Let the Primary Begin! (even if it's 9 mo. early)

Dover, NH
For a Saturday morning, the Dover High School cafeteria was unusually packed. Over one thousand people attended the town hall style meeting for New York Senator Hillary Clinton. She was introduced by Freshman Senator Carol Shea-Porter (1st District) and greeted the crowd with a chipper yet focused energy.

Senator Clinton almost didn't make this trip to New Hampshire because of her duty to vote on the House Resolution to rebuke the President's decision to send more troops into the Iraq war.

That vote, as predicted by Senator Clinton prior to leaving for Washington, failed by a margin of four votes. She stated that the importance of having the vote, admittedly without enough Republican support was to hold those Republicans accountable in the further discussions on the war in Iraq.

On a more editorial note, Senator Clinton's meeting on Saturday was very focused and actually proposed concrete solutions to buttress her campaign promises. She is showing that she is not only aware of the topics on everyone's minds, but she has been in an arena to actually craft logical approaches and lead with examples.

Two of the other democratic candidates that I have covered in the past few weeks were Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. One is riding high on the popularity wave, while the other is working the room like a stand-up observational comic. But both are pro-topic pundits. Pro- health/education/environment, anti-war/nukes/oil. But neither has given any clear or concrete example of how they would address the issue if they were commander in chief, save approaches on the environment (which are really no comparison given the complexity of war).

So, as it stands now, Hillary has allegedly a stronger platform to stump on, but it is very early on in this New Hampshire Primary season. Let's see how well the candidates hold up over the next year and see if they can put their policies where there mouth is.

Tomorrow I will comment on America's zaniest underdog since Jerry Brown, Congressman Dennis Kucinich from Ohio.

Snow Daze

 
Well, at least I had a chance to "work" today. It took over an hour and a half to get into work Wednesday because of the Nor'easter. But when I got there, I just sat around growing bored. Then this call came in - tame at best. No one was injured, response teams were mellow and polite. The most work I did was taking pictures of the newsroom so I can blog to you now.
tah dah!