One part of presidential politics that fascinates me is how certain national news stories permeate campaign narratives in Iowa and others do not. Generally, I think the Iowa press does a good job filtering out the real stories from the dumb stuff. Former Sen. John Edwards’s $400 haircut did not make nearly the [...]

Senators Barack Obama and Chris Dodd both announced new ads in Iowa today. Dodd’s is a TV ad, while Obama’s is a radio ad.
Obama’s ad (listen here) features Duffy Lyon, the so-called “Butter Cow Lady,” and it could be the best ad of the campaign so far. Yeah, it’s folksy. Maybe it’s [...]

Sen. Chris Dodd’s campaign announced yesterday that it has added two new senior staffers to its Iowa team: Nikki Budzinski, who is coming from the IAFF (that endorsement has led to a number of press release-worthy endorsements and additions), will be their Political Director. And Joe Zepecki, who “served as a consultant to the [...]

Thursday evening, AARP and Iowa Public Television cosponsored a Democratic presidential debate focusing on health care and economic security. There were no major position switches, although a few candidates used the event as an opportunity to unveil new policy proposals (I got press releases about proposals affecting retirees and/or health care from both Edwards [...]

On the heels of Sen. Barack Obama’s Iraq policy tour through Iowa this week, expect the Obama campaign to release a legislative endorsement announcement very soon. Sen. Joe Biden announced his second House leadership endorsement yesterday, which put the legislative endorsement mini-horserace back in the news. For those keeping score: Clinton is in [...]

Yesterday, anticipation was mounting for Sen. Barack Obama’s ‘major policy address’ on Iraq in Clinton, IA. Fresh from the Senate hearing in which Obama challenged two prominent proponents of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, many believed that Obama would use the speech as an opportunity to emerge as a leader in the Senate for [...]

New reasons emerged this week to doubt the tier system most commentators use to describe the 2008 presidential horse race.
Conventional wisdom — here in Iowa and across the country — dictates that the three candidates to watch on the Democratic side are Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, and former Sen. John Edwards.
Sen. Chris Dodd, [...]

noneed4thneed of Century of the Common Iowan launched a new online poll last week to measure his readers’ support of Democratic presidential candidates.  He held them in the past, and the results were always unscientific but interesting to see.  Now that campaigns are taking Iowa blogs a bit more seriously, however, Iowa bloggers can’t assume [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]