Lovely Parting Gifts, Tom

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070223presidentialrace,0,7692122.story

 

Good, our newsroom e-mail was getting 5 a day from that guy.

 

No wonder he ran out of money.

 

He needed to end it. No one from Iowa was going to get on his bandwagon. We've spent eight years with him at Terrace Hill. With the way that Hillary and Barack is going with the folks here, Vilsack had no chance in hell in to win the caucus or New Hampshire.

He should start preparing for a shot for Education or Ag Secretary in the new Cabinet. But for now, he has a visiting professorship gig at Drake to bide time.

 

His wife went to college with mine. Met her at a reunion. I liked her a great deal.

 

I like how Obama was very complimentary when asked about Vilsack's departure. Court some support, Barack. You'll need it to get past the Clinton machine.

 

She has a masters degree in journalism: http://www.tomvilsack08.com/pages/meet_christie_vilsack

 

With Vilsack out of the way, this puts Iowa back into play. Vilsack would've won the Dem caucus with the homer vote, which meant everyone would've been reading tea leaves to see who gets the mojo. Now we'll know for sure.

 

Hilary promised to introduce Vilsack to Leonard Peltier.

 

FB Bat, Iowa wasn't even a lock for Tom. There was no guarantee that he could win, and this is coming from native Iowans such as myself. Even if Hillary and Obama didn't enter the fray, he would still lag behind guys like Edwards, Dodd, or Richardson (if he does run).

Many here will point to when he sealed his own fate over the last two years, when he kept publicly toying with the idea of running for the top job. A good friend of mine I went to college who did some number crunching (and was helping Chet's campaign) said that if Vilsack ran for Prez, he would get buried by the big names. If Tom was more than 20 percentage points of behind the leader or the packin the caucus, he would had to end his campaign the next day. It was better to do it now than to have a ship continue to sink further to the ocean floor.

Seconly, many state Dems haven't forgiven him for not supporting Culver in the primaries last year, opting to endorse his friend, economic development chief Mike Blouin. It's no secret that Chet and Tom don't like each other. Tom sees Chet as a "fast-track" Dem like Obama. Not willing to pay the dues long enough to be patient until their time came.

Culver was pining to be governor for a long time and his old man was a former U.S. Senator (Dodd and John Culver are best friends). Thirdly, voters here are still unimpressed with how he dealt with state issues with DHS, a work-training program in which the top officials were skimming fed money into their pockets, and not being able to get the Statehouse Dems on his side.

Fenian met Tom and his wife. They're good people and he's a good guy away from the office, but the odds were stacked up against him nationally and state-wide.

The last time a native guy took the homer vote was Harkin in '92. He got blitzed in New Hampshire and call it quits shortly afterwards. That's why it's not a guaranteed lock to get the homer votes.

Just ask Al Gore how that felt in 2000 when Tennessee turned their backs on him.