Why is McCain still in Iowa?

Why is John McCain still campaigning and advertising here? Pollster shows him behind by over 10 points, he's never polled ahead of Obama here, and his stance against ethanol subsidies (which I personally agree with) certainly makes it an uphill battle. While this is a purple state that went narrowly for Gore in 2000, then narrowly for Bush in 2004, but this year, the independents I know are voting Obama, as are many moderate Republicans I know. So, again, why does McCain continue to spend time & money here? Perhaps if he starts to give up on the states in which he's polling so far behind, eventually it becomes mathematically impossible for him to hit 270 votes...

His interview with the Des Moines Register last week certainly didn't win him any friends while he was here either:

Update: Turns out, the LA Times is asking the same question as me...

Do they realize they're being recorded?

Last night's episode of the Daily Show featured a great segment of video-taped hypocrisy. Don't these guys realize that when they're talking on TV, they might want to consider the possibility that their words don't instantly evaporate? That they might be used later to point out, shall we say, glaring inconsistencies in their arguments? Welcome to the age of DVRs, voice recognition, Google, and YouTube:

Obama in Iowa

I didn't think he could do it, but I'm very impressed. Obama won Iowa, and his victory speech was goosebump-inspiring. I caucused for Ron Paul, but I'll be switching my registration back to Democrat now, and hope to vote for Obama (or Edwards, though that seems unlikely) next fall for President:

Tucker Carlson on Ron Paul

Great article here from Tucker Carlson, talking about Ron Paul:

One thing you can say for certain: The crowds at Ron Paul rallies aren't coming to be entertained. Stylistically, a Paul speech is about as colorful as a tax return. He is the only politician I've ever seen who doesn't draw energy from the audience; his tone is as flat at the conclusion as it was at the beginning. There are no jokes. There's no warm-up, no shout-out to local luminaries in the room, no inspiring vignettes about ordinary Americans doing their best in the face of this or that bad thing. In fact, there are virtually none of the usual political clichés in a Paul speech. Children may be our future, but Ron Paul isn't admitting it in public.

Paul is no demagogue, and probably couldn't be if he tried. He's too libertarian. He can't stand to tell other people what to do, even people who've shown up looking for instructions. On board the campaign's tiny chartered jet one night (the plane was so small my legs were intertwined with the candidate's for the entire flight), Paul and his staff engaged in an unintentionally hilarious exchange about the cabin lights. The staff wanted to know whether Paul preferred the lights on or off. Not wanting to be bossy, Paul wouldn't say. Ultimately, the staff had to guess. It was a long three minutes.

Merry Christmas from Hillary

Wow, Rudy's commercial was cringe-inducing, but Hillary's is just... well... it makes me want to puke.  She needs to do a follow up ad that shows her having to pay off the credit card bill for those gifts in January...

By comparison, Ron Paul's Christmas video seems genuine, and he wears the requisite red shirt:

Mike Huckabee's commercial also plays as genuine, to me, though the "floating cross" is a bit disturbing.  That said, I find it hard to believe that they actually came up with that ahead of time, it was probably a happy accident for them.

I think Huckabee and Paul have good Christmas ads, won't win them many new voters, but they don't turn people off.  Rudy's ad is just plain creepy and weird, and Hillary's reinforces her image as calculating and her humor always just seems so forced...