The new year of 2008 has just set in, but Iowa and New Hampshire have to immediately shake off the holiday mood and kick off the caucuses for the US presidential Primary scheduled respectively on Jan.3 and 8.
Since 1976, Iowa Primary has become the first candidate-selection campaign, in which voters discuss their preference to a certain candidate, and choose delegates pledged to a particular candidate to go to the party convention. A total of eight Democrats and seven Republicans vying for 2008 presidential candidacy met here Thursday to seize the last minute to recruit more voters.
The uniqueness of the 2008 presidential campaign can be manifested from many different facets: First, this is a Presidential campaign that began earlier and with an increased intensity than ever before, but one that has not produced an obvious front-runner on either side. Secondly, the elections have turned out an exhibition and contest of financial strength. With the date of primaries and caucuses approaching, Democrat candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had already raised as much as 100 million US dollars each and could raise even much more with the General Election day drawing near. The pre-election fund-raising can reflect the strength of a candidate, but it resembles a mimic warfare of wealth this year which will produce a bigger impact on the General Election. What particularly unprecedented is precisely with the candidates themselves, the forerunners on Democrat side, Hillary Clinton, Mrs. Clinton or the former First Lady, and Barack Obama, the first-ever Black candidate in American history. Either of them will make American history if picked up as the US President. Besides, it is the first time ever in eight decades since 1928 that no incumbent President nor Vice President entered into the election campaign.
More often than not, with the competitions in both parties still too close to call, the leading candidates would go all out to race on colleges campuses or in mall towns to make their last pitches, so as to cultivate and feed their preference groups to remain viable and exert more influence on the primaries and caucuses before staging the last contention of mouth and tongue.
This year, however, both parties exhibited unusual performing skills. Democrats departed from their usual behavior of each holding an opinion, and diverging from others on many major political issues, they inclined to show some consensus on policies and political intentions instead. For instance, the three leading candidates, Hillary Clinton, BarackObama and John Edwards, all expressed their shared view that they would put forward timetables for US troops pullout of Iraq in a bid to end the war as early as possible. They are all prone to trade protectionism, and discontent with the free trade policy of the Bush administration. They all agree to reform medicare security system, proposing the all-people inclusive medicare mechanism.
By contrast, Republicans, with their credit for unanimity, have been bogged into the Iraqi plight, causing a great rift and disparity within the party. Former Mayor of NY, Rudy Giuliani, one of the leading Republican candidates, for example, is well-known for his pro-war viewpoint, but afraid of losing the popular support, he had to differentiate himself from the Bush administration on this thorny issue, saying that mistake lying in Iraqi war is the improper control over the war process
Nevertheless, Republicans have an ace in the hole: counter-terrorism, and particularly when the assassination of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto threw US back into the general panic of terrorism, pro-war Republicans would be assumingly cast in the role of national security defenders.
Despite this, the latest poll still indicated that Republicans were still lagging behind Democrats in terms of public support.
Tiny as a state as Iowa, and although pre-election polls and their outcome are not real elections anyway, Iowa Primaries and caucuses always mark the beginning to the end for some major Presidential contenders. As Tom Clark, a senior political reporter, has put it, 'Iowa starts winnowing out people as opposed to crowning people.' Following it, the race is going on to proceed.
By People's Daily Online
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