In describing the results of final night’s Iowa caucuses, The Washington Post’s David Broder minced no words: “Eight years after Iowa voters did the conventional — sending George W. Bush and Al Gore on to meet in the election of 2000, they shook up the status quo in both parties as never before. The victories of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee jolted the expectations of establishment candidates with far stronger conventional credentials.”

The New York Times‘ David Brooks was similarly thunderstruck. “I’ve been through election nights that brought a political earthquake to the country. I’ve never been through an election night that brought two.”

While I confess the results were exciting, there is something that citizens often forget that the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dick Polman argues they need to remember: “Incumbents aside, precisely one victorious Iowa

candidate — George W. Bush in 2000 — has ever gone on to win the presidency in the same year. Even though (Jimmy) Carter got an historic boost in Iowa, on the way to his November election, he actually finished moment in Iowa — behind ‘Uncommitted.’”

Oh, so all of the hot air that’s been expounded in the past 24 hours by that antiquated political system is that one of the least representative states in the country may not actually mean much in the faraway term. That’s unbelievable, but what’s worse is that we are about to go through that whole exercise yet again in an equally non-representative state, New Hampshire.

Continue reading Media World: Huckabee, Obama victories leave pundits speechless

Original post by Jonathan Berr

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