IowaPolitics.com BlogWatch

As you all know by now I'm a partisan hack, but I give credit where
credit is due, and Hillary Clinton's speech last night was a homerun…
for her, not Obama. I have never seen Hillary deliver such a
performance. I was impressed and was left telling myself thank God the
Democrats didn't nominate her, and secondly why the hell isn't she on
the ticket? Oh that's right because she is married to Bill. Speaking
of Bill, he gives a prime time speech tomorrow. So let's see if I have
this right, night one was all about making the Obama's into the
Huxtables. Night two is all about Hillary. Night three will be all
about Bill, unless Biden says something stupid, which leaves Obama
with only one night where he is the focus of the convention. Someone
should be fired for that.

Labels: Barack_Obama, Bill_Clinton, Hillary_Clinton

My dear friend Gordon Fischer got caught in his own trap yesterday,
succumbing to the negativism that has characterized the Obama campaign
rhetoric in recent weeks. He wrote a post on his Web site (it's not a
blog, because he doesn't allow comments) that compared Bill Clinton to
Joe McCarthy and brought up the "blue dress" incident of the Clinton
impeachment. Those are two historical events that I've personally
heard enough about to last the entire rest of my life. When they are
brought up, it's usually by a Fox News anchor who is trying to draw
attention to himself and ingratiate himself to a rabid republican
base, who can't seem to get enough of this type of blithering
bullcrap.

Labels: Barack_Obama, Bill_Clinton

I sincerely apologize for a tasteless and gratituous comment I made
here about President Clinton. It was unnecessary and wrong. I have
since deleted the comment, and again apologize for making it. It will
not happen again. I hope my readers will accept my apology and we can
move on to the very important issues facing our state and country.
Thank you.

Labels: Barack_Obama, Bill_Clinton

It is strange for me to feel so detached the day before an election. I
don't have a dog in this fight anymore. I see advantages and
disadvantages to both Clinton and Obama as candidates and as
presidents. I could live with either and would be enthusiastic about
neither. Super Tuesday, which looked a couple of weeks ago like it
would be a blowout for Clinton, is up for grabs now with Obama surging
in some key states. Put your predictions in this thread. 1. How many
of the 22 states will Clinton win, how many will Obama win, and how
many will be split decisions (with one candidate winning the popular
vote and the other winning a majority of the delegates)?

Labels: Barack_Obama, Bill_Clinton

When he came into office 15 years ago, Bill Clinton was on a mission
to make his mark in history by reforming American government and
reinvigorate a languishing economy. Notable missteps on health care
and gays in the military contributed to a repudiation at the polls in
the 1994 congressional mid-terms, which seemed to refocus Clinton's
remarkable political skills. Bill Clinton presided over the longest
peacetime economic expansion in our nation's history, turned record
budget deficits into record surpluses, lifted millions of families out
of poverty, and stepped in to prevent genocide in the heart of Europe.
And then the mischief set in.

Labels: Bill_Clinton

This late morning and early afternoon, I had the opportunity to attend
an event on campus featuring former President William Jefferson
Clinton. I got two of my roommates to also attend with me. The event
was held in Fisher Auditorium, which is the smallest building of the
four that encompass the Iowa State Center. Iowa State Center is where
the very influential Ames Straw Poll was held on August 11. The event
was slated to start at 11 AM and I arrived at 10, expecting to see a
big crowd and limited seating available since Fisher is not a huge
venue. What I found was a crowd that was relatively thin in nature.

Labels: Bill_Clinton

Today, President Clinton complained about Hillary's press coverage.
Apparently, Bill thinks we'd all find Hill a more attractive
Presidential option if we just discussed her experience and
accomplishments more than we talked about the horse race. This
criticique presents an interesting and paradoxical challenge to the
media. What are Hillary's accomplishments? The only public program
with which Hillary was ever known to be involved was the
preposterously conceived and politically bungled 1993-1994 socialized
healthcare plan.

Labels: Bill_Clinton, Hillary_Clinton

Iowans were surprised today when former President Bill Clinton hit the campaign trail in Muscatine, Iowa and endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton for the coveted political nod: "The person I'd most likely want to go into a blizzard of adversaries until the last dog died." Dog-fighting adversaries, still reeling from the high-profile Michael Vick conviction, took note of Bill Clinton's liberal use of dog-fighting metaphors and vowed to ramp up the anybody-but-Hillary voting contingency.

Labels: Bill_Clinton, Hillary_Clinton

In Democratic politics, former President Bill Clinton can be like a blinding light. Whether you consider him brilliant or not, when he's on stage he has a tendency to obscure those standing around him. That includes his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. That could be one reason why he's mostly campaigning solo these days. On Tuesday, he sang his wife's praises at small town stops in eastern Iowa, the more Democrat-friendly half of the state where Sen. Clinton has pinned her hopes of winning a tight, three-way battle with Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards.

Labels: Bill_Clinton, Hillary_Clinton

They say some Iowa voters don't start paying attention to elections
until Labor Day. Well, here it is, the day that brings our Back Roads
to the White House vacation to an end -- and just in time to catch the
unofficial start of the sprint to the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucus.
You can start paying attention now. On Monday, the national Democratic
front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, brought her
husband, former President Bill Clinton, back to the Iowa State
Fairgrounds, where he first joined her on the campaign trail in July.
The occasion was "Solidarity Fest," the holiday show of force for the
South-Central Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. But don't let the
event's name fool you. One of Clinton's leading rivals, Sen. John
Edwards of North Carolina, made sure he had made his pro-labor speech
and got out of there before the Clintons and their unusually large
media tag-along crew arrived.

Labels: Bill_Clinton, Hillary_Clinton

Visits from two former presidents and one fictitious one, and a little creative self-promotion, have turned an old fashioned diner on Iowa City's north side into one of the ritual stops on the caucus campaign trail. And this year the Hamburg Inn's Coffee Bean Caucus -- where diners vote for their favorite candidate by dropping coffee beans into labeled jars -- has expanded onto the Internet. ... it was in 2003 that the Hamburg Inn really cemented its reputation as a must-stop for caucus candidates. That March, former President Bill Clinton visited while in Iowa City for a University lecture. The Clinton table is two booths down from the Reagan table. The other presidential candidate named Clinton has not yet visited. ... While the first Coffee Bean Caucus was a publicity smash, its track record as a predictor is 0 for 1 -- Dean won the beans but John Kerry carried Johnson County and the state on caucus night. So far this year, both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have mentioned their Hamburg Inn visits in their local speeches.

Labels: Barack_Obama, Bill_Clinton, John_Kerry, John_McCain