I'm in my home state of Iowa for Christmas with my family.
I had a little talk about politics with my father on the ride from the airport. He's a letter carrier for the USPS, so one of the way he judges local politics is by the amount of mail sent. He said he's only seen two candidates -- Dean and Gephardt -- use that medium. Dean has sent about twice as much as Gephardt. He expects the volume to increase a lot in January.
His other sources of information are the Cedar Rapids Gazette, television, and I suspect some talk about politics at work, which is unionized.
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His response to a statement about Lieberman: "I didn't even know he was running this time."
His response to a statement about Kucinich: "Who's that?"
He did have some awareness of Sharpton and Braun's campaigns.
Anyways, it was an interesting reality check for me. From sunny Los Angeles I envision Iowa inundated with political messages, but the reality may not be quite as pervasive as I imagine.
It sounds like he is definitely considering voting for the Democratic nominee in November, but it's not a done deal. He did view the capture of Saddam as progress, though as a Vietnam vet, he's aware that the capture of a single individual will not magically make the situation in Iraq tranquil or fix any of the infrastructure problems.
The headline on Friday's Gazette was "Iowa Grows, But Slowly". The population growth here ranks 47 of 50. This is largely due to the "brain drain" of educated children leaving the state for college or soon afterwards.
Another trend I'm keeping an eye on is the telemarketing industry. There are a lot of telemarketing jobs in the area, and the industry is in for some tough times.
Many of my family here are teachers, and I honestly don't that there are many other great career options left. Farming sure as hell isn't it. In recent years, I've begun to see the state as a second-world country with Walmart.