…and the winners are…

…Clark and Lieberman.

The maneuver by the two most right wing candidates of the Democrat party to avoid the Iowa caucus can be seen to have now skewed the field to the right.

By most analysis, Iowans voted strategically and Kerry appealed as a candidate that could compete with Bush. However that now leads him to accept the front running position and become the “pin-cushion”, except he now has to endure another round of Lieberman’s spoiling that was used so effectively against Dean.

…Clark and Lieberman.

The maneuver by the two most right wing candidates of the Democrat party to avoid the Iowa caucus can be seen to have now skewed the field to the right.

By most analysis, Iowans voted strategically and Kerry appealed as a candidate that could compete with Bush. However that now leads him to accept the front running position and become the “pin-cushion”, except he now has to endure another round of Lieberman’s spoiling that was used so effectively against Dean.

It was very interesting to me to see how CNN characterised the Iowan caucus as some terribly confused and by corollary unrepresentative system. It strikes me as quite similar to the proportional system used in the election of the Senate in Australia, with the obvious distinction that it is a secret ballot there.

The effect of proportional representation is to give a proportionally smaller voice for minority views in the election of a group of representatives. The process is such that when a certain threshold of voting support is achieved, that candidates representative is elected, otherwise the candidates support percentage is transferred to another candidate.

In the case of the Australian senate, the recipient of that support is determined by each voter, whereas in Iowa that transfer of support is a negotiated process of dialogue between local people.

In any event, the caucus result is clearly overblown by the media, as many have commented, a week is a long time in politics.