Focusing the Outrage

If you've read my posts you know I'm no fan of Barack Obama, and that I have a distinct tendency to display copious amounts of Righteous Indignation. There's a reason for that, but there is always a danger in creating outrage fatigue, so today I'm going to try to help put it all into perspective.

Yes, there is indeed a method in my ranting. If you read down to the end of my entry about Obama's purge of anti-war delegates in California, the answer lies there.

Fortunately, this latest outrage by the Obama campaign has a somewhat happy ending; all of the delegates purged from California's bloc seem to have been reinstated.

The people who got good and ticked off about this sorry spectacle didn't just complain about what had happened to them, allowing resentment and disillusionment to fester; they allowed their anger to motivate them to do something about their situation. Overnight, the Obama campaign offices in California were flooded with e-mails and messages undoubtedly left on voice mail, demanding that the delegates be reinstated or a reasonable explanation given for why they were removed.

In the end, having no explanation for the purge anyone would buy, the Obama campaign had no choice but to reinstate the delegates. This is but one example of how righteous anger served to motivate people to apply the needed pressure on a politician to do the right thing. Another for consideration is the defeat of Maryland Representative Al Wynn by Democratic primary challenger Donna Edwards. His defeat sent a signal to one of the most stubborn Bush Dogs in the House, Iowa's Leonard Boswell (and, by extension, all the so-called 'Blue Dogs'): get with the program, or you're next.

Boswell, facing his own primary challenge from Ed Fallon, belatedly signed on to efforts by fellow Democrat Robert Wexler to begin the impeachment process against the shrub and his gargoyle. It is in response to voter anger, taken out at the polling locations, that got Boswell to pay attention to what his constituents are demanding. Does anyone think an otherwise loyal Bush Dog would have changed his tune on impeachment if he hadn't seen how strong voter resentment is, if the people hadn't risen up and voted a bum out?

Finally, I give you this article from Black Agenda Report as proof of how Righteous Indignation served to get Barack Obama to reinstate his anti-war speech on his campaign web site in 2003.

After calls to Obama's campaign office yielded no satisfactory answers, we published an article in the June 5, 2003 issue of Black Commentator effectively calling Barack Obama out. We drew attention to the disappearance of any indication that U.S. Senate candidate Obama opposed the Iraq war at all from his web site and public statements. We noted with consternation that the Democratic Leadership Council, the right wing Trojan Horse inside the Democratic party, had apparently vetted and approved Obama, naming him as one of its "100 to Watch" that season. This is what real journalists are supposed to do --- fact check candidates, investigate the facts, tell the truth to audiences and hold the little clay feet of politicians and corporations to the fire.

Facing the possible erosion of his base among progressive Democrats in Illinois, Obama contacted us. We printed his response in Black Commentator's June 19 issue and queried the candidate on three "bright line" issues that clearly distinguish between corporate-funded DLC Democrats and authentic progressives. We concluded the dialog by printing Obama's response on June 26, 2003. For the convenience of our readers in 2007, all three of these articles can be found here.

The lesson to be learned here is that outrage, used as a motivator for action, works. If Barack Obama can be made to do as the Progressive Movement dictates, so too can Hillary Clinton, and so therefore can Congress. As Mickey Z. of Smirking Chimp points out:

How about some good old-fashioned anger, rage, and passion? (Che sez: "If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.") Let's forget hope and aim for vision, clarity, strategy, courage, and finally: some goddamned results. "Creativity comes from trust," sez Rita Mae Brown. "Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work" (as they say in South Florida: bingo).

So whenever you see a report about politicians preaching change but preserving the status quo behaving badly, don't get discouraged, don't get disillusioned, and above all, don't give up. Yes, get angry. Get good and outraged. Let that serve as your motivation to get up and do something about the evils visited upon us all by a corrupt system, force those we pay with our tax dollars to work for us.

If Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or Barack Obama say or do something fundamentally stupid on the campaign trail, get a hold of your media outlets and demand that they report it. Flood their offices with telephone calls, e-mails, and letters, until they pull their heads out of their asses. If your representatives in Congress, in both the House and the Senate, pass bad legislation or look as though they're going to, do likewise. Better yet, in addition to that, gather about two or three dozen of your closest friends -- the ones willing to get beaten up, tazered, sent to jail -- and march on down to their offices and stage a sit-in. Don't let yourselves be corralled into "safe", out of the way "free speech zones". Free speech doesn't need zones, places kept well out of sight and earshot of the powerful. Get up in their faces and make them pay attention to you, make them do as they're told. Remember, these people work for you -- NOT the other way around. And if all that doesn't get them to pull their heads out of their asses, you can always pull together and get them voted out.

While we're on the subject, there's no reason why we cannot apply similar tactics to the corporate media. Remember, these whores only report what is in their bosses' best interests to report. Unless we make the punditry report the truth, and on a regular basis, how is the rest of the nation to know what's going on? So yeah, send out those e-mails and telephone calls. Put those postal delivery workers on a good weight-lifting routine with those bags they carry.

Do these things on a regular basis, and there may yet be cause for optimism about our country's future. Let your outrage be focused like a laser beam, and aim it squarely where it needs to be.

It's called Karma.

Reading this MyDD analysis of Obama's rhetorical flub about rural Pennsylvania voters, which would be 100% excellent if not for the writer's insane devotion to ignoring the apostrophe whenever trying to condense 'it is' -- which is a shame because otherwise the piece seems well written (for that it's earned a mere 99% for its grammatical apathy), I couldn't help but feel that the senator supposedly representing Illinois is facing a bit of Karmic justice.

People have a right to be angry that their religion and their values have been manipulated time and again to cover for a corrupt and inefficient Republican party. They also have a right to be angry that when a politician actually acknowledges that people are being played, McCain completely ignores the context of the statement itself and goes for the easy attack. Its much easier to brand someone "elitist" and walk away without addressing the actual issues they brought up. Since yesterday "elitist" seems to have become the new insult du jour. Why address the meat of the issue when you can shellac a questionable persona on someone, regardless of its truth, and just discount the individual along with their words entirely out of hand?

The writer happens to mention Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, in the following paragraph. Hence my feeling of Karmic justice contained within what's happening to the senator. For did not Barack Obama walk away from Wright's message about what America has done to the world and to its minority members, having dismissed it all as the ramblings of a bitter old Black man? As pointed out by The Progressive's Kevin Alexander Gray:

[W]hile Obama gets points for not tossing his church pastor under the bus, he loses points for running away from the critique of American empire-building and oppression that his pastor offered.

Obama fobbed off his preacher’s entire sermon as an expression of the “anger and bitterness” of an older generation of black men.

What Obama refused to say was that Wright made some solid points: about the genocide of the Native Americans, the immorality of dropping atom bombs on Japanese civilians in World II, the killing of millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, and the deaths so far of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

So now Barack Obama is paying the price, courtesy of a higher plane of justice than anything we mortals care to provide on our own initiative, for his blithe dismissal of what Jeremiah Wright was trying to explain to his congregation. Just as Obama so flippantly zeroed in on his former pastor's delivery, ignoring the legitimate message of America's darker side, so too are the media, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and worst of all the voters, now focusing their anger and contempt on his choice of words.

I imagine that somewhere Mr. Wright is chuckling to himself at how what goes around, comes around.

What exactly was behind Obama's California delegate purge?

Stop me if you've heard this one. Yesterday MyDD reported that the Obama campaign had wiped over nine hundred delegates in California from its list of chosen representatives for the national convention in August. Ostensibly, this was done to ensure only Obama loyalists would represent the senator from Illinois at the Democratic National Convention. No big deal, right? After all, Hillary Clinton's campaign did a similar purge.

The problem is this: while Clinton trimmed only fifty or so delegates, down from an initial 950, Obama wiped roughly half of 1,700. Furthermore, whereas Clinton appears to have carefully screened the delegates to be excluded, Obama's purge list appeared random -- activists with solid credentials and who worked tirelessly to campaign for their candidate were eliminated, while those who did little or nothing got to stay on the list to go to Denver.

But here's where things get more ominous. As MyDD points out, Obama campaigner Marcy Winograd -- a woman with more than a few political credentials to her own name -- seems to think the main targets were anti-war progressives.

By dusk on Wednesday, the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists. Names of candidates, people who had filed to run to represent Obama at the August Democratic Party National Convention, disappeared, not one by one, but hundreds at a time, from the Party web site listing the eligibles. The list of Obama delegate hopefuls in one northern California congressional district went from a robust 100 to an anemic 23, while in southern California, the list in Congressman Waxman's district almost slipped out of sight, plunging from a high of 91 candidates to 17. Gone were strong women with independent political bases.

And the Huffington Post's Nathaniel Bach wrote:

After completing the application process and finding my name on the official list of registered candidates, I received an email from the California Democratic Party today (Wednesday) at 4:48 p.m. informing me that the final approved lists of delegate candidates had been posted and that I should check the website. (I assume the same email went out to all the delegate candidates.) I clicked over to the website and found that, lo and behold, what had been a list of 90 candidates had been eviscerated down to only 17, and that my name was gone. I immediately checked the Obama candidate list for the 33rd District, where a friend and fellow Obama die-hard was also running for a delegate spot. His name was gone, too, and a list that formerly contained 83 names was down to a mere 20.

The ostensible rationale for the cutting of delegate candidates is to prevent "Trojan horse" delegates from making their way to the Convention floor and then switching allegiances. The vetting and removal of delegate candidates is expressly allowed by party rules. But could the 30th District really have had 73 such turncoats, and was I really one of them? I was a Precinct Captain for the Obama campaign for the California primary; I've donated several hundred dollars to Senator Obama's campaign (the first politician I've ever supported financially); and I've boosted the campaign in numerous posts on this website...

It's hard not to be cynical. Remaining on the list of approved candidates is the slate of candidates (longtime campaign volunteers) that the Obama campaign has officially endorsed, as well as several names recognizable from local politics. These delegate candidates aren't to be faulted for being longtime political activists, but the cynic in me wonders why those names remained while the "nobodies" on the list disappeared. The Obama campaign owes those of us who were cut a fuller explanation of the decision process.

MyDD's 'campskunk' clearly believes that this is not accidental, that the Obama campaign wants "people who will go to the convention and vote for Obama, no matter what. It's not about the issues, it's about the candidate. If these delegates have strong dedication to particular causes they might be persuadable, so none of those types are allowed."

But the purge of California delegates, and the fear that anti-war activists among those sent to represent Obama in Denver come August might defect, may run even deeper than anyone suspects. According to the New York Sun, Obama's phony anti-occupation position stands a good chance of being exposed for the sham it is.

A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security*. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”

Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq. A shorter and less detailed version of this paper appeared on the center’s Web site as a policy brief.

If this is true, if Obama plans to back off from any and all public pledges to withdraw from the quagmire in Iraq by the end of his first term (assuming he gets a first term), then this cynical lack of faith in his own supporters exposes a far more serious crisis. The senator from Illinois, in spite of his alleged initial opposition to the invasion of Iraq, really does support the policy of American imperialism. And if he's worried enough about his true position becoming widely known that it has driven him to purge half his California delegates -- thus making the prospect of a brokered convention likelier, what does that say about the worth assigned to the anti-war movement by the Democratic Party? Not much, apparently.

Fortunately, this latest outrage by the Obama campaign has a somewhat happy ending; all of the delegates purged from California's bloc seem to have been reinstated. But if Obama thought these devoted supporters might have harbored plans to defect to Hillary Clinton's camp, he may have pushed his fear one step closer to realization.

*: Is it me, or does this organization's name sound ominously similar to Project for the New American Century?

Obama had better pull his head out of his posterior.

According to MSNBC, McCain has erased Obama's ten point lead over him. If the senator from Illinois doesn't start running like a Democrat, and stop acting like a fucking Republican, he's going to find himself making one hell of a concession speech come November. And that shall be bad in far more ways than one.

If Obama really wanted to win this thing, he could have distinguished himself by running to the left of Hillary Clinton -- not to the right of her. His failure to seal the deal, combined with his Republican-style attacks (not that Mrs. Clinton is innocent of following suit) and condescending dismissals of the challenges faced by minorities, indicates that he is fully prepared to blow it come November. Consider this: Recent polls show that Ralph Nader may actually get up to five percent of the vote in November, and that a sizable number of Clinton supporters are likely to vote for McCain -- twenty-eight percent, in fact.

That is how things stand at this point. Can you imagine what shall happen if a bruised and battered Obama comes out of the Democratic National Convention, having alienated upwards of 33% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, and with the media attacking him at every turn having smelled blood in the water? Imagine that pathetic creature going up against McCain. We cannot allow overconfidence to cost us this time. There really is far too much at stake.

What Romney's departure means for the general election.

With Mitt Romney now out of the Republican race for president, John McCain is much, much closer to locking up his political party's nomination. What does this mean for Democrats? Bad news, and here's why:

McCain now has less to worry about going into November. Mike Huckabee might yet pose a serious challenge, since he has the backing of the religious far right. But this assumes that Huckabee manages to win most states in the remaining primaries and caucuses. And there's no reason to think this shall be the case. The most likely scenario is that McCain continues to do well, and there will be no brokered Republican National Convention.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are essentially tied for delegates, both are likely to go to the Democratic National Convention to settle who shall be the party's nominee for president. Obama has a slight advantage of money; Clinton has had to lend her campaign money from out of pocket, and have her paid staff go without their salaries for a while. But since Super Tuesday, both Clinton and Obama have managed to raise roughly equal amounts of campaign money.

As reported by DHinMI, Howard Dean is trying to get the two prima donna candidates to make some sort of deal to avoid a brokered convention. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee knows why a brokered convention would be bad for the party; while McCain uses the time between now and his party's convention to shore up support, raise money, and form a general election campaign strategy against the Democratic nominee, we'll still be fighting the nominating process out until August. That means whoever the nominee is shall go into the general election exhausted from a drawn out primary fight, and having expended much of his or her financial resources.

So the advantage clearly goes to McCain, if Clinton and Obama insist on staying in competition for the Democratic nomination until convention. And this is where Dean's attempt to make the two prima donnas reach some sort of deal shall fail. Because their egos are so huge, neither Clinton or Obama is willing to accept second fiddle status as vice president. And the fierceness of the campaign so far has taken a publicly visible toll; at the shrub's last SotU liefest, Obama gave Clinton the cold shoulder as she moved to shake hands with Senator Edward Kennedy -- who endorsed her rival. Obama's latest 'Harry and Louise'-style attacks on Clinton's health care plan (which is pissing off a lot of progressives, including economist Paul Krugman), strengthens the likelihood that there will be no Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket.

So while many are cheering Romney's departure from the Republican race, it also presents a serious problem for Democrats. The opposition now has less of a reason to worry about its chances in November, while we have plenty to worry about. Howard Dean's attempts to get the prima donnas to shelve their differences and reach some kind of deal are a public acknowledgment of this problem.

Which makes it all the more sad that John Edwards and not Clinton or Obama was the one to call it quits. Had he won enough early states to be the likely nominee, all this would have been settled and we would be able to stand a chance in November. But now, with Obama and Clinton duking it out until convention, we have once again shot ourselves in the foot by sticking our party with a fundamentally weak candidate going into the general election. The Democratic Party, as usual, has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And that is bad for all of America.

Even Dowd saw through Clinton's crocodile tears.

When Maureen Dowd -- the New York Times' resident über-feminist -- sees through Hillary Clinton's act, that is saying something that ought not to be casually dismissed. In her newest column, Dowd speculates that Clinton might win the nomination by playing the female victim card, as she did in New Hampshire. Now, before I continue, I should point out that I don't care much for Maureen Dowd. She is the NYT's version of MSNBC's Chris Matthews, practicing what I call the schoolgirl characterization brand of political analysis. That is to say, she's all about the shallow, superficial aspects of politics -- chattering on about haircuts and masculinity and clothes, rather than the actual substance of policy positions. But today she was in fine form. She points out:

She won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man. She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man. She was seen as so controlling when she ran for the Senate that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did during the Monica scandal, before she seemed soft enough to attract many New York voters.

Getting brushed back by Barack Obama in Iowa, her emotional moment here in a cafe and her chagrin at a debate question suggesting she was not likable served the same purpose, making her more appealing, especially to women, particularly to women over 45.

Clinton's act the other day was a cynical act of political calculation, one that has served her well. It allowed her to do two things going in the wake of Iowa: gain voter sympathy as the beat-up girl in the campaign; and have cover for her attack on Obama over national security, a page pulled straight from Karl Rove's playbook.

Gordon Brown comes in, the very next day, there are terrorist attacks. Thankfully, they were unsuccessful, from London to Scotland. So, you've got to be prepared on day one with everything ready to go.

It was, as I stated, a cynical calculation. And fundamentally dishonest. For what incoming executives -- other than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney -- would not have a transition team in place long before election day to prepare for upcoming eventualities, both real and potential? Had Clinton not pretended to lose control of her emotions when she did, her attack would not have worked and Obama might have prevailed -- albeit by a narrower margin than he did in Iowa. Instead, the fake tears tipped that statistically marginal balance in Clinton's favor. Never mind that in terms of delegates, Clinton and Obama won an equal number. She knows as well as her chief rival that what matters is how the press reports the results, not how the statistics break down.

I've never believed, as some have suggested, that Hillary Clinton has no emotions. I do believe she has much better control over them than most lay people, by simple virtue of her trade. She knows when and how to display emotion, and use it to her advantage. There is never a time when Clinton is truly out of control. Consider this bit of condescending whining: "I just don’t want to see us fall backwards...some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not." Put the selfish, teary-eyed whining and the Rovian attack together, and Clinton's political calculations become evident. Her phony breakdown became the thing that salvaged her presidential campaign.

This is not to say that Clinton's near-breakdown didn't have a hint of genuine emotion; after running for months on a sense of entitlement to the presidency, the former president's wife had clearly come to believe the hype over her perceived inevitability. As she saw her hopes of becoming president dashed, she honestly felt as though she was being robbed a second time.

[T]here was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.

As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” “Here we go again, the old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than any acid.”

The Clintons once more wriggled out of a tight spot at the last minute. Bill churlishly dismissed the Obama phenom as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” but for the last few days, it was Hillary who seemed in danger of being Cinderella. She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite. All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?

Kudos to Dowd for being smart enough to see through Hillary Clinton's whiny victim act. The question now is, will the rest of America?

So Iowans have learned nothing from 2004.

It's sad, really. Rather than vote for a progressive candidate, someone who represents the increasingly progressive majority of this country, Iowans chose to go for a Democrat who is all style and no substance, and a wacko fundie Republican who by comparison makes Pat Robertson on his most batshit insane days look normal. For the Democratic caucus, here's how the final numbers broke down.

Senator Barack Obama : 37.58%
Senator John Edwards : 29.75%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 29.47%
Governor Bill Richardson : 2.11%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.93%
Uncommitted : 0.14%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.02%

Precincts Reporting: 1781 of 1781
(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)

John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were a virtual tie for second place, with Edwards maintaining the slightest edge. Everyone else got just over two percent of the vote or less. A lot less. But what does this say about the sorry state of the Democratic Party, that a guy who ran -- if such a thing could have been considered possible until now -- to the right of Hillary Clinton won an early state caucus? Hillary Clinton, the de facto leader of the conservative DLC wing of the party.

It seems that Iowa Democrats learned nothing from 2004. Four years ago Howard Dean ran a grassroots campaign that rivaled that of Ohio's U.S. Representative, Dennis Kucinich. He was even handed unearned front-runner status going into the Iowa caucus. But the state Democratic Party decided it wanted a candidate -- John Kerry of Massachusetts -- whose record was at best weak and whose entire campaign ended up being a pitiful exercise in weakness against a Republican incumbent who, by any reasonable account, should have been eminently beatable. Last night, Iowan Democrats did it again.

What was really sad was that Dennis Kucinich instructed his supporters in Iowa to go with Obama as their choice if he failed to get 15% of the vote. Four years ago, he threw his Iowa supporters to Edwards. I really wish he'd done likewise this year, because Edwards is far more qualified for the presidency than Obama. On the flip side, Republican Mike Huckabee handily won his party's caucus in Iowa. The Washington Post breaks down the percentage points thusly:

Mike Huckabee: 34%
Mitt Romney: 24%
Fred Thompson: 13%
John McCain: 13% (Just a few hundred votes behind Thompson, another virtual tie.)
Ron Paul: 10%
Rudy Giuliani: 3%
Duncan Hunter: 0% (At 515 votes.)
Tom Tancredo: 0% (At a laughable five votes.)

So Iowa Republicans, then, want a bugfuck insane wacko religious fundamentalist in the nation's highest executive office. Wonderful. Giuliani apparently wrote off Iowa -- and New Hampshire, too -- hoping to win Florida, South Carolina, and other must-win states. It's a losing strategy, of course, by a doomed candidate who found himself exposed for the monster he truly is too early in the campaign. That's what you get, Giuliani, for thinking you could run for dictator without anyone finding out what was in your political closet. So say goodbye to the former mayor of New York's campaign.

If Iowa is an early indicator of which candidates we'll end up with running for president, then this country is fucked. Let's just hope New Hampshire gives the win to Edwards.

EDIT @ 10:36 AM EST: Michael Moore had these things to say going into the Iowa Caucus, and after the state had been called for Obama and Huckabee.

January 2, 2008

Barack Obama is a good and inspiring man. What a breath of fresh air! There's no doubting his sincerity or his commitment to trying to straighten things out in this country. But who is he? I mean, other than a guy who gives a great speech? How much do any of us really know about him? I know he was against the war. How do I know that? He gave a speech before the war started. But since he joined the senate, he has voted for the funds for the war, while at the same time saying we should get out. He says he's for the little guy, but then he votes for a corporate-backed bill to make it harder for the little guy to file a class action suit when his kid swallows lead paint from a Chinese-made toy. In fact, Obama doesn't think Wall Street is a bad place. He wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan -- the same companies who have created the mess in the first place. He's such a feel-good kinda guy, I get the sense that, if elected, the Republicans will eat him for breakfast. He won't even have time to make a good speech about it.

January 3, 2008 (After Iowa was called for Obama.)

The Republicans won't go down without a fight. Look what happened when Kerry tried to play nice. So Barack, you can talk all you want about "let's put the partisanship aside, let's all get along," but the other side has no intention of being anything but the bullies they are. Get your game face on now. And, if you can, tell me why you are now the second largest recipient of health industry payola after Hillary. You now take more money from the people committed to stopping universal health care than any of the Republican candidates.

Who won Iowa?

As I type this, it's far too early to tell which candidate in either political party has come out on top place in Iowa. Huckabee and Romney -- two religious extremists -- are competing for first place on the GOP side. Giuliani, apparently, isn't even being discussed as a potential third place finish. On the Democrat side it still appears to be a toss-up between Edwards, Obama and Clinton. I'll update this entry as I learn more. I'm watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC right now.

UPDATE #1: It's still too early to say definitively, but John Edwards appears to be ahead in Iowa on the Democrat side. For that political party's candidates, here is how the early results break down.

(Source: Iowa Democratic Party)

Senator John Edwards : 33.70%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 32.06%
Senator Barack Obama : 31.36%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.90%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.84%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.08%
Uncommitted : 0.06%
Precincts Reporting: 313 of 1781

(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)

I must stress again, these are early results. They do not necessarily reflect what the final tally shall be. The results page refreshes, apparently every thirty seconds or so. Countdown is reporting Obama ahead, however. My best guess as to the final winner? Fuck, I'm not even gonna bother.

UPDATE #2: Huckabee has won the Republican caucus in Iowa, according to MSNBC. On the Democrat side, here are the latest results.

Senator Barack Obama : 34.38%
Senator John Edwards : 31.61%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 31.19%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.73%
Senator Joe Biden : 1.01%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.04%
Uncommitted : 0.03%
Precincts Reporting: 978 of 1781

(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)

Obama has pulled ahead, with Edwards and Billary W. Clinton closely tied for #2.

UPDATE #3: 1,108 of 1,781 precincts have reported in. Obama still maintains the clear lead. Edwards is slowly beginning to catch up, however, as the final results come closer to fruition. Edwards has widened his slight lead against Clinton.

UPDATE #4: 1,230 of 1,781 precincts have reported in. Obama leads still, 34.96% to John Edwards' 31.16%.

UPDATE #5: MSNBC has called Iowa for Obama, but I'm going to hold off until all precincts have reported in.

UPDATE #6: Obama has won Iowa, the final set of results is almost in. But this is interesting. As of this update, Clinton is losing ground to Bill Richardson -- while Edwards maintains his second place status. Obama has 36.86%, Edwards 30.15%, Clinton 29.84%, and Richardson up to 2.10%.

UPDATE #7: Note to Billary W. Clinton; when you just got your ass kicked in Iowa, it helps if you don't mention in your concession speech about Democrats having a nominee who can go the distance in the general election. Because that nominee isn't gonna be you.

FINAL UPDATE OF THE EVENING, 10:32 P.M. EST: I'm off to bed, the tedium of watching Clinton flail about trying to muster support among her disheartened followers has my tired ass needing to get some rest. Here are the results as I type.

Senator Barack Obama : 37.53%
Senator John Edwards : 29.86%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 29.41%
Governor Bill Richardson : 2.10%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.94%
Uncommitted : 0.13%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.02%
Precincts Reporting: 1720 of 1781

(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)