too much — is very tight and very volatile.
Even the jittery pack of seasoned political operatives gazing into their BlackBerrys doesn’t seem to have a clue which way the Iowa snowdrifts are blowing.
Across town, Nancy Hibbs, a 57-year-old nurse, came to listen to John Edwards give his son-of-a-mill-worker rant against corporate greed, complete with a sneer aimed at Obama that anyone who thinks you can “just nice” the carnivorous Republican fat cats into submission is in “Never-Never Land.”
Ms. Hibbs had decided after seeing Barack Obama a year ago that she would vote for him. She saw him again Monday night in Ames and felt even more certain that he was the one.
After listening to Edwards for 40 minutes on Tuesday, she up and changed her mind, deciding to vote for him.
“You can tell in his voice he’s not playing the game, you can hear his moral commitment,” she said. “We need a big turnaround.”
And what about Hillary? “I don’t want the same old entrenched politics,” she replied, adding emphatically, “And I don’t want Bill in the White House again.”
But Bill very much wants to be in the White House again. He is going around the state relentlessly, giving a speech as tightly choreographed with Hillary’s as a “Dancing With the Stars” routine.
“Miss Bill? Vote Hill!” reads one button being sold outside their events. By the time Bill and Hill are finished with you, you could be forgiven for thinking that she had personally forged the peace accord in Northern Ireland while socking away the $127 billion Clinton budget surplus and dodging bullets en route to ending ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
The Big Dog pushed the experience card hard. “Whatever’s fixin’ to happen,” whether it’s something like 9/11, Katrina or Pakistan, he said, Hillary is better equipped to face it.
As to the health care debacle, he said, “Every president will fail at something or another.” It’s how they dust themselves off that counts.
And whether she has learned from her mistakes, of course, is the heart of the matter, and something that voters can never really know — even if they study up as much as Iowans.
Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled?
Or has she merely learned to mask her off-putting and self-sabotaging qualities better? If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom?
She is speaking in a soft, measured voice in these final days, so that, as with Daisy Buchanan, you have to lean in to listen.
But is she really different than she was in the years when she was so careless about the people around her getting hurt by the Clinton legal whirlwind that she was dubbed the Daisy Buchanan of the boomer set?
The underlying rationale for her campaign is that she is owed. Owed for moving to Arkansas and giving up the name Rodham, owed for pretending to care about place settings and menus when she held the unappetizing title of first lady, owed for enduring one humiliation after another at the hands of her husband.
Oddly, Barack and Michelle Obama also radiate a sense that they are owed. Not for a lifetime of sublimation and humiliation, but for this onerous campaign, for offering themselves up to save and uplift the nation, even though it disrupted their comfortable lives.
Michelle told Vanity Fair that Americans would have only one chance to anoint her husband, vowing “it’s now or never” and explaining “there’s an inconvenience factor there” and a “really, really hard” pressure and stress on the family that can only be justified if her husband can win the presidency and “change the world.”
She told a group gathered at a nursing home in Grinnell on Monday that “Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics.”
So it comes down to this: Will Queen Hillary reign? Will Prince Barack deign? And who is owed more?