Reactions to the Iowa vote

Once more, the dysfunctional media thoughtlessly trash one of our great national treasures, as in Britney Spears is hospitalized after child-custody dispute Los Angeles Times 01/04/07. Despite what all these nasty Yankee reporters are saying about her, I'm guessing we're going to find out that she's a huge John Edwards fan and that this latest incident was her overly-passionate reaction to his coming in second in Iowa. The vampiritic media should, "Leave Britney alone!" And Jaimelynn, too!

Meanwhile, Joe Conason has a more sober reaction in Barack delivers, Hillary disappoints Salon 01/04/07. His view of the Iowa outcome:

Against the skepticism of experience, Obama boasted that he would attract new voters, young voters, independent voters and even Republican voters into the arcane caucus system - and they all actually showed up to help him win. His politics of inclusion, which has sometimes sounded ephemeral and ethereal, suddenly seems to be rooted in reality. There turned out to be more to him than hope.

But Obama's achievement is not diminished in any way by observing that he enjoyed the unintentional assistance of Hillary Clinton, who suffered the consequences of consistently choosing caution over inspiration. From the high point of her primary campaign last September, when she introduced a strong healthcare platform that overshadowed those of her opponents, she eventually fell back into the calculated dullness that is the hallmark of her longtime advisors, most notably her strategist Mark Penn.

As an example of how her conventionally cautious approach led her to miss opportunities, Conason points out that Obama's foolish repeating of Republican anti-Social Security clichees gave her a good chance to position herself against him in a far more effective way than she did.

He doesn't discuss Edwards' role in the campaign. But he makes a very good point about why Clinton needs to jam Obama on just how he's going to fight for liberal goals:

Knocked down but not out, she has only two plausible choices going forward. The first is to demand the hard substance and specifics of change that underpin Obama's lofty rhetoric. Both the conservative admiration for Obama and his gauzy red-blue thematic scheme depend heavily on his reluctance to discuss how he plans to achieve a progressive agenda. If he speaks out as a progressive, he will draw fire from the right.

Indeed, such candid exchanges are likely to prove that Clinton is correct in anticipating a tough, nasty, expensive general election campaign rather than a campfire lovefest. Even if she loses the nomination to Obama, she will have done him an important favor by forcing him to hone his defenses. Those who sought to destroy the Clintons for eight years and that then smeared John Kerry in 2004 are not about to surrender the White House to any Democrat, not even a smart, nice and charismatic young guy from Chicago.

Tags: barack obama, britney, britney spears, hillary clinton, joe conason