Going to be a little mean here, but… as I mentioned in my pre-Iowa comments, and felt even more strongly now, I think Hillary will not get the Democratic nomination. I now further predict that within 12 months of her officially admitting defeat she will no longer be married to Bill Clinton. I think she will know that she won’t be trying this again in 4 or 8 years, and she won’t need him any more as a Senator. And she will be very bitter. And so the two of them will go their separate ways.

Nobody gives a speech like this man. He is going to be unstoppable.

OK, forget about who I prefer… time for going out on a limb and making predictions… predictions which could very well be made close to impossible as soon as tomorrow depending on how Iowa comes out, let alone New Hampshire a few days later. I will of course adjust predictions if what I predict today becomes unlikely due to events as they play out… but as of right now, before Iowa and before the first votes, here would be my best guesses… but frankly, with so much in the air right now, and with so much in play… anything can still happen. These are my predictions, but I can’t say I’d put down too much cash wagering on it… things are just too unsettled.

Anyway…

Republicans. I think Huckabee will peak and then start dropping. The evangelicals have his back, and he does have some general appeal, but I think the other parts of the Republican coalition will ultimately be too uncomfortable with him and I don’t think the religious wing has enough strength to nominate him on their own. Giuliani is self-destructing, and the more people find out about him, the less they like him… and despite some of his super right wing tendencies in some areas, in others he is far too liberal for most of the party. Romney is losing momentum in the two early states where he is strong. We will of course see how that plays out in the next few days. But if he doesn’t win both of them, I think he will sputter out soon after. Absent a major surprise, I think Thompson will probably be out of the race before too much longer. Before he got in it was all about what he might be. Once he got in in was more about “Oh, is that all there is?”. I think he is done. With the strength of his internet support, Paul will stay in it the whole way I think (unless he bails to officially go 3rd party). But within the Republican world I don’t think he’ll ever manage to break the 15% barrier. Maybe not even the 10% barrier, although that might be possible as some of the others drop out. I do think he will out perform expectations though (perhaps even mine) due to the sheer determination of his supporters to get out the vote and keep on plugging. They are a stubborn bunch. But who does that leave? Unless we get the brokered convention scenario and someone coming into play that isn’t even running, that leaves McCain. He had been consistantly losing support for the last year. But he has leveled out nationally, and has actually been regaining strength rapidly in both Iowa and New Hampshire in the last month or so. I think this is a show of the Republican candidates slowly ruling out everybody else on one point or another. McCain is a shadow of his former self from 4 years ago. And he also has problems which make many Republicans uncomfortable. And I don’t think he’d be a strong candidate in the general election. But I think he is the one candidate that a majority of Republicans will end up being able to say “Well, he’s not great, but he’s OK, he’ll do.” And, in true Republican fashion, it is “his turn”. I think we’ll see slow and steady McCain slowly grab the support from the others. If he is lucky he will come in 3rd in Iowa. And he has a real shot at winning New Hampshire. If he does that, he will be on the road to consolidating an overall win. I think in the end he will pull it out. But it will be a weakened and divided Republican party that he presides over.

Now the Democrats. Nationally Hillary is still way ahead in polls by a large margin. (45% to Obama’s 26%.) If she actually manages to win both Iowa and New Hampshire, she will walk away with the rest and be the “inevitable” nominee so many people have thought she has been all along. But her weakness is indeed those first two states. If she loses both of them, she will be in real trouble. She might be able to make it up. She still has very strong leads in all other state polls I have seen. But she has lost some momentum in South Carolina and may be weak there too. If Iowa and New Hampshire fall, her leads elsewhere may start evaporating quickly… or she may manage to hold them, although it would be difficult. But these two states are critical. And I do not think she will be able to hold them. I think in Iowa the “second choice” votes for the under 15% folks will fall toward Obama and not Hillary or Edwards. Edwards is surging in Iowa and he may be able to pull off a surprise win, but I think Iowa is going to go for Obama. (Of course, as I said above, this is a hunch, the actual evidence of polls and such just gives a big fat “it could be any of them”.) If this happens, or, I think, even if Obama just comes in “close”, it will boost him to a win in New Hampshire. He has been rising there for three months while Clinton has been falling. It is now neck and neck. Anything other than a solid win for Hillary in Iowa will show Obama is viable and electable and all of that, and I think push him over the edge to a win in New Hampshire. In that scenerio I see Obama rapidly narrowing the gap in South Carolina and winning that, and then proceeding to build momentum, eventually taking the nomination.

Right after Obama’s 2004 convention speech, I sent this email to a couple of friends:

Subject: Obama
Date: 28 July 2004 14:43:38 GMT+00:00

Missed it last night, but just watched Obama’s convention speech off the C-Span website. He hit it out of the park. Came off VERY well. I liked him a lot. I’ll go out on a limb and say that he WILL be on a presidential ticket (not saying top or bottom) in 2008 or 2012.

I’ll stick by that, and go a bit further now. Yes, predicting today, even though Hillary is still ahead almost everywhere, and nationally by a huge margin, I’d say that Obama will get the Democratic nomination. This time, not in 2012. And he’ll be at the top of the ticket, not the bottom.

And if these come true and it ends up being Obama vs McCain in the general election? Well, first of all there might be some interesting effects if Paul ends up running 3rd party. (As much as I’d like this, if I had to bet right now I’d say he won’t… I think it is clear he does not WANT to… although if his followers make enough of an uproar once he is eliminated from contention on the Republican side, I could see him maybe reluctantly agreeing.) Bloomberg, Dobbs and others are also rumored to be considering it. The right combination of people running might produce interesting things. But frankly, most of the names mentioned as possible 3rd parties would all pull more from the Republican side. And even if a left wing 3rd party candidate entered the fray, I think most people on that side of the spectrum are frightened by the “Nader scenerio” and would stick with the Democratic candidate. (Although I disagree with the contention that Nader and his voters are responsible for the Bush presidency as some folks believe.) So I think pretty much any third party possibility only hurts the Republicans further. And they will already come into this weak I believe.

In terms of both the nomination and the general election though I think it is going to be Obama for more “heart” reasons than “head” reasons.

There is charisma and energy there and the message of hope and unity, etc is compelling. Obama represents a turn to the future and away from the past. It would be a generational shift that would push beyond the old conflicts of the last century. (This would be especially clear if it did end up being Obama vs McCain.) He represents the best of the “American Dream” of yore. The story of his family and his life is inspiring. His energy is contagious. Seeing him speak just makes one catch that optimism and want to follow him. I don’t remember a candidate like him since I have been old enough to be following presidential races closely. Historically he has the vibe of a JFK… or perhaps actually even more so he reflects the way in which I have heard people describe their feelings about RFK before his run for president was cut short.

This is relevant, so for the first time ever I’ll do the embedded YouTube thing here on this blog…

Yes, most of that is from his four year old convention speech, but this does get to the heart of it… This is powerful moving stuff. It is a good message. It will appeal to a lot of people. Will it convince hardcore Republicans to vote Democratic? No. They will mock this sort of thing, not be drawn to it. But it will rally the Democratic base, and it will bring in moderates and independents. And that is what it will take to win. Obama has the charisma and appeal to bring it together and to win this thing. (Absent of course any currently unknown revelations that would damage him later on.) The type of compelling oratory and vision that Obama has is well fitted to the types of media campaigns of today. There may or may not be substance behind it. But you don’t need substance to win. You need to inspire people and make them like you and make them think you are a good person who they can trust to do a good job… even if they may disagree with you on some things. Obama will be able to do that quite nicely. And with a good VP pick to balance out the “experience” criticisms… my guy Biden maybe… he would be very solid. Not saying that it still wouldn’t be a race. I’m not willing to predict a landslide. 2008 may not end up being as close as 2000 or 2004, but it probably still will be somewhat close. But I think Obama would win.

So there we go. My prediction is Obama vs McCain (and maybe one or 2 third party candidates) in the general election, with Obama winning it in the end.

Now, of course that is saying nothing about how I think an Obama administration would actually GOVERN, because being President is a very different thing than running for President… but I think he has what he takes to win. And I think he will.

Of course, as I said at the top, making any predictions this early is foolhardy, and things are so incredibly unsettled that really ANYTHING can still happen… but these are my predictions as of right now.

Of course, if Obama fails to win either Iowa or New Hampshire, and Hillary does… or McCain fails to show decently in both Iowa and New Hampshire… and we’ll of course know all of that very shortly… then everything I said goes out the window completely.

But hey, I thought I’d give it a shot. Worst case, I’m completely wrong. And that happens all the time, so I’m not too worried about it. :-)

Too close to call in both parties with less than 24 hours until the first results start coming out of Iowa. This is so very exciting. I’ll be rushing home from work as soon as my last meeting ends to spend the entire evening watching news coverage. This stuff is great!

Things to watch for besides the obvious “Who wins?”:

• Do the top three Dems essentially tie like current polls show, with one squeaking out a narrow victory? Or does someone manage to get enough of those “second choice” votes from the lower tier candidates to get a clear win?
• Who gets third place on the Republican side?

In any case, the results of this will define the shape of the race… for at least the next few DAYS until New Hampshire, at which time it may completely change again.

This is great. Here’s hoping for a long primary season where the ultimate nominee isn’t known for as long as possible and every state is a close race in both parties! :-)

In the days after the beginning of the current gulf war (before the days of this blog) I remember talking to several friends via email about the radical difference in the coverage of the war on the mainstream US news networks and what one was being shown and reported in the rest of the world, specifically in middle eastern news outlets. Because of the internet it was now possible to find and see some of that coverage. Due to language barriers the TEXT was often not easily accessible, but one thing that stood out immediately was the PICTURES. The US versions were cropped, sanitized and heavily censored. Usually not by any governmental authoority or anything, this was self-censorship by the major media outlets. You would look at some middle Eastern news site covering the results of some bombing and you would see blood and gore and mangled body parts and pictures that were often downright horrific. Horrific, but obviously reality. On CNN or the like you would see a close up of someone crying or whatnot, but you would rarely see the horror and gore that surrounded them.

I felt that this was dramatically distorting how we viewed this war, and conflicts we were involved in generally. (I felt the same thing by the way on the more explicit pictures of the September 11th aftermath.) The various bombings and casualties inflicted by us might well be justified. And perhaps some of that can be viewed by observing the results of the attacks ON us and balancing them in some way. But one can not make an honest deliberation on that by just looking at “X number were killed today”. Yes, it is a number, it is a measurement, and measurements are important. But they allow one to gloss over the reality of what is actually happening. Actually SEEING it, and seeing it directly, without filters or sanitization, gives one the real picture. It is much easier to say, for instance, that collateral civilian casualties are “unfortunate, but necessary” when it is just a number than when you actually see the remains of the child that was killed with all the mess of reality. Now, it may sometimes actually STILL be truly a necessity for some larger important goal… but if one is to make that judgment, one really needs to do so with one’s eyes wide open, staring that reality straight in the face, rather than hiding from it behind numbers and euphemisms.

Wonkette has been mostly useless and annoying since Ana Marie Cox left, but in the last couple of days Megan Carpenter has taken up this exact topic mentioned above in a “snark free” way, and it brought me right back to those thoughts I had back in 2001 & 2003. Her two recent posts:

• Before and After the Assassination, in Photos
• What They Sort of Showed You

This is of course in the context of the Bhutto assassination and some of the pictures taken there. The first post has a gallery of some of those pictures, unsanitized.

Now, basically mainstream news in the US is almost completely useless at this point. Definitely TV news. Except when big breaking news like this happens the front page of cnn.com for instance is usually filled with meaningless uninportant crap. (I mean, even now with Bhutto still leading the news, above the fold on CNN are stories about the Tiger escape in California, something about a murder/suicide in PA, a freak accident a toddler was involved in and some other random stuff that may be interesting from a fark.com sort of perspective, but which in no way is actually important or informative on larger issues.) Some of the newspapers are still a bit better, but are a shadow of what they were decades ago. It is a shame.

But in any case, they are showing the cleaned up stuff because they can tell you the facts, but not have the sort of image that would potentially make someone upset and change the channel (or decide not to buy the newspaper again the next day, or go to the website, or whatever). And of course because kids might be watching and we want to protect the kids. Yeah, OK, whatever. But it also doesn’t really give the full reality of the situation. Of whatever happened. It doesn’t make you as mad, or as upset, or care as much. It lets you sit back fat dumb and happy, looking at things clinically without understanding or caring about the human reality.

Now, if every day we saw graphic images from the wars we are involved in (or for that matter other wars, or just plain crime scenes in our own cities) would we get completely immune to it and still not care? Maybe. And maybe most people would just decide to look away because they would rather not see the reality. But perhaps also it would just enable us to have a better perception of the reality of situations, and be better able to evaluate the consequences to what we are doing. Because we would take away the soft focus filter and be able to see something a little closer to “truth” (whatever that is).

Of course, there are still issues of such things distorting things in other directions… the horrible thing we have pictures of suddenly being far more vivid and consequential than the horrible thing for which there are no available pictures, or which aren’t even capturable in pictures…

And sometimes seeing the full reality of a situation can just inflame people’s emotions and lead toward further escalations, when perhaps a little careful censorship could keep a lid on things by just keeping people a bit calmer…

So there is no perfect answer.

And hey look, I don’t WANT to look at the extremely graphic pictures of human beings killed or maimed either. It is not pleasant. It is horrifying. But I think when trying to formulate opinions on events, it is IMPORTANT to see that reality ANYWAY. And I think every time the media blurs something out of a picture, or crops it to not show the “disturbing” bits, or chooses not to show anything at all, they are doing a massive disservice… because they are letting their viewers/readers/whatever develop an internal viewpoint on the events that is cleaner and less horrifying than reality… and which therefore is a fundamental misrepresentation of what is happening… and therefore results in opinions and viewpoints… and then actions by decision makers… that are fundamentally divorced from the facts of the situation. And while there may of course be exception cases, and of course nobody can ever have a complete omnicient view of all of the facts and reality of a situation… it seems like willfully excluding a significant part of the reality of a situation from the picture is not the way to produce eduicated viewpoints that can lead toward good decisions on the right course of action.

And you know, no, it is not good enough to just say something was horrible or horrific. That just does not have the same effect as SEEING it. It is important to SEE these things.

Now, in this particular case, the aftermath of the Bhutto assassination, does it fundamentally change or alter my opinion on the events in the region? No. Perhaps not. But does it give me a better and more complete view of what went on? Yes. I think it does. Is it worth it? I think it is.

At least these days with the wealth of sources available on the Internet, one gets to see events like this from many different perspectives, including some more graphic than others. It is no longer the case that if the big media outlets don’t say it or show it that it becomes a lot of work to find alternatives. This is a very good thing.