New Hampshire

My take on New Hampshire....
NOTE: greatly cut from various things i wrote elsewhere today. i ramble here. forgive me.

Kerry--Looks good, but NH and IA have BARELY ever been indicators of the final winner, however they are important, especially in this year's compacted schedule.

i think the conventional wisdom is to believe its a virtual tie btw Edwards and Clark for 3rd. it will not be easy for them from this point, but i'm just not convinced its over yet for any of the top 4. Dean has the $$. Kerry has the momentum. Clark and Edwards are out of their home base, but coming back to it. they also have the money to make a fight when they get there.

look at the number of minority voters in these 2 states compared to what's coming up.
look at the success rate of NH winners since '72. then look at the IA winners since '76.
Hell, NH has picked the Dem Nominee correctly 3 times in the last 52 years. (not including times when a dem was in the white house already)
Personally, I don't mind if we aren't sewed up yet.

I should point out that I'm not a Kerry fan, so maybe i'm clinging to something here. i find him slightly more inspiring than Lieberman (whom i assume is dead--literally a corpse). that along with the track record of NH rarely predicting candidates (or winners for that matter) make me wanna say HOLD ON!

Dems have wanted SOMEONE outta the crowded field of 10 for a long time now. The MEDIA...my word! they have pretty much said it's all over for anyone that's not the flavor of the moment. they want to call it now, for somebody...anybody. they want this so badly that its beyond reality and has long shaped the coverage. Again, look at these 4. they can all withstand 3 more weeks. we get out of New England and we see who can keep it up. it may 2/10 before we really know for certain.

Clark is not out. everyone keeps talking about SC, which IS important to Clark and Edwards (And dean plays like crap there), BUT don’t forget about Missouri and Oklahoma. Both are neighboring states to Clark’s Native Ark. I say all 3 of those have to go down before we see the real race (and we will see clark fall, if he does not survive/succeed there).
also note that Clinton was the “comeback kid” after a THIRD in N.H., so…despite the compacted schedule, its not over yet…as well it shouldn’t be. I do not believe that IA and NH are good reads on who wins the general election.