The dollar bubble bursting will do far more to alter the foreign policy then any politician.

here.

" Edwards seems to recognize that there are some people -- like the health care executive he cited who retired from his job with over $100 million in the policy-holders loot -- who don't deserve to come together with anything except a grand jury. Edwards is willing to gaze past the kindergarten emotions of primary politics and see the stupendous ugliness and unfairness of a land that is being sucked dry by corporate vampires. I believe he will righteously kick their asses, and that they need to get their asses kicked, so I'm more inclined to support Edwards. I believe he means it, too."

http://www.kunstler.com/

The tide is changing and it's changing fast. The latest New Hampshire poll has Obama beating Clinton by double digits and Clinton beating Edwards by another ten points. The current South Carolina poll has Obama anywhere from 10 to twenty points better than Clinton and between 25 and 35 points better than Edwards.

I did inhale.

firstly, the Rasmussen numbers from today show this:

         1/7  1/6  1/5  1/4  1/3

Clinton  33   36   38   38   41
Obama    29   25   25   26   24
Edwards  20   23   20   18   17

Obama surges 4 points, Edwards falls 3.

Secondly, an average of all polls works better than any one poll...

http://www.pollster.com/08-US-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

Statistically speaking, Edwards has been flat for almost a year, whereas Obama has been rising steadily. Clinton also (interestingly) has a modest surge... but is falling in Florida and California.

I, for one, am curious to see how this pans out...

--
http://bexhuff.com
Of COURSE you can trust the US Government! Just ask the Indians.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2008

I'm in line with Gravel, left to right and two notches further down on the libertarian scale.

Shame he doesn't have a prayer.

By all rights, I guess I should vote for him anyway. Ron Paul scored more toward authoritarian thinking than I would have expected.

I did inhale.

OTTAWA — If you're asking Canadians, it doesn't seem to matter much who wins Tuesday's New Hampshire primaries.

A new poll suggests Canadians so massively favour the U.S. Democratic party that they'd back any of its leading candidates in a presidential race against a Republican.

The Harris-Decima survey suggests the Democrats would trounce the Republicans by a four-to-one margin if the voters were Canadian.

U.S. President George W. Bush's Republican party would get creamed even in a hypothetical election in which only Canadian Conservatives voted.

The survey, provided exclusively to The Canadian Press, says 49 per cent of Canadians expressed a preference for Democrats while only 12 per cent did the same for Republicans.

Even self-described Conservatives — who are supposedly more ideologically in tune with the right-leaning Republicans — favoured the Democrats by a 47-23 margin.
More

Edwards is doing a fine job being the bad cop to Obama's good cop. As a long time Dem, I'll be holding my breath today hoping the proverbial nails are put in Clinton's campaign today.

I have heard several speeches in the last six days by all the candidates. I heard all of Obama's Iowa acceptance speech. His words make the hair on the back of my neck go up. No one else does that in quite the way he can. It has been a long time since I remember anyone speak in such a powerful voice. There has been a change, and people are responding to someone who seems to be President.

I've been an ardent Hillary supporter all year, really on a fear basis. Not believing that anyone else can go against the Republican establishment. But that is not true anymore as almost every repub candidate appears to have self imploded or is on their way to that end. And some of the stuff about these guys one just cannot make up, so the dynamic has changed.

I still maintain, and have maintained, that Edwards has a steep hill to climb. For one he was once a DLCer, and seems to jump on things when it is timely. I guess all politicians do, but this idea that he is an anti-DLCer I don't think is founded. I can't get over the fact that Edwards holds no political office. He shares the same fate as Giuliani and Thompson in that regard, and look how they have fared. I will say that Fred Thompson probably woke up last week and went - Shit - when he saw he came in third, which meant he can't quit yet.

Anyway, something has changed in the last two weeks, and I watch a candidate who is growing and morphing into, perhaps, something very very great. And I have not seen it in a long long time.

I find it interesting that Huckabee is the most favorably disposed to Obama, compared to other Republicans who attack him as a liberal. Probably because Huckabee knows that the "people want change" message favors both him and Obama in the primaries...

--
http://bexhuff.com
Of COURSE you can trust the US Government! Just ask the Indians.

How confident are we with our criteria for high public office? On the one hand, I have some yearnings for a citizen legislature -- if you enter the political track in college, start with government service (usually as a lawyer) after graduation, run for local office, then state office, then Congress, after a few terms Senator or Governor, and finally are regarded as having sufficient experience to be a viable Presidential candidate, you've essentially been a politician all your life, with the narrowness that implies. The narrowness can be good if you've been focussed on public policy your whole life and have learned how to work within the system to bring about your goals. Or it can be bad, if you've lived your life in the arms of government and lobbyists and consultants and have developed the "we're leaders, we know better than the electorate who need to be spun to put us back in office" attitude notable in Washington. Notable example of a man who came to politics late is Jimmy Carter, whose efforts on energy independence and human rights-based foreign policy look pretty prescient these days but who didn't have the purely politican instincts to put together the political coalition to make any of it happen.

John Edwards is another man who came to politics late. He entered politics in 1998 when he ran for the Senate, and learned politics on the job. That means he was heavily dependent on advisors. What I've seen is someone who learned very quickly and increasingly made his own decisions. The learning was not instantaneous. His major error was the vote that enabled Bush to invade Iraq. How many colleagues/consultants do you think said, "Here's how you have to vote to avoid committing electoral suicide, especially since you come from a Bush-supporting, military-loving conservative state"?

Given that Edwards was the only candidate to push a poverty agenda in 2004, and given his role in moving the whole Democratic field to the left in 2007, it's hard for me to conclude that Edwards jumps on things when it's timely. Instead, I conclude that we're seeing someone who is not a lifetime politician growing in confidence and ability to advance a public policy agenda with some realistic hope of effectiveness.

I'm looking for a web site where I can enter a term, say "agricultural subsidies" or "outsourcing" and get an across-the-board analysis of what the candidates (regardless of party) stand for.

Is there anything like this?

Would it be a bad idea for some organization should submit written questionnaires for about 100 hot-button issues and elicit written responses from the candidates themselves? No PR flacks allowed.

This business of the press covering what it wants makes an objective analysis very difficult.

these polls mean something, especially at the grain of a couple of percentage points. Big assumption.

n/t

early exit polling leaks from NH look like:

Obama in the 40s%
Hillary in the 20s%
Edwards in the 10s%

with all independents cutting to Obama. So Obama wins two in a row. And Hillary and Edwards get sloppy seconds and thirds. Going into South Carolina it is again looking like Obama-Hillary-Edwards.

And no chance of an Obama-Edwards ticket. That has already played out, and Edwards was not a team player with Kerry in 2004, so a repeat is not likely in the cards.

But who would Obama pick?? (AND can we move off pining after Edwards for a little while. I feel like this site is missing a real sea change in these early caucus/primaries).