After months of carping about the Iowa caucuses, the Michigan media settled down to actually cover the event and the coverage in today's media (January 4, 2007) is diverse because of the multi-media abilities made possible by the Internet. The Free Press has some interesting angles, including:
--An animated cartoon by staff cartoonist Mike Thompson. It's cute, but inaccurate. Iowa grows corn and you don't need a threshing machine for corn, only for wheat. Kansas grows wheat.
--Video from one of the caucuses, in Urbandale, Iowa. The Free Press visited the most Republican precinct in central Iowa and found a 60 percent voter turnout at the Democratic caucus. Interesting to see people willing to raise their hand in public to demonstrate their support for a candidate.
--The Detroit News mainly relied on AP coverage, including this video. It includes a segment from Barack Obama's speech.
One interpretation of the Iowa caucuses that I didn't see much of last night (except for some allusions to it in this piece by CBS News)was the "neighbor effect."
Over the years, candidates from other Midwestern states have done very well in the Iowa caucuses, on both the Democratic and Republican sides. Consider wins by Walter Mondale from Minnesota in 1984, Dick Gephardt from Missouri (followed by Paul Simon from Illinois) in 1988, plus Tom Harkin from Iowa in 1992 on the Democratic side and Bob Dole from Kansas on the Republican side in 1988 and 1996. Now we can add Barack Obama from Illinois to the list on the Democratic side.
Even Mike Huckabee on the Republican side is much more of a neighbor to Iowans than the rest of the Republican field but his religion likely influenced the outcome more so than geography.
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