Tuesday, November 13, 2007

I Like Hillary Well Enough...

...but I wish she'd stop calling me at dinner time.


Bill Clinton made his very first campaign appearance for Hillary in Iowa City last July

For that matter, the daily email from John Edwards and Joe Biden are getting a little old too. While I'm whining, I'm tired of the two old guys in the barber shop talking about Dodd, during his commercial that runs during the 10:00 news. I'm even ready to snarl at the ubelievably earnest Obama volunteers who phone to invite us to picnics.

As a matter of fact, the only candidates not bombarding my family right now are Richardson and Kucinich.

I supported Kucinich at my local precinct caucus in 2004. We were viable! (arcane Iowa Caucus term that no one else cares about) This time around we will be in a new precinct. That should be interesting.

Our old precinct (Iowa City 20) had college student rental houses, senior citizen apartments, and a Catholic rectory all included in it's area, quite the diverse group. Our new precinct is the entire town of University Heights. Our county is HEAVILY Democratic. I think we Democrats get the biggest "public" structure in town, the Presbyterian Church. The Republicans will likely get a room at West High School, which is not located inside city limits, but is in Iowa City. In know that in 2004 the Republicans met at the elementary school that is inside city limits, but since people parked on the streets around it for more than the posted 1 hour time length, they all got ticketed!

One kind of cool spin off of the caucuses are the Iowa Electronic Markets. These are "futures" markets for political events. Here is the link to the Presidential 08 Market.

The two "futures" currently trading are the popular vote percentage for each major party (as of 11/13/08 Dem- .530 Rep. .493) and winner take all market (as of 11/13/08 Dem- .612 Rep. .397)

I am looking forward to January 4th. (The day after the caucuses)