Last night Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) won the Iowa caucuses for the democrats, the first leg of the presidential nominating process for for the Democrat party. I’m finding it curious that we are not bombarded with headlines and news buzz on the networks about first black this and first black that. This is historic, and according to Iowa democrats and independents, Obama’s message of change was more appealing and perhaps, more believable than the others in his party. Which, on second thought, is precisely why we are not hearing much about it. Hillary is who the media wants.
Barack Obama has already surpassed anything that two other black presidential hopefuls have tried before. He won a contest that Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson could not. But that’s only the half, or third the big story that isn’t being told. He beat Sen. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive candidate and wife of the ‘first black president’ Bill Clinton, by a pretty wide margin. And this, in a state with a black population of 2 percent. Seems to me that in this field of candidates, Iowa is more ready for a black man than a white woman to lead the country.
Sen. Clinton started out as the presumptive candidate for the democrat party. Looks like that presumption was a bit presumptuous on the part of the media and her handlers. And lastly, history was made in the fact that this is the first election that a Clinton has lost since 1988. After her loss last night, Hillary gave her victory speech of sorts. It was full of ‘we’ this and ‘we’ that. Just too funny.
On the republican side, no earth-shakers there. Gov. Mike Huckabee was on home turf in a values sense. And voters in Iowa don’t like what they perceive to be negative campaigning. They also resent to some degree the flood of campaign adds that a wealthy campaign can produce. This seemed to hurt second place finisher Gov. Mitt Romney in Iowa. And to put it another way, Huckabee’s lack of money may have helped him. What?
