The New Hampshire Primary
I Pay Attention So You Don't Have To

DEMOCRATS

Obama: by nearly 40%
Hillary: will come in around 30 or below
Edwards: will hover around 20%.

REPUBLICANS

McCain: 27%(?)
Romney: 24%(?)
Huckabee: 14%
Rudy: 12%
Paul: 10%



Democrats

Obama appears to have been able to turn his large Iowa victory and Hillary's huge loss into a major case that he owns the mantle of change and that he is in fact more electable than Hillary. Let’s call this O-Mentum.

After this, look for the Nevada Culinary Workers' Union to endorse Barry-O and give him a boost in Nevada Primary, which will be held 11 days later on the 19th. Will he win? Who knows, maybe.

Hillary will fight in Nevada, but she might as well not visit South Carolina, because the Democratic electorate is 60% African American, and they are breaking overwhelmingly for Obama, and they will do so exceptionally more so if they see that he won too white-bread states like Iowa and NH.

Hillary is going to look right ahead to the Feb 5. Super-Tuesday states with a retooled campaign with staff and surrogates. She can do well in the North East, and probably in New York .

BUT, if Obama is 3-0 in Iowa, NH, and S.C…. Hillary is going to have a hard time convincing people to give donate to her sinking campaign, and Obama is going to be able to outspend her like mad, and in big States like Missouri, California, Illinois, New York etc. .TV campaigns are important, and to have a TV campaign you need $$S

Also, the black populations in the big cities in those large and not so large states are going to have to want to support Sen. Obama. I am talking L.A., San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Chicago, Boston, New York City, St. Louis, Nashville, Memphis, Mobile, Tupelo, Biloxi, Newark, Trenton, New Haven. . .Hillary is going to have a hard time moving urban populations in her favor.

If Hillary is to live another day, she must stop Obama tonight or hope that he ends his own career with some profound mistake.

Republicans

Character Vs. Issues = McCain Vs. Romney

Despite how effing awesome Obama is, the Republican race is a lot more suspenseful.

Because of this, I have about half as much confidence in my GOP projections as I do my Dem projections . . .because I think Romney might do better than this because in GOP post-debate focus groups, undecided Republicans and Republican Independents are breaking for Mitt on the issues of taxes and immigration.

Everyone expects John McCain to win this one, so he kind of has too. The big question today is how many Independent voters want to break for Obama vs. McCain given that they have until they show up at the polling place to choose

If Obamamania has swept NH unaffiliated voters, Romney could live to fight another day in Michigan, and whoever wins Michigan will get to knife-fight Huckabee in S.C.

If Romney finds a way to edge out McCain (which is possible but a long shot)...Huckabee has a great shot at becoming the nominee, because he is going to do well in S.C. and the Feb. 5 redneck States, where his chief Rival will be a weakened Rudy G.

If Romney, Huckabee, Mitt, and Rudy G are dukeing it out until Feb 5. . .we might see a brokered convention, and we might not know who the Republican nominees for President will be until September 2008, when the GOP holds their convention in the Twin Cities, MN.

I pay attention, so you don’t have too.

You’re welcome.

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The Kitchenette Hotel

and why you wont run into Mitt Romney there.

What I would really like to do right now is lock myself in a Kitchenette Motel somewhere in the mountains. Maybe Colorado or Nevada. This idea is inspired in part by Jack Kerouac's Big Sur, which I am currently borrowing from my housemate. Apparently Ol' Jack went up to Big Sur to cope with a nervous breakdown and/or to detox from alcohol. . .I'm not sure if he got any writing done while he was there.

I wonder if those with artistic tendencies are pre-disposed toward substance abuse, or if merely the established culture of Bohemianism makes it part of the business. I imagine that if you led an ordinary life devoid of crisis, conflict, breakdowns and relapses you wouldn't have too much to write about. Not much worth reading anyway. I feel as though if Fitzgerald were alive today that he would at least embrace the recreational use of NyQuil™; it is after all the absinthe for the new crop of faux-Lost Generation writers.

Last night before bed, I laid on my futon with a note pad, trying to assimilate a couple of ideas together for a story that I'd like to write. Frustrated, I turned the television on to C-Span where Mitt Romney was doing a Town Hall forum in Cedar Rapids Iowa. A guy like Mitt Romney could never produce a novel, short story, or even a Presidential memoir worth reading; not because he is devoid of psychosis, but because he isn't the sort of guy to acknowledge it and work with it.

Willard "Mitt" Romney is certainly not the kind of fellow who would still have a pulse if he defied the Grand Wizard of his local Church and experimented with something like NyQuil.His suits are impeccable, his hair is flawlessly parted, and he has a handsome functional family. But no such things are what they seem and no doubt the Romney family has dark and troubling secrets, which is perhaps the cornerstone of Mormon culture. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, Mitt Romney embodies cold logic, crass literalism, and a tragic artifice built upon an erroneous foundation of American perfection and exceptionalism.

I hope you'll thank Mitt Romney to leave the writing to me.

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