Drinking Liberally®

You might've noticed a drastic decline in posts around here. We've temporarily suspended posting items to this blog due to more pressing obligations. The Fayetteville chapter of Drinking Liberally remains alive and well. We still meet every other Tuesday at On the Rocks at seven o'clock. We'll post important announcements here, but for now, if you're a member of Facebook, you can follow us here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2258921204

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Chelsea Clinton will make an appearance on Dickson Street today. She's supposed to arrive at George's around 5:30 and will stay until just after halftime. Doors open at 4:00.

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So what did everyone think of Bush's final (hopefully) State of the Union last night? Yeah, that's what we thought.

Quick reminder (probably you're sick of the quick reminders by this point): Peter Grumbles, Deputy Field Director for the state party, is slated to give a short presentation at tonight's meeting at On the Rocks. We'll start around 7:15 or so.

We're working to lock up a guest speaker for the next meeting, too. We'll let you know as soon as we confirm anything.

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Hey, kids. Remember we've a guest speaker slated for this Tuesday's meeting. Peter Grumbles, Deputy Field Director for the state party, will give a short presentation at On the Rocks. Let's try to get as many people there as we can.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

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A staffer from the state party is scheduled to speak at our January 29th meeting. We're hoping for a big crowd. We'll meet at On the Rocks at seven o'clock.

UPDATE: There's a chance now we'll also have someone from Hillary's campaign speaking at this meeting, but we've yet to confirm anything. We'll try to let you know early this week.

UPDATE II: Peter Grumbles, Deputy Field Director for the Democratic Party of Arkansas, is slated to speak at the 29th meeting.

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Political consultant Brett Kincaid—the Arkansas State Director for Hillary's campaign—is slated to speak at the Progressionals meeting tonight. Yes, the group's name is irritatingly cute, but they're good people fighting the good fight in (shudder) Benton County. The Progressionals are meeting at Fuddrucker's in Rogers at 6:30. Should be very interesting, particularly after yesterday's New Hampshire primary.

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So despite polls released late Sunday and Monday showing Hillary down in New Hampshire ten and nine points respectively, she managed to snag first-place by narrowly edging Obama. We didn't get to catch much coverage last night, but we're willing to bet references to Bill's comeback in 1992 were tossed around some (though many forget Bill finished second in that race). Edwards finished third, and while he can't be thrilled, he shouldn't feel discouraged just yet. South Carolina is coming up quickly, and he won that primary in 2004. The next casualty will most likely be Gov. Bill Richardson as his distant fourth-place showing last night doesn't bode well.

Meanwhile McCain—long since written off by just about everybody (except a few people...like us)—won last night, providing his campaign some much-needed vigor heading into Michigan next week. McCain won both New Hampshire and Michigan in 2000 before Rove helped Bush torpedo him in South Carolina. Romney finished second, Huckabee third. Huckabee should fare better in South Carolina.

Things are still much too close on both sides to make any kind of prediction, but we think Hillary's win last night was bigger than it would have been had she won in Iowa. Her campaign took a huge hit after her third-place finish last Thursday. Her campaign had spent far too much money to come away with nothing better than bronze. Also, it clearly illustrated what people had suspected throughout the fall: Hillary's candidacy was by no means inevitable. By staging a dramatic comeback in New Hampshire, she showed resiliency and—more importantly—she's now able to wear that black eye earned in Iowa proudly. No longer is that loss as embarrassing, for it shows she actually had to put up a fight and was able to bounce back.

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So Hillary finished third last night. As little as two months ago she still seemed to carry an air of inevitability about her—which probably should've been the first sign she'd see serious trouble. Her campaign is certainly not dead; however, a third-place finish doesn't help her chances. The days between now and New Hampshire (they vote Tuesday) should prove very interesting.

Also interesting: Huckabee easily capturing first place. Sure, he seemed likely to do so in these last days, but two months ago—back when many felt resigned to Hillary—Huckabee still seemed a long shot at best. He's accomplished miracles considering his lack of resources and name recognition. He now has name recognition, and he should see a surge in donations to his campaign. Whether he'll be able to do anything with them remains to be seen. New Hampshire will prove quite interesting for the Republican candidates as well given that Mitt now finds himself chasing Huckabee and that McCain—more or less dead in the water for some time now—has been doing well in New Hampshire. A strong showing could revitalize his campaign.

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As of this writing at 8:04 CST CNN says it's projecting Mike Huckabee the winner of the Republican Iowa caucuses with 25% reporting. CNN had shown Edwards holding a slight lead over Obama and Clinton, but their latest totals show Obama with 33% of the vote to 32% each for Clinton and Edwards, so that race could still easily go to any of the three even with 37% of the precincts reporting.

CNN's results are posted here.

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The Morning News features a nice little article about Bill and Missy Kincaid, two longtime Clinton supporters. Anyone familiar with Arkansas politics should recognize their names. From the article:

Bill Kincaid of Fayetteville uses a long-tested method of getting voters' attention when campaigning in Iowa: He just mentions he's from Arkansas.

Voters pay attention when the Arkansan and friend of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., tells them he's from the state. It worked in 1992, when bands of "Arkansas Travelers" drummed up support for then-Gov. Bill Clinton in early primary states. Voters then were interested in a personal take on the longtime governor.

It's no different now, Kincaid said Wednesday before heading to Hillary Clinton's campaign office in Iowa City.

"We have found that people are very interested to learn that we're from Arkansas, that we've had the opportunity to know Senator Clinton for many years and to work with her over time. That's something meaningful to them," Kincaid said.

You can read the rest of the article here.

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So Bill Mears over at CNN mentioned earlier today the possibility of Hillary—if elected—naming Bill to the Supreme Court. While it's not entirely impossible and not without precedent (Taft served on the Supreme Court years after his presidency), we don't feel it's likely Hillary would actually appoint her husband. Probably it's even less likely he'd pass confirmation, what with that whole perjury thing, not to mention the fact that—as Wonkette points out—Bill was kicked off the Supreme Court bar.

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Hey, kids, the Iowa caucuses are finally here. Already most candidates have been campaigning for at least a year or more. A week from now it could (more or less) be all over but the shouting, what with New Hampshire voting next Tuesday. Chris Hitchens over at Slate rants about the ridiculousness of Iowa's role in determining our nation's president, while CNN provides a handy little guide explaining just what a caucus is and how it works. Apparently nobody has a fucking clue what's going to happen today. Guess we'll see.

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Mike Huckabee is slated to appear on The Tonight Show this evening in what will mark Jay Leno's first live appearance in about eight weeks. (Conan, Letterman, and Ferguson return to the airwaves, too, though Letterman and Ferguson do so under different circumstances having brokered deals with the picketing writers.)

Meanwhile, Huckabee—apparently the Republican candidate to beat tomorrow according to the latest polls—tried to get the press to run his negative ads for him:

In front of perhaps the largest press crowd in Iowa history...Huckabee has said that he isn't going to run the attack ad he spent Sunday making. Minutes before the press conference—where he was to unveil and explain the new ads—he'd decided not to go negative, calling the stations where the spots were planning to air and killing them. Despite changing his mind, Huckabee still wanted to show the press the negative ad he wasn't going to run.

So Huckabee showed the gathered members of the press his negative ad in the hopes they'd show the ad he'd decided not to run. Slate's John Dickerson wonders how Iowa's caucus-goers will respond to the maneuver and sees three options: they find the move "one of the most craven and cynical" in politics; they sympathize with Huckabee, seeing him as a "poorly-funded candidate against a self-financed juggernaut" in Romney; or they find his zig-zagging on the issue of negative campaigning confusing.

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A few things: first, hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season. Second, happy 2008. Third, we sincerely apologize to anyone who troubled herself to show up at On the Rocks Tuesday night. A meeting was scheduled, but we hadn't checked to make sure OTR would be open—and it wasn't. Woops. Our next meeting is set for Tuesday, January 15th.

The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow. No one seems able to confidently predict an outcome what with the holidays having made it nearly impossible to conduct anything approaching an accurate poll. Huckabee and Obama seem to be the candidates to beat tomorrow. We'll see.

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So, Huckabee: pro-life, unless we're talking about people sentenced to death, and then he's OK with people killing other people. Why? Because if Jesus had opposed the death penalty, that whole Crucifixion thing never woulda happened:

"Interestingly enough, if there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, 'This is an unjust punishment and I deserve clemency.'"

Never mind that Jesus coming to earth in mortal form to die was kinda the entire plan, or that Jesus did kinda ask God if maybe there weren't another way to save mankind, or that the people who killed him did give him a window to maybe save himself.... Wait, where were we going with this? Oh, right. Huckabee's suddenly (and increasingly) relevant in the presidential race, and so people are dragging out all the ridiculous things he's ever said.

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