I wrote a commentary on Iowa Independent today about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s vulnerability in Iowa. Here’s the gist:
Clinton’s rivals cannot plan to beat the New York Senator by attacking her on specific policy proposals or waiting for her to make gaffes, because Clinton is not going to give anyone enough of that material to [...]

The conventional wisdom says that Sen. Sam Brownback will drop out of the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination Friday because he ran out of money. While this is true — the Kansas Sen. was running on fumes at the end of the third quarter FEC filing deadline — the root causes of [...]

Yesterday, State Rep. Mark Smith, a social worker who represents a district that includes Marshalltown in Central Iowa, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama. The question about Smith’s endorsement was never “whom” he would endorse; it was “whether” and “when” he would endorse.
Democratic politics in Smith’s district are essentially run by the United Auto Workers, who [...]

A couple months ago, I blogged about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Iowa TV ad buy, which included spots on the Hallmark Channel (during, among other shows, Walker, Texas Ranger). Clinton remains the only candidate to appear on that network with any regularity, from what I have been able to observe.
But Sen. Barack Obama, not to [...]

The Republican Party of Iowa is set to announce that it has set the date of its Caucuses for January 3. Will the Iowa Democratic Party follow suit?
Over the past few months, it has generally sounded like they wanted to keep their date in line with the Republicans. Their statement tonight? Pretty [...]

South Carolina State Rep. Fletcher Smith, who served as co-chair of Gov. Bill Richardson’s campaign in that state before defecting to Sen. Joe Biden’s campaign, speaks.
Garance Franke-Ruta follows up on the question of how influential blogs are in Iowa.
Sen. Barack Obama gave the Chicago Tribune surprising access to details of its field campaign, revealing that [...]

I already blogged about the New York Times piece claiming that blogs in Iowa don’t have much of an impact on actual Iowans, but John Deeth’s liveblog of Edwards’s SEIU endorsement appearance in Johnson County raised my spirits a bit. Talking to University of Iowa political scientist and pollster David Redlawsk, Deeth writes:
We exchange [...]

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year’s topic is the environment. Participating bloggers are encouraged to write a post about environmental issues, but not to post something that wouldn’t fit into the normal mold of their blog. Keeping with those instructions, I just wanted to update you on how environmental organizations are [...]

Sen. John Edwards’s campaign just wrapped up a conference call to discuss their Iowa SEIU endorsement (and, it turns out, endorsements from other as-yet-unnamed SEIU state councils), and they’re obviously touting it as a “major victory” and an “enormous boost” here.
But they also played up the fact that Sen. Edwards worked very hard to get [...]

The New York Times published an article yesterday with the headline, “The Web, Despite Its Promise, Fails to Snare Iowa Voters.” In it, the TImes found Iowans who said they have never read a blog. And then they quoted Joe Trippi, who admitted that Iowans don’t use as many of the Edwards campaign’s [...]