Plenty of volunteers have crappy experiences in campaign offices, because that’s just how it goes.  Once you agree to volunteer, campaigns don’t put as much effort into making friends with you because they assume you have already drunk the Kool-Aid.  Unfortunately, when there are few clear distinctions between candidates and a long, contentious primary, staff [...]

Out of the saddle for a couple weeks, Iowa Independent’s usual liveblogger John Deeth is back to his old ways tonight, blogging from the Hawkeye Labor Council’s Democratic candidates’ forum in Cedar Rapids. Before the festivities have really even started, he delivers this succinctly accurate picture of what’s going on in caucus politics:
The [...]

And now, the post wherein I undermine whatever credibility I might have left by admitting that I watch the Hallmark Channel:
Yes, from midnight to 2AM central time each night, I allow the soothing action sequences and overt Republican undertones of the mediocre show Walker, Texas Ranger to lull me to sleep. It’s a guilty [...]

Tonight and tomorrow night, the band Third Eye Blind will play concerts in Council Bluffs and Des Moines, IA, to crowds that are expected to be quite large. (Where all the people are coming from, I’m not sure.)
But that’s not the story. The story is that, according to rumors, they’ll be sporting Barack [...]

The primacy of the Iowa Caucuses is Chet Culver’s top priority, but (1) should it be? And (2) does it matter what Culver’s priorities are?
On the first question: being chronologically first isn’t sufficient; and, taken to the extreme, it could be a bad thing. Idaho could decide to hold its primary tomorrow, and [...]

Congressman Ron Paul’s R-LOVE-ution is on the air with a 30-second TV spot that, according to the Register, will run in Sioux City, Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids. The ad, which is better than Tancredo’s but worse than everyone else’s, highlights Paul’s record on fiscal policy, emphasizing that he has never accepted his Congressional [...]

I liveblogged the debate over on Iowa Independent tonight — or at least I tried.
So who won?  The talking heads can’t decide, but they are thrilled to have so many arguments to talk about.
 On framing, the winner is either Obama or Edwards, depending on who you think is best served by the discussion of lobbyist [...]

Big, important YearlyKos info-dump is forthcoming, I think.  Until I get that up, I thought it might be interesting to talk a bit about the differences between seeing a candidate in Iowa and seeing a candidate at a progressive bloggers’ convention.  This was going to be long and developed, but it turned out that there [...]

Here’s a little of what the mainstream Iowa media have been saying recently:
Using unfortunately-hackneyed boxing metaphors, Todd Dorman (Lee Newspapers) identifies the fundamental issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. A little “big picture” for me, but still noteworthy.
David Yepsen (Des Moines Register) blogs that the Obama-Hillary feud only helps the candidates not yet involved. [...]

I got a press release earlier today from the Obama campaign announcing that they have received 1,864 donations from Iowans (also noting predictably that the vast majority of Iowan donations are under $200).
So Iowa Independent did some digging, and it turns out that Edwards is beating Obama by some 600 donations: Edwards’s total is 2,468.
Obviously, [...]