As I watched Hillary Clinton's Iowa concession speech, I couldn't help but think of the eponymous Prince song that everyone waited 16 years to come appropriately use. Flanked by her husband and former Clinton administration members Wesley Clark and Madeleine Albright, her message of "rebirth" sounded more like "let's go back to the good old days and fight about the meaningless stuff we boomers used to fight about prior to 9/11. Let's go back to 1999!" Same old time warp rhetoric being espoused by Mrs. Clinton, even when it causes her to lose in Iowa. Perhaps that is because she has nothing in her own record to run on?
But then again, perhaps Bill actually wants to go back to 1992 as evidenced by his attempted spiking of the loss by noting his trail to the White House in 1992. Anticipating his wife's third place showing, Bubba tried to remind everyone that he didn't win a primary until they got to Georgia in 1992. In typical Clinton fashion, this is all selective memory. In the intervening 16 years, the primary system has become so compressed that losses in Iowa and NH can spell doom for a candidate, especially the presumptive front runner. Perhaps we are witnessing the Dean flameout of 2008?
Who knows what NH will have in store for us in the coming 5 days. We just know it is a whole new ball game after Iowa.
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