Iowa Caucus Guy’s Presidential Election Blog

 With the recent Vice Presidential debate, as well as the President's COVID diagnosis, I thought it worthwhile to revisit a book that came out around this time last year called Piety and Power .  Tom LoBianco has followed Mike Pence as long as any journalist on the planet.  He is about as much of an expert on Pence as one will find. Since Pence did not appear much in Michael Wolff's treatment of Jarvanka and Bannon in Fire and Fury, one may wonder his role.  This book does much in providing that insight, and more importantly, the VP's background. The title is well selected.  Pence's religious conviction is a real thing.  Some of the things we saw this week in the debate are apparent from this reading of Pence.  He does have charisma and plays the role of politician quite well. On the other hand, he has a great deal of ambition, and it would seem his ultimate goal is the White House.  My reading of this is that he has sometimes chosen inaction as a...

As unpopular as Donald Trump seems, there are only a handful of serious Republican candidates running against him.  One of these is writer Zoltan Istvan. Zoltan is on the ballot in many of the states holding Republican primaries including New Hampshire, California, Colorado, and Texas.  I first heard of Zoltan (his real name) in 2016 when he ran as the Transhumanist Party's candidate for President. As much of a campaign for Transhumanism as for the White House, Zoltan's 2016 write-in campaign was covered in the Guardian , Vice, New Yorker, USA Today. the BBC, Business Insider, Vox, Salon, Huffington Post and many other media outlets. Zoltan made a run for Governor of California as a Libertarian in 2018 and gathered over 14,400 votes.  As featured in the Washington Times, his run in 2020 is as a new type of Republican- a candidate who is fiscally Conservative, appealing to Libertarians and Republicans, but with a focus on Science (a subject that often seems owned...

2020 is soooo boring! I mean, we haven't had the Iowa Caucus, the New Hampshire Primary or Super Tuesday yet, but what everyone wants to know about is 2024. I mean, we have been talking about these same candidates for a year, let's get to the good stuff. Well, that is probably not true.  I think most people hate the eternal election cycle.  It's the media trying to fill the need for constant information. In any case, I suppose you can't top a headline like Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump lead 2024 polls  for clickbait. Now, there will be a Republican Primary next month.  I heard it would be an up/down vote on Trump, but the Register is saying it will be a straw poll.  In any case, William Weld and Joe Walsh (who campaigned in Iowa this weekend) will challenge, and it will be uphill as the Donald had at least 76% of party support per November polls. An even longer shot is Rocky de la Fuente, running as a Republican, after a 2016 Democratic primary race...

Iowa is in the spotlight again as the latest Des Moines Register poll is out.   To be honest, the results of the polls have not been surprising to me.  They are in line with what I have seen and Dems I talked to.  I know I fall in the trap of social media sometimes which can distort whose the loudest, but my gut is with the results as they currently show. To that end, I think the Warren and Buttigieg ground campaigns are strong, and they are appealing with the voters of Iowa.  It's not to say other candidates are not appealing (believe me, social media will tell you that  their  candidate is winning), but it is no surprise to me. The headline that likely write itself is 'how liberal do Iowans want the Party to go?'. The story as we get to the actual night itself will likely be around the uniqueness of the Caucus.  If a candidate does not gain 15%, then they are not considered viable.  The question then may be where do Booker and Harri...

September 26th, 17:38 The Des Moines Register Poll came out this weekend.  The Register did not have a good week as their reporting on Carson King's teenage tweets seemed to send Iowans over the edge. Still, the Register Poll is iconic, and I love the extra minutiae. It comes off a National Qunnipac poll that put Warren up 14 points, and showed her ahead of Joe Biden for the first time. Nationwide: Warren 27% Biden 25% Sanders 16% Buttigieg 7% Harris 3% I was in Massachusetts incidentally this week, and was told by one person that Warren, will be another Hillary, a candidate with too much baggage to beat Trump.  I think in this day and age, though, we are hypercritical of our local politicians. So, with no further ado, here's the numbers: in Iowa Warren 22% Biden 20% Sanders 11% Buttigieg 9% Harris 6% Booker, Klobuchar 3% Gabbard, Steyer, O'Rourke, Yang 2% Bullock, Castro, Delaney 1% Bennet, Williamson <1% None of the Above 2% Unsure 14% ...