The Audacity Of Hope?

Those were huge wins yesterday in Iowa for Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee! While this is really just the spring training of the political season, with much bigger races yet to come in South Carolina, Florida, New York, California and many other major states within the next 30 days, I think Iowa's results is an early indication that people are responding strongly to the positive message preached by the two victors–namely, that most people want an end to narrow, gridlock-inducing political partisanship. So, where do the candidates go from here?

I'm going a bit beyond my usual boundaries and blogging on the presidential race for two reasons:

First, whoever takes over the White House in 2009 will have a huge impact on how the insurance industry is handled, especially when it comes to health care reform, and its potential impact on the medical portions of workers' comp and auto. Second, if there is anything I love talking about more than baseball (and insurance, of course), it's politics!

In my view, a big winner yesterday was also John Edwards, who I expected to trail badly in Iowa, when in fact he ended up edging Hillary for second place with a relatively strong 30 percent showing.

Hillary Clinton, who I had assumed would be the ultimate winner–at least for the Democratic nomination–is still having trouble getting past her votes on Iraq and her inability to connect emotionally with voters. She doesn't have much time to recover her momentum.

Sen. Obama is by far the most inspiring candidate–his victory speech last night was the best since he delivered his famous keynote at the Democratic Convention that propelled him into the presidential race. (If you haven't already seen his speech from last night, CNN and no doubt YouTube probably has it. It's worth watching.)

CNN also reported some interesting exit polls, showing that Sen. Obama did much better with younger voters than with older ones, and actually got a higher share of the women's vote than Hillary! Quite a surprise.

At least Sen. Chris Dodd and Sen. Joe Biden dropped out. I respect Sen. Biden especially for his intelligence and broad vision–he often appeared to be the only adult and realist in this pandering field, especially when it came to foreign affairs. But we need a smaller crowd going into Super Tuesday next month to eliminate the clutter and sharpen the debates from the sound bite-a-thons into which they've degenerated. (Click here for NU's story about the insurance industry and the presidential race, and here for industry reaction to Sen. Dodd dropping out.)

On the Republican side, Mr. Huckabee really pulled off an upset, and might have sunk the candidacy of both Fred Thompson (who I had assumed would grab the evangelical vote, but whose candidacy has been a dud from the start), and Mitt Romney (who changed his position so often he just can't be trusted). Good riddance to them both!

The Huckabee win no doubt boosts the cause of Rudy Giuliani, at least in the short term, by delivering a possible death blow to the Romney campaign. But in the long run, I still would be shocked to see today's Republican Party nominating a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control candidate, no matter how much double-talking he's done to cover his track record as New York's mayor.

If Rudy were somehow were to win the nomination, I could see the right-to-life and NRA sections of the party storming out of the Republican convention and field their own candidate, which I think would kill any chance for the Republicans to keep the White House in November.

Mr. Huckabee could therefore sneak in as the compromise candidate, but perhaps John McCain (who also has done more than his share of shameless flip-flops) can make a comeback and head him off.

What do you folks think???