Wednesday, January 02, 2008 - Posts
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If you want to see how two campaigns with very different means trying to achieve the same ends, watch Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden's closing argument videos. Hillary's two-minute spot is airing on Iowa news programs this evening. Biden's five-minute pitch is online only.
Biden sells his candidacy based largely on the war in Iraq. He cites his prescient concerns about Pakistan's security even before the Bhutto assassination. He comes off as pugnacious: "I want this fight. I relish this fight."
Everything about Hillary, meanwhile, is softer. Her voice seems carefully modulated to convey calmness, almost motherly. She also looks younger than usual. In her monologue, she dumps policy specifics in favor of vague, comforting reassurances: Voters want "a president who could hear you and see you. ... Help me change America ... Stand with me for one night."
According to YouTube, Biden's video has been viewed 7,800 times since Dec. 31. Hillary's has 17,000 views over the past day.
UPDATE 8:38 p.m.: Barack Obama also wants your caucus.
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FORT MADISON -- It’s fun to watch the evolution of a non-story from the inside.
Today the LA Times campaign blog “Top of the Ticket” posted an item about the John Edwards bus breaking down during his 36-hour marathon bus tour—a metaphor for his flagging candidacy!
Edwards aides played down the incident, calling it an “electrical problem.” (Wait, isn’t that just another word for breakdown?) But they were right that on the day before the caucus, a bus breakdown that results in a barely perceptible delay shouldn’t be big news. (By now we really should have moved past the If he can't run a bus tour, how can he possibly run the federal government? logic.) The incident did, however, lead to this little exchange:
A group of reporters are asking Edwards spokesman Mark Kornblau what caused the breakdown.
“I think it was the alternator,” he says, joking.
“Really?” says one reporter.
“No, I have no idea what it was. That’s just speculation.”
“The Obama campaign is speculating it was the fan,” I offer.
“Yeah, the bus was getting too angry, there was too much heat,” Kornblau says.
“You’re saying it generated more heat than light?” another reporter asks.
Kornblau, laughing: “Don’t you dare use that."
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Mitt Romney knows you might be having a tough time convincing your friends to vote for him. So, to help, he's making his pre-recorded voice available 24-7.
A delightfully fun link on Mitt Romney's home page gives you the long-awaited chance to have Mitt Romney prank call your friends. Fill in some names, contact info, and which Republican issue matters most to your friend, and voilà! Romney in your ear. (Just hope Romney has pre-recorded your name. Romney was willing to say Chad, but not Chadwick.) It's an episode of Crank Yankers gone horribly wrong.
Also an option: If you donate 25 bucks to Romney's campaign, he'll record your voicemail greeting for you. I never thought I'd have the opportunity to make two Carl Kasell jokes in the same week.
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If you're too lazy to make your own office pool, join Trailhead's instead. Send us your predictions, and we'll track who is the top Trailhead soothsayer. The winner gets a blogosphere shout-out and unending respect.
The rules:
- Points will be awarded for correct guesses on first, second, and third place finishers in the states listed. No need to get the full slate in exact order to be awarded points.
- Certain states are weighted more than others. See the spreadsheets for point rundowns.
- Democratic and Republican predictions will be tallied together.
- There's a tiebreaker just in case. Guess the number of delegates the frontrunner will have through Feb. 5. Maximum number of delegates is on the spreadsheet.
Entry is simple. Download the spreadsheet and fill out your name and your predictions. Then send it to TrailheadContest@gmail.com. Entries must be received by 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 3. We'll keep you updated.
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Caucus night draws nigh. There's no better way to celebrate one great American tradition—democracy—than by carrying out another American ritual—the office pool. Consider it a high-minded warm-up for March Madness. Our recommendations for setting up your own office pool:
- Give the later contests more prominence: Because we have no idea what's going to happen between now and Feb. 5 (let alone now and New Hampshire's primaries), correct predictions for the later states should be worth more points.
- Award points for more than just first place: Throw a bone to the nonpoliticos in your office and make second and third place count, too.
- Don't get wonkish: When predicting Tsunami Tuesday winners, don't get bogged down in the particulars of Mike Gravel's chances in Alaska (his home state). Pull out a few major players from the crowded field of states and have your co-workers predict the majority to encompass the rest.
- Forget about odds: Trying to entice people to choose Duncan Hunter isn't going to work. And you don't want to have to sit there calculating the odds of Bill Richardson finishing third in South Carolina.
If you want to go the premade route, download spreadsheets we mocked up for the Democratic field and/or the GOP contests.
Stay tuned for details about Trailhead's own primary prediction contest, coming up later in the day.
UPDATE 3:21 p.m.: If you don't have enough people to make your own pool, enter your predictions in Trailhead's contest.
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MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa—There's a classic stunt James Brown used to pull at the end of his shows. After playing his last song, handlers would come out, throw a shawl over his shoulders, and hustle him off stage, as if to say, Come on James, the show's over. But just as he reached the edge of the stage, he would toss off the blanket, run back out and start dancing again. The crowd devoured it.
John Edwards has perfected a political version of the James Brown. At the end of an event in Fairfield, Iowa, Edwards told the audience, "They told me not to take questions"—"they" apparently being his killjoy campaign staff—"but I'm gonna do it anyway." Grateful applause ensues. Same thing at the end of a Q&A session here in Mount Pleasant. An aide cut in, "Senator—" "We have time for one more," Edwards cheerfully interrupted. He even tried it during impromptu availability aboard the press bus, while delivering coffee to baggy-eyed reporters. "It's time to go," said an aide, to which Edwards responded, "No, let's do this now."
It's one of the oldest tricks around, but somehow it never fails to delight. And with zero hour approaching, it never hurts to throw off the cape and dance for one more minute.
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Over the past 24 hours, John Edwards' stump speech has shrunk. At yesterday's tour kickoff in Ames, Iowa, he spoke for a good half hour about the Iraq war, health care, jobs, and immigration. This morning, in the town of Ottumwa, he spoke to a roomful of supporters for all of 80 seconds: "Elizabeth and I take this personally. ... I will fight for you. ... corporate greed ... need guts ... my father ... knock on doors ... caucus on Thursday." By the time he wraps up the tour this evening, he will have honed his speech to one word: "Caucus!"
You can see why he'd want to tighten his language: This process is hellish. Having to say the exact same thing 15 times a day as if it were the first time -- it's hard to imagine why people don't drop out after the first day. There has to be a canto somewhere in Inferno describing the ghoulish fate of the presidential candidate, condemned to recite the same lines, smile till his face stings, and clasp clammy hands every day, knowing all the while that he may have to do it all over again in four years.
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It's 17 hours and 34 minutes into John Edwards' 36-hour pre-caucus bus tour marathon, and the wear is starting to show. Please chalk any incoherence in this post up to the hour and the steady diet of Goldfish, granola bars, and apple sauce.
- I spend five panicked minutes searching the bus for my notebook. It contains everything I've written so far on this trip. As I'm about to demand that the driver turn the bus around, there it is in my back pocket.
- A rival blogger actually does leave everything--camera and iPod included--at that last stop.
- While greeting supporters at the Creston house party, a groggy John Edwards reaches out to shake my hand. "Oh, I know you," he says, realizing his mistake. I shake his hand anyway. It's warm and rough, like soil.
- At a breakfast rally at 5 a.m., a lady is holding her Edwards sign upside down. "Get it right side up, Claire!" shouts her husband across the room.
- "We're still running on adrenaline right now," Edwards tells the audience. He speaks for four minutes.
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CRESTON – A quick study in contrasts between two late-nite retail campaign stops:
The first house, in Cass County, looks like it could be haunted if it weren’t stuffed with people. Strung with a few lines of Christmas lights, it’s a relatively modest place with a wooden stove and an ice box in the back. Edwards and guests snack on cornbread.
The Creston house feels like the last house’s rich uncle. The hostess cheerily greets everyone at the door as if it weren’t 2:30 a.m. Guests snack on mini quiches and other fine treats. Other indicators—the 50-inch flat-screen TV, the stone sculpture, the shag carpet, the plush matching furniture—suggest this might be a detour for the Middle-Class Express.
Not exactly the prince and the pauper, but still an interesting choice for back-to-back parties -- and perhaps an indicator that Edwards' tough-on-corporations rhetoric is resonating with more than just mill workers and their sons.
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COUNCIL BLUFFS -- Temperature now: Partly cloudy, 4 degrees (feels like -11 degrees). Forecast for Thursday: Mostly sunny, some wind, with a high of 31 degrees.
This good news has some people predicting higher caucus turnout than usual. But watching some of these Edwards supporters, you get the sense that even if it's snowing sheets, with face-ripping wind and toe-bruising temperatures, they’re still going to show up.
Or maybe that’s just the kind of people who showed up to a John Edwards pit stop at 10 p.m. tonight. Nearly a hundred people cram into the two rooms of the campaign’s Council Bluffs field office. Dozens more spill out into the cold, stomping their feet on the icy pavement while waiting for the guest of honor.
When he finally arrives, there’s a quick scare as Elizabeth Edwards slips on the black ice. John helps her up. “Are you okay?” someone asks. “No,” she says, but doesn’t show it.
Later inside, Edwards thanks for group for showing up: “You came out in the freezing weather.” “This ain’t nothing,” someone shouts. “You got that right brother,” Edwards replies.
For all the recent caucus hating, it seems true that people who do turn out take the process seriously. As Harlan, IA native Byron Christiansen put it to me, “You can’t just drop by during your lunch break. If you’re going to go out on a freezing winter night to stand around for a few hours, you’re going to know your stuff.”
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