I generally enjoy reading your posts and think you are an excellent writer.  However, I don't subscribe to the Grist blog to follow the presidential race.  Yes, I think Grist readers should follow and be involved in presidential politics, and we need to make sure the candidates are talking about the important environmental issues of our time.  Just try to make your posts at least somewhat relevant to the environment and not just straight-up political news.  

Another factor might have been the difficulty of getting enough young republicans to boo Hillary, pretend to be for Obama, and pack the caucuses with anti-Hillary votes.  No caucuses in NH.  Just voting booths.

(Go jump in the river..guy.)  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Hmmm...where's Michael Moore when you need him...

And it might be observed -- if we need to make absolutely everything directly relevant to environmental issues -- that John Edwards in his speech to his campaign workers last night named having to deal with global warming and other environmental problems as one of the most prominent of the challenges facing whoever will be the next president.

On whether "pundits don't know sh*t and voters know how to make up their own minds," well, the punditry in the media would not want to agree with that entirely.

At least two curiosities emerge in comparing Iowa and New Hampshire:

1. The Des Moines Register poll showing Barack Obama with a clear lead, which was taken during the weekend before New Year's Day, and which was much questioned by both pundits and campaign workers, including Obama's, turned out to be a good predictor of the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.  But, as Amazing points out, the several polls taken in NH right before the primary, which showed Obama with a good lead over Hillary, turned out to be unreliable.

2. CNN said they were delaying calling the race for Clinton, because they needed to wait for returns from the vicinities of the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth University.  Since high turn-out and enthusiastic activity by young people seemed to do the trick for Obama in Iowa, it was thought that the same phenomena might do the same thing in NH.  As we have seen, it did not turn out that way.  Perhaps NH gives witness to that cynical old bit of wisdom, Young political activists are unreliable flashes-in-the-pan.

(But Republicans are a separate species.  Talking to Jim Lehrer last night, Mark Shields repeated the old rule-of-thumb: "The Democrats need to fall in love with their candidates; the Republicans fall in line.")

Amazing,
congratulations on the success of your girlfriend!  The women of NH seem to have brought back the gender gap.  And I suspect that much-analysed moment of emotion, in the Portsmouth diner on Monday, may have had something to do with it.  (Yes, I fully agree with Jack Cafferty, it was a good thing to see; on the other hand, against those who attacked her for her weakness, it was not as though she collapsed in sobs into a neighboring lap, with her napkin over her head.)

Also, yesterday, Gloria Steinem, that venerable feminist prophetess, had this powerful op-ed in the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08steinem.html? ...

Not impossibly it moved a number of undecided women voters in NH (and some men too!) to vote for Hillary.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

It well might have been.  The public became incensed at the obvious media manipulation of the process.  Because it was no Ed Muskie sobbing or Dean scream.  And the media somehow took polls that predicted she would lose by up to 12 points.

Rachel Maddow pointed out that Mit cried 3 times and the media passed over it.  No coverage.

Now it is time for the pollsters to explain how and why they tried to skew the primary results with those polls.  The media is still at it, pandering for ratings.  

Inventing tabloid news that isn't there and ignoring the issues.  How many times has the media asked the candidates about the latest energy innovations?  So we the people can decide if they understand any of it?

John Stewart just had a segment featuring many different crying incidents by many different presidents.

What could explain the polling errors?  Manipulation or voter backlash.  voters were scared to the polls by the media prediction that Hillary was out of it. Did they realize we were going to be stuck relying on a sex symbol with even less experience than bush to beat the swiftboating and smear and election fraud of the bushwacked GOP.

Did the voters realize we have to win in a landslide to beat that corruption?  maybe.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Given the criticism from all sides of the biased media covering only the front runners and wealthy candidates... and given Grist's superior journalistic integrity and interest in seeing that voters are fully informed... why have you neglected to present all 100 or so candidates' views on the environment and discuss other primary races here?

See...

http://votesmart.org/election_president_search.php?type=a ... ...

... for a list.

I can understand why you might not cover the quirky Light Party, the fascists, or the Prohibitionist Party, especially since there is no primary race for such groups, but I notice you are not covering the Green Party primary. They DO have a primary right now and there are five Green candidates competing to be on the November ballot. And there are twelve Libertarian candidates competing in a primary. How's that going?

You presentation of only the Democratic and Republican races further reinforces the public perception that we don't have many candidates to choose from and that the few we have are all the same and funded by corporate interests.

I suggest taking advantage of your popularity and growing influence to shine a light on some of the other primary races. And, of course, I assume that you will be looking at all of the independent candidate when we get closer to November.

Thanks for you other election coverage, even if you are a bit biased. Just want to see you become news leaders rather than just news followers.

The winner of this election will have the most critical environmental responsibilities of any leader in world history.

Such hyperbole. I wish you Americans would get out a little more. The presidential race is interesting from an environmental point of view because it will determine whether the US federal government continues to block progress, or finally gets on board with the program. But given the partisan logjam that is American federal politics, the chance of any of these candidates to get even a fraction of what they promise done is pretty low.

You may have missed it, but over the last few years, America's credibility to offer any kind of leadership to the rest of the world disappeared. The best that the next president can do is to start to repair that credibility. How that counts as the biggest responsibility of any leader in world history completely escapes me.

Your insinuation of Americans' ignorance aside, I do appreciate you bolstering my point for me, EB. And while the "partisan logjam" of American politics is an unfortunate thing to witness, and a poor framework through which to manage a response to climate change, this election offers the possibility of a democratic supermajority. Such a situation would mean the US "getting on board with the program" (internationally) as you put it, but more importantly would signal the start of domestic policies that begin to undo the damage. As the 2nd largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the largest consumer of goods and resources on the planet, this is extremely significant. Cap and Auction, a national RPS, stopping new/scaling back existing coal electrical generation, no CTL, CAFÉ standards with teeth, intelligent urban planning, and the possibility of exerting influence over our trading partners (China, Latin America, etc.) to behave more responsibly as regards climate, all stand as strong possibilities. Our level of influence has certainly and rightly diminished, and will take time to recover, but a closer study of the climate positions of Edwards, Clinton, and Obama should give you some of the hope you clearly lack.