DEM FIELD: Iraq 4evah!

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong links to a No Troops Left Behind table showing little difference between Dem 08er positions on Iraq (Dennis Kucinich was not included on the table). Armstrong comments:

There are a couple of reasons why I post this, none of them because I support Richardson (though I certainly could; and I strongly support his position on Iraq). First, I think it's problematic if Biden's position of staying in Iraq for a longer period becomes the de facto position that Obama supports explicitly, and neither Clinton nor Edwards confronts in disagreement. If the Democrats go into '08 fuzzy on getting out of Iraq, we will lose again. The lesson of '06 would be ignored in favor of repeating the mistake of '04. And secondly, getting out of Iraq asap is the lynchpin for Democratic wins beyond '08.

DEM FIELD II: A Kernel Of Truth

Bleeding Heartland's Simon Stevenson notes the IA State Fair's "Cast Your Kernel" straw poll netted results a lot more similar to reality than online straw polling. Stevenson explains: "[f]air attendees were able to drop a kernel of corn into the jar of the candidate they wanted to see as our next President. If you wanted to you could probably go cast a kernel every few hours, but the nature of the event would make it difficult and costly to really stuff the poll."

IA Votes reports that Hillary Clinton netted 33% of the kernels cast, John Edwards 28%, Barack Obama 22%, and Bill Richardson 13%. More importantly, Strevenson notes: "The most important thing of all from this exercise though is the total number cast for each side: 21,438 for Democrats and 14,010 for Republicans. That's better than 60%/40% for the Dems, and shows that even among the rural-and-probably-conservative-leaning Iowa State Fair crowd most people would like to see a Democratic President." [ed. note: Mike Huckabee finished second here too, with 17% to Mitt Romney's 36%, Rudy Giuliani's 14%, and Fred Thompson's 13%]