Front Runners,

I watched Fred Thompson on Meet the Press this morning. That guy is duller than baseball. Luckily Edwards was on This Week so I only had to watch an old man babble for a half hour.

Assuming Giuliani and Clinton are the front runners (I know that is a big assumption especially for Rudy, but he is always ahead in the polls and I'll get to Clinton later) something that surprises me that hasn't come out is Rudy can't win his home state. This always seemed to be a big deal in the past and considering Rudy's platform is "I'm the only one who can beat Clinton" it would seem that his opponents would pounce on that, but I haven't heard it brought up once (that's not saying no one has, it just hasn't predominately been brought up). This might have something to do with Romney's home state some what up in the air. He was governor of Massachusetts and obviously can't win that state. He announced his presidential run in Michigan where he was born and probably doesn't stand much of a chance there, but better than the dark blue Massachusetts. But I would think that one of the other candidates would bring up this major point by now.

Anyways on to Clinton. She had pretty much cemented her front runner status last month. So Obama announced he was going after her a lot stronger than he had before. I kind of wanted to actually watch that debate to see what would happen, but I have ghetto cable and don't get MSN. From the what I've read and heard about it, it sounded like Edwards did more attacking and projected himself back into the mix that he had kind of fell out of. Clinton made a couple of mistakes seemingly switching positions, mostly on immigrant driver license, but I think her biggest mistake was her, did you see those mean boys picking on this little girl, response after the event. Which I think made her look really weak and feed into all the negative stereotypes that she carries with her. Not to mention it made her sound like she wasn't the front runner which has always been her main strength. Who knows what the masses will do, we shall see in a couple of weeks, but in this bloggers opinion her front runner status is a little more shaky than it was a week ago. Hopefully I'm right.

Winners and Losers,

Not much to do this afternoon after my friend left, except sit around and wait for the weekend to end, so I can get back to hanging that 52x34 duct in the hot sun.

I keep looking to see if Tommy Thompson has dropped out of his joke presidential run, after his dismal showing in the Iowa straw poll like he said he would. It seems pretty unanimous that the big winner was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Here is an interesting take on his second place finish. It reminds me of Mark Green challenging then losing to Doyle for the Governorship and the seat he gave up in congress to run for governor went to a democrat. Ha ha double loser, how's Tanzania?

Polls,

Clinton leads Obama by double digits in new poll or so this story says. I am reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail right now. This book is about Hunter Thomson following McGovern's '72 campaign for president. In reading this book something has occurred to me that is missing from all these stories about Hillary being the democratic front runner. She is in the same spot as Howard Dean in 04, Tsongas in 92, Gary Hart in 88, in 76 there was no clear front runner but Carter wasn't even on early polls, Edmund Muskie in 72, LBJ in 68. Besides incumbent or VP (Clinton and Gore), Mondale is the only front runner before votes were cast to win the nomination. So good luck Hillary it looks like you will need it. Get ready for a bunch of articles about the big upset.