Thursday, January 03, 2008

Its a Horse Race, sort of

Caucus * Day in Iowa...all the presidential hopefuls are hoping their message will sell them.
The media is doing their part by only focusing on the top few hopefuls. In the paper where I am, they published a chart (from the Associated Press) of the candidates' positions, except it was not all the candidates who are running...the chart winnowed out those candidates who someone thought did not have a chance--Biden, Dodd, Kucinich on the Democrats' side and Paul, Hunter and Keyes on the Republicans' side. The media makes the race into a horse race between the top runners in the two major parties. What of third party candidates????
But anyone who has watched an actual horse race knows that horses in the lead can lose to horses who are bringing up the rear, but have a burst of speed well into the race when the others are starting to flag...
And, if one remembers another campaign, the media can disqualify a top runner because of their supposed "scream" which others might have just called exuberance...


For info on how caucuses work see http://www.iowacaucus.org/iacaucus.html

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