In last night’s Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton was prepared for anything her opponents threw at her. The first ten minutes set the tone of the rest of the night, as both Clinton herself and her fans in the audience slapped down any overt attempts to criticize her. It changed the dynamics [...]

Sen. Joe Biden may have had his nihilator gators on Friday, because, to quote Snoop Dogg’s remix of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.,” his “pimp hand” was “way strong.” (I didn’t want to quote from misogynous rap lyrics to describe what happened, but I can’t think of better language to describe what I witnessed.) The [...]

Who won the Democratic Presidential Debate Thursday night at Dartmouth? Everyone but Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The issues that commentators expected would plague the former First Lady’s campaign months ago have begun to emerge. From the “old stuff” Sen. Joe Biden referred to (”He then pointedly said he was talking about ‘policy, policy’ issues,” notes [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]