Iowa Caucuses

Tonight is the first test of the various Democratic candidates. While I'm eager to hear the results, I'll confess that I have not done a good job of keeping track of the distinguishing features of each of them. I went and saw Dick Gephardt at a $1,000 (got in for free) fundraiser here in KC earlier this year, and I was impressed with his passion and intelligence. I had written him off as an inside-the-beltway also-ran, but he has the stuff to run rings around Bush in a debate. I also went to a Howard Dean meet-up, but he's lost points with me because of his equivocal position on tort reform. Tort reform is a masterful deceit of the insurance industry posing as a family physician - anyone who supports the sort of proposals being floated around is either stupid or a paid-for rep of the big insurance companies.

Truth of the matter is that I can excuse my lack of heavy investigation about the candidates because it doesn't really matter what opinion I form about their relative strengths right now. Tonight, the people in Iowa get to name a front-runner. When the Missouri primary comes around, I will have researched the choices, and I will vote for the one who most closely mirrors my own opinions, and who has he strongest chance of defeating Bush.