Axis of Balance

Fantastic…

Senator Obama wins South Carolina…by a landslide. The black vote was a strong influence on his victory. However, the win for Obama broke down largely on generational lines. I am excited and pleased to be apart of watching what I think is history in the making.

Florida for the Republicans in Tuesday. I have a feeling this will be the last we hear from Rudy Guiliani. Bye bye America’s mayor.

So Barack Obama has won Iowa…as one of his supporters I couldn’t be any happier. It was a great day in America when a black man wins a 92% white state in the primaries. Its still the beginning of a long race, and a decent amount of time before Super Tuesday, but he will have a lot of momentum to push him further in the next few races. Also, not that its any less important news but Mike Huckabee, the come behind kid, has securely trounced the rest of the Republican party in Iowa. Huckabee won Iowa with a 9 point lead on Romney, the 2nd place winner. While both Obama and Huckabee have many differences, they seem to have a general message of needed change that resonates with voters. While I do not want a evangelical preacher as my president, I appreciate his fairly progressive social views…abortion and gay rights notwithstanding.

As I read the news this morning it seems that going into New Hampshire Hillary Clinton and John McCain held the largest leads. Clinton with 9 points over Obama, and McCain 4 points over Romney. However, today those leads have shrinked significantly. Obama is now within 4 points, and Romney now within 2 points. So it looks like Iowa’s outcome will play a pretty strong part in what kind of race we have in New Hampshire. From the looks of it, the Democrats race there will be another close one going into voting day.

With mix feelings I had to read that Chris Dodd and Joe Biden have both dropped out of the race. While I think they are both great candidates for their party, realistically they had no chance at the presidency. Both are said to most likely throw their support behind Obama, as Kucinich has already done. I don’t think Clinton or Edwards will end of picking up any major amount of votes from Dodd and Biden supporters. However, this race has been all over the place, so we shall see.

On the Republican side, Fred Thompson actually got 12% of the vote, which surprised me because I think most people believe he is barely running a campaign. Ron Paul pulled in 10% of the vote. He is hoping for a big jump in NH, but I don’t think this is going to ever happen. While I think his supporters work hard to push their candidates message, I think they can be a little delusional to think 10% is enough to start a real charge towards the Whitehouse. Guiliani came in with a whopping 3%, of course he is concentrating on Florida for his first victory, which I think is a stupid idea. The little states can make of break you just as easily as the big ones. However, as much as I hate his campaign, I am sure his has some crafty stuff up his sleeve.

So we keep our eye on NH and see if this makes or breaks the remaining candidates.