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I bought jerusalem artichokes at this morning's market. I've never actually eaten them before, and have no clue how they should be prepared: any tips? (Or as my friend said about this morning's market: this is why people are omnivores. There was, admittedly, a pretty wide variety of root vegetables, but oy. I'm running out of Things to Do with
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McCain wrote off Iowa long ago, returning to the state only a few days before the Caucus only because the Des Moines Register endorsed him. By not showing up and still garnering double-digits I think it allows him to be seen as pulling off a victory. It's only a loss if you showed up it seems.
Conversely, Edwards--who campaigned for months on end in Iowa--basically tied the Democratic front-runner for all practical intents and purposes.
The early contests on the Democratic side--in a national perspective--are essentially a referendum on who is going to go head's-up against Hillary. She has the support to survive losses in Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina consecutively, and still duke it out on Super Tuesday, but Edwards doesn't. (see caveat below) Prior to Iowa, he was trailing Hillary by double-digits in NH according to every poll and doing even worse in South Carolina. Every Suffolk/WHDH poll from mid December forward had Edwards unable to garner even half the support (in votes) that Hillary enjoyed. If Edwards had won as decisively as Obama did, then one could expect to see the results being enjoyed by Obama (ie: the 10 point boost in polling numbers seen in NH this morning) who also had more support prior to Iowa and could most likely survive a few more losses and make it to Super Tuesday.
If Edwards was in triage, he'd be handed a compress and told to keep pressure on a wound... he'd be reassured that everything is going to be ok, but as the doc walked away he would be checking his name off the list. Edwards is now the walking dead. He has to finish first in NH to stay competitive against Obama, and that is damn near an impossibility at this point. The only other way he stays alive is if Hillary--who should fire every one of her post-Iowa advisors who have her spouting all of this "I'm more electable in a general election" nonsense--self-destructs (CAVEAT: which is a distinct possibility if she doesn't start speaking about THE ISSUES; no one is voting based on hypotheticals regarding who is more electable in a future election where the Republican field is so divided and frankly weak).
Personally, I'm a little bit miffed about the whole thing, as I had Edwards pulling off the upset with Obama an incredibly close second (half a percentage point maybe) and Hillary a distant third. All the polling data prior to Iowa had Edwards as the leading "second-choice" candidate; I expected more of the Richardson, Kucinich and Biden kids to walk over to the Edwards camp once they didn't get their 15%. I'm still trying to figure out how that did not happen.
What WILL be fascinating--to me at least--is once the primaries are over and the Obama camp or the Iowa organizers release what they did to make that happen. Traditional logic would have stated that they go after the likely caucus goers, but that *appears* to have been what distinguished the Obama campaign in that they didn't write off the "unlikelys" or "not-as-likelys" even pushing for Republicans to show up and caucus for Barack. I'm *guessing* that they threw a hearty amount of effort into bringing out new voters--a REAL effort that is, not some "rock the vote" lip-service rote thing--and that's why this thing turned but if that's the case I want to know whose idea it was, what the discussions were like and how it played out prior to the caucus. That would be an amazing story.
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