As Eyewear hoped, and predicted, Mr. Obama has placed first in the Democratic Iowa Caucus, held last night, beating Hillary Clinton. Less positively, the charismatic rightwing Republican candidate, Mike Huckabee, also came first for his party. It remains to be seen what happens in New Hampshire, next Tuesday, when some distance may open up between the few leading figures bunched at the head of the pack. It seems likely, given Mr. Edwards' second placing here, he will stay the course perhaps until Super Tuesday, in February, meaning the Democratic party has a three-legged race staggering on until then. The Republicans, too, should keep at least four men in the race until February 5, Mitt Romney, Huckabee, McCain and Giuliani. Ron Paul might just edge in, there, too, as his Internet-based support keeps his maverick status alive. The world may yet be saved...
As Eyewear hoped, and predicted, Mr. Obama has placed first in the Democratic Iowa Caucus, held last night, beating Hillary Clinton. Less positively, the charismatic rightwing Republican candidate, Mike Huckabee, also came first for his party. It remains to be seen what happens in New Hampshire, next Tuesday, when some distance may open up between the few leading figures bunched at the head of the pack. It seems likely, given Mr. Edwards' second placing here, he will stay the course perhaps until Super Tuesday, in February, meaning the Democratic party has a three-legged race staggering on until then. The Republicans, too, should keep at least four men in the race until February 5, Mitt Romney, Huckabee, McCain and Giuliani. Ron Paul might just edge in, there, too, as his Internet-based support keeps his maverick status alive. The world may yet be saved...
Comments
Next year we will all be saying "President Barack Obama" without a moment's thought. Ever since I saw Obama's origin as the son of an extremely poor goat-herder used as material for a Jon Stewart sketch, I have felt an increasing certainty about this. A woman president? Who cares. It would be good and all, but the world has already had its Maggie Thatchers and its Benazir Bhuuttos. Can women be just as corrupt as men? Probably? The issue, now, is to see if America has gone beyond racism. Obama would be able to show that it is showing signs of that. As Andrew Sullivan stated in The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama/3) this month:
"Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."