Clinton's Embarrassing Iowa Flop

Excellent analysis over at BuzzFlash:


Dave Lindorff: Clinton's Embarrassing Iowa Flop Exposes Key Democratic Leadership Myth
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 01/04/2008 - 1:54pm. Dave Lindorff

The real message of the Iowa caucus yesterday was that the long-operative Clintonian/Democratic Leadership Council assumption that the independent or unaffiliated voter bloc is composed of conservative-leaning, dim-witted, and easily manipulated people has got it all wrong.

In fact, in Iowa, where unaffiliated voters are free to participate in either a Democratic or Republican caucus, 41 percent of those people voted not for the conservative, tough-talking "centrist" Hillary Clinton. They voted instead for the black, nominally anti-war candidate, Barack Obama. Another significant percentage of independents went for another progressive-sounding candidate, John Edwards. Clinton only got an embarrassing 17 percent of the unaffiliated vote.

~SNIP~

Because of the disastrous course of the last seven years under the Bush/Cheney Administration, these independents are willing, as they showed in 2006, to give it a shot and vote for Democrats IF (and that word has to be capitalized and put in italics for emphasis) the Democrats will stand for something more than just Republicanism with frills. Exit polls in November 2006 showed that these voters (and a majority of Democratic voters) were looking for Democrats to stand up forcefully for the Constitution, and to put an end to the Iraq War.

They were double-crossed. The Democratic Congressional leadership, under the Clintonesque direction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have done none of those things, choosing instead to simply pretend to be an opposition, while actually doing nothing on either front.

~SNIP~

CONTINUED:
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/lindorff/050