My thinking is that people who are Edwards supporters are SOLID Edwards supporters - much like people who were supporting Dean. Difference is - there are a lot more Edwards supporters in Iowa than there were Deaniacs. On the Hillary front - I see her early adopters as a little bit more “inside baseball” types. These are people who have interacted with her as part of the Clinton machine from the 90’s. She is a talented politician, though, but it remains to be seen whether she can make the broad based appeal to the rank & file.

To be honest - I think that Vilsack is really a wild card in the Iowa Caucus. Edwards has a ton of early support and Hillary will run tough. I think that Vilsack peels off enough traditional activists statewide because he’s the “local guy” to make it a real toss-up in the end. Then …. you have Obama.

Should be a good time!

IMHO to ignore Kucinich is to ignore the message of the 2006 election. Less than one year ago some (actually many) were saying the same about Congressperson Loebsack; “he will never be able to defeat Leach, the best he can do is loose by less than 10%”

And “moi,” I don’t think Kucinich is worth discounting, except that at the moment he isn’t drawing any support that he didn’t draw last time around. I happen to like Kucinich, and I thought his Iowa stump speech was the smartest stump speech I heard from any of the candidates: off the top of his head, he quoted the bible, Joyce, and I believe Tenison. I also think he’s good at keeping our party honest and, to whatever extent possible, consistent with our liberal views in general.

But I don’t think Kucinich’s message connects with voters as much as you think, and I don’t think America voted Democrat in the last election because they liked Kucinich. You could make a case that they ended up liking what John Kerry was saying in the last general, or that they were inspired by a big name like Hillary, Obama, or even Edwards, but Kucinich wasn’t on everyone’s mind when they went into the voting booth. He is ahead of the curve on a lot of issues, but average voters are the ones setting the curve, and you can’t win by always being ahead of them. That said, I like Kucinich where he is, because he keeps us honest.

I do think that this time around there is a difference. Health care (and a general dissatisfaction with insurance companies) and the war in Iraq are in the mind of most voters. Obama opposed the war before he was a senator, but voted to fund the war every time. His “liberal voting record” is worst than Hillary’s. Obama voted for the Patriot Act, and for the 600 Miles Fence along the southern border. Obama is no progressive, he is a very “soft” liberal.

In January Bush will announce some kind of increase on troop deployment in Iraq. He will ask the congress for additional money, probably much more than the 160 billion he was saying he would ask only a month ago. By Spring we will know who voted for additional funding of the war and who did not. If by that time Kucinich is the only candidate opposing funding the war, I think that he will be able to get a strong support. Again, as I stated in my previous message, keep in mind that most people did not predict the “sweep” of the last election, much less that somebody like Loebsack could beat a “safe” seat like the one held by Leach.

Check how AP covered Kucinich’s announcement. This is the lead: “Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich launched his second bid for president on Tuesday, a long-shot candidacy fueled by his frustration with his party’s effort to end the Iraq war.” As the pressure from the base to bring the troops back *now* increases, the media will “rediscover” Kucinich, and IMHO it will start calling him the “wild card candidate.”

In the meanwhile, I hope that the Blogsphere will start looking at Dennis beyond the label of “electability.”

John Edwards and Barack Obama would attract the same voters, the voters who want to spend more money on poverty. Maybe they even have the same strategy, winning Southern states by appealing to the large African American consitituency in the Democratic primaries. In 2004, Edwards did very poorly in New Hampshire given that he’d come in 2nd in Iowa and had spent a lot of time in New Hampshire. Nobody ever talks about this but I’m curious: are his 2 youngest children from in vitro fertilization? People ARE going to be curious about that if he is the candidate and its not without controversy.

Notice that you never hear any Republicans mentioning in vitro clinics, calling for them to be shut down, etc. As Ron Reagan said, that’s because it would be a political non-starter.