Friday, January 04, 2008

Huckaee, Obama win Iowa

The night is over and the big winners are Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama. This is a huge win for both of them, as it catapults them - at least for the moment - from underdogs into front-runners. Next up is New Hampshire, where it is still anyone's game.

My own prediction is that Huckabee loses New Hampshire, now that the Religious Right has made their statement, but that Obama probably will take it for the Democratic side. The question of the night will be "Can Hillary remain in the race after two major losses?" The answer will be yes.

What do our Mod-Blog readers think? Did the right men win? Or did short-term thinking make Iowans choose wrongly?

1 comment:

Sean said...

It was interesting as I watched the speeches at the end of the night. Huckabee, Romney and Obama were all upbeat and still running as if they would win. Clinton on the other hand sounded almost as if she had given up. Rather than saying that she would still be the winner despite this setback, she said that "a democrat" would be in the White House at the end of this presidential cycle. Now, that could be her, but wouldn't it be more effective to say "I" or "We" rather than the nondescript "a democrat". It seems like even she doesn't believe herself to be the inevitable winner - and that's a really bad thing when most of your strategy up to this point has been based on inevitability.

I think that Huckabee is a one trick pony. He may win a few of the very conservative states in the middle of the country, but when states start turning shades of blue (even blue/red) he's going to have a rough time.

I think that this victory helps Obama the most as it shows that he has momentum, a perception that is necessary as it seems most democrats favor whoever is most popular at the moment. I think that this also shows that a lot of democrats want to move forward rather than back to the '90s. Hopefully he keeps winning states and eliminates Clinton on Super Tuesday. That would be a great birthday present for me :P