I certainly agree with Catherine that most of the Democratic candidates are making similar promises.  I keep hearing this argument though that Hillary will better be able to “follow through” on those promises – While I’m trying to be open-minded on the point, it seems a tough sell.  

For example, what is it going to take to “follow through” on healthcare – The Democrats are unlikely to have 60 seats in the Senate, and even if they do there will be plenty of moderate democrats who are unlikely to support the similar plans that Obama, Hillary, and Edwards have proposed.  So what will it take to follow through? It seems to me that you have to build support for these plans within the entire country, not just the Democratic party.  This is the point about Reagan.  Regardless of whether you agree with his ideas or not, he was a transformational leader because he was able to build a broad base of support for those ideas.  

I am supporting Obama – Not because he gives great speeches, but because I believe he has a better chance of building broad based support for the Democratic ideas proposed in the campaign and therefore a better chance of “following through” on these promises.  My question for those that believe Hillary will better be able to “follow through” is whether they disagree with the assessment that broad based support is important, or whether they just believe that Hillary will be better at acheiving that support?

I, for one, am grateful that Hillary took Nevada.  I appreciate how moving Barack Obama’s speeches are but I am convinced that she will be better able to follow through on the similar promises that our candidates are making.

As for the other team, I am relieved that Huckabee lost and am holding my breath as the results for South Carolina start rolling in.  Huckabee makes Bush look not so bad.  And that is frightening.

I worry now that as Bloomberg sees Hillary win he is reving up his team.  While I appreciate the generous addition he made to the HBS library and love having him as mayor of NYC, (my home is in Brooklyn), I desperately do not want him to enter this race.  It would be Ralph Nader all over again. 

Before the primaries began I heard a number of people say that Iowa and New Hampshire would no longer have a major impact on who received the Democratic and Republican nomination.  Now that they are past, what’s the verdict?

I think that they still mattered - a lot.  Huckabee and McCain, whose campaigns were were virtually given up for dead, were given new life by Iowa and New Hampshire.  Barack gave two speeches which surprised many people, including me, with their power. Numerous Democrats dropped out of the race after seeing that they weren’t gaining traction in New Hampshire and Iowa.  Guiliani, who had been a front-runner, suddenly disappeared from the media coverage because he did not contest either state. Now his senior staff is going without pay because his campaign is having trouble raising money.

On the other hand, Iowa and New Hampshire are over but the primaries aren’t.  Neither party has a nominee. So at the end of the day, Iowa and New Hampshire mattered but they weren’t decisive.  But any candidate, like Guiliani, who chooses to write them off will clearly regret their decision.

I think that everyone should read the article by Gloria Steinem in the International Herald Tribune titled “American women are never front-runners.”  Please cut and paste the below link:

http://mobile.iht.com/articles/edsteinem.1.9152446.xhtml 

Most important is the ending where Ms Steinem talks about what worries her.  I, too, am concerned that Obama is seen as unifying his race while Hillary is seen as dividing her gender and that this inequality is accepted rather than fought.     

John McCain, for whom I save a warm spot in my heart because of his work on climate change, gave an surprisingly weak victory speech tonight.  There were three major problems with the speech.

First, the audience hardly saw his eyes.  How can someone who has been a politician for so long give one of the most important speeches of his life and read the speech?

Second, his voice was a monotone.  Now, I’ve heard John McCain give inspirational speeches. There is no question that he is an extremely impressive individual and has the capacity to speak very well.  This was not one of his better speeches.  When he was speaking into his notes in a monotone, he came across as aged, tired, and lacking passion.

And lastly the speech was endless. Good political speeches have good editors.  This was not such a speech.  It included everything. I would love to know how that happened given how good McCain’s advisors are supposed to be.

On a night when McCain should be immensely proud of his victory, his campaign should be immensely concerned about how that speech was perceived by upcoming primary states.

The other night Barack Obama won in Iowa.  But to my mind that wasn’t the real story of the night.  What moved me was his victory speech.

A familiar and well deserved lament about American politics is that the substance has disappeared, and has been replaced by opinion polls and focus groups.  Speeches sound as though every line has been tested by market research - they push familiar buttons and are devoid of the life and character that we associate with America’s greatest leaders of the past.

The other night in Iowa, Barack Obama showed us something different. It was simply spellbinding.  Obama’s message was simple: change and hope.  I haven’t seen anything like that since watching videos of Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis and MLK in Washington.

Even the pundits were thunderstruck. After the speech Chris Matthews called the speech heroic, twice.  I’m not sure which commentator said it, but several months ago I remember hearing an apt analogy: Hillary was driving a car with a top speed of 80 mph and she was driving at top speed.  Obama, on the other hand was driving a car with a top speed of 200 mph but he was only driving 70 mph.  That has changed.

Since his amazing Democratic convention speech in 2004, I have been waiting to see Obama demonstrate the strength and inspiration he displayed that night.  On a snowy night in Iowa, Obama finally shifted gears and went from 70 mph to 200 mph. Let’s hope that he keeps it up.

Big night in politics and there are a lot of different ways to read what happened.  What I took away from the result comes from how reality seems to be converging with Hollywood.  

My memory is a bit fuzzy but let me see if I can’t paint the picture… On the Democractic side, a minority wins the primary by taking on the entrenched party interests and running on a positive message of change.  On the Republican side, the nominee is a maverick Senator with a mountain of foreign policy experience that is not completely acceptable to ‘Christian conservatives’.  Sound familiar… Obama vs. McCain or Congressman Matt Santos vs. Senator Arnold Vinick.

Many people, Democrats and independents in particular, watched The West Wing not just because it was a good drama but because they identified with the political message and themes of the show.  Although President Bartlett has been campaigning for Gov. Richardson, Senator Obama has represented those themes better than anyone else in the Democratic field – and in my opinion, that is why he won.

Who knows whether it will actually be Obama versus McCain, but after last night it certainly seems a lot more likely.  From my perspective that would certainly be a great race - I can only hope that if that is the race, the end result also mirrors what happened on TV.

Huckabee just turned the political world upside down.  And there’s no way that the Republican party is happy about it. The candidate who represents vehement anti-gay sentiment, who wanted to quarantine AIDs patients, and who will actually take action to criminalize abortion just won the Iowa Caucuses.

The Republicans have held their coalition together by winking and nodding at the Christian right without ever taking real action on abortion or their other pet issues.  Now the Christian right has become the face of the party - and the question is how will economic conservatives, neoconservatives and other members of the Republican coalition view that change?

Given that Huckabee recently criticized President Bush’s foreign policy, you can bet that the neoconservatives aren’t happy with him.  Given that Huckabee raised taxes when he was governor, you can bet that the economic conservatives aren’t happy with him.  The Republican coalition is in disarray.

Governor Huckabee’s comment linking Pakistan with immigration created a minor uproar in part because it shined a spotlight on his lack of foreign policy experience. But while his deficient foreign policy experience matters to me and it matters to the media and to many pundits, does it matter to most voters?

Some may recall George Bush’s near failure on Andy Hiller’s foreign policy quiz in 1999. (Among other things, he couldn’t remember the name of the general who had recently taken over Pakistan’s government, General Musharraf.) Yet he was able to defeat Al Gore. Admittedly, the 2000 election was obviously pre-9/11 and had much less emphasis on foreign policy than the 2008 election. But how much do voters really know or care about a candidate’s foreign policy experience?

Joe Biden is arguably one of the most experienced candidates when it comes to foreign policy, yet his support in the polls is negligible. Meanwhile Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are leading candidates, despite having no claim to foreign policy depth. It’s common knowledge in political circles that voters tend to vote on the basis of character, not policies. How many people can discuss the details of Hillary’s health plan knowledgeably? Probably not many. But nearly everyone has an opinion about her character.

The consequence of voting solely on character rather than policies or experience has been demonstrated during George W. Bush’s presidency. As one might have predicted after he failed Hiller’s quiz in 1999, his foreign policy has been a series of appalling blunders. While Huckabee’s foreign policy weakness is on display in the media, perhaps the glaring deficiency is in how we are judging the presidential candidates.

Since this is the inaugural Crimson&Blue blog post, I’m using it to talk about the genesis and future of the blog. Harvard Business School’s Democratic Club is composed of diverse, talented, politically engaged individuals. Contrary to popular opinion, there are quite a few of us. And the blog was created to give us a voice in politics, while we are at HBS and after we graduate.

The strength of our numbers and our engagement in the political process shows that the widespread belief that Democrats are not business friendly is no longer true - if it ever was. The reality is that Democratic principles like environmental protection are good, even critical, for the long term health and sustainability of the US economy. On the other hand, while the Republican Party used to be the party of fiscal responsibility, they now engage in massive deficit spending. As today’s government spends freely, conducts multiple wars and simultaneously cuts taxes, the national debt is piling up. My generation and future generations will be forced to pay it off - harming the US economy and the American people in the process. These are some of the issues I look forward to delving into in the months to come.

This blog will help add to a vibrant discussion going on throughout the nation about the future of our party and the future of our country. There is little question that the members and alumni of our club have something important to say. I look forward to listening to their voices and to those who join the conversation.