2008: The Voting Begins

The Iowa caucuses kick off tonight all across the Hawkeye State, with the stakes high for both parties; the Democratic and Republican contests are both too close to call. Several lesser candidates will be winnowed out, meaning we'll finally get Mike Gravel out of our hair once and for all. :-D

Hillary Clinton came out with a final ad to appeal to voters, filmed in soft focus and with her face immaculately made up to make her look more like Helen Hunt than Linda Hunt. She tried to convey the warmth and fuzziness of a wool sweater, which, naturally, made me want to chafe.

John Edwards - who rails against major corporations and speaks in the populist terms Democrats have sought to avoid using since McGovern lost the Presidency - is probably my emotional choice in this race, but I'm more than pleased with Barack Obama, who strikes the same chord as Edwards in more carefully considered language. (No one calls Obama a Trotskyite, which is exactly the charge financial expert Jim Cramer has leveled against Edwards.) But Hillary Rodham Clinton, hoping to became the nation's first female President, is hoping that this possibility will make voters forget her sense of dynastic entitlement, her extremely close relations with lobbyists, her arrogant posturing, her support of resolutions against hostile Middle Eastern countries that have only made them more hostile, and the fact that Wall Street considers her the Democratic presidential candidate least threatening to their interests.

Being a woman isn't enough of a sociocultural breakthrough by itself in the race to lead the nation. Ask the Brits, who lived through eleven years of Margaret Thatcher.