The Sounds of 2008

That Giant Sucking Sound. The giant sucking sound you heard out of Iowa yesterday was the oxygen being taken away from the campaigns of any Democrat not named Hillary or Barack. There were 1500 people at a high school gym to see Hillary on a very cold day and every word she said was parsed and psychoanalyzed for what it says about Bill and Hillary, her position on the war, and her attitude toward President Bush. To effectively challenge as big a front-runner as Hillary, either the front-runner has to blow up or the new faces or marginal candidates have to be more interesting. Obama might still prove to be interesting enough to overtake her, but the media and the voters are much more interested in Hillary than they are in John Edwards, Chris Dodds, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack, and the rest. That's one of the big reasons why all of those guys are doomed.

Early Blow-Ups. John McCain lost his patience last Saturday with progressive columnist and uber-blogger Arianna Huffington over her Iraq questions. McCain has a long-standing reputation for having a "short fuse." If he's going to start losing his temper a year before the first primary, it's going to be a long, long campaign.

The Tree Unheard. With so much attention so early on the 2008 campaign, the Bush administration might find it hard to get heard. That's why we can expect a lot of snarling from the President, Dick Cheney, and Joe Lieberman as the War Party struggles to be heard over the twin drumming of the celebrity candidates and the daily disasters in Iraq.