The Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primaries, and what is a Washington Insider?

.
Haha.  Ted Cruz has evidently come out slightly ahead of Trump and Rubio, and is basking in his slight victory.  (It is hard to imagine how the more sophisticated and socially aware within the GOP can bear the boorishness and hypocrisy of Ted Cruz; but he comes off looking good compared to --well, others of their candidates.)  You just know that the better-educated within the GOP do not believe in Creationism, or in banning abortion.  But it suits their purposes to encourage Presidential hopefuls to spout this extreme propaganda.

Hillary Clinton seem to be slightly ahead in Iowa, and there are rumors that she and Bernie Sanders were in a dead heat in a number of New Hampshire caucuses, and the ties had to be broken with coin tosses.  And she won every single toss, I'm hearing.  I sincerely hope that the Secretary of State did not flood the state with fake coins, though I think she would make a good president.

The problem with Hillary Clinton is that she is viewed by (and heavily painted by) the GOP propaganda machine as a Washington Insider.

What does that mean?  (See the article in Wikipedia about what a Washington Insider is, and "Inside the Beltway," and "Beltway Bandits".  You can Google it.)

Hillary Clinton was in the White House as Bill Clinton's wife for eight years, and as Secretary of State for another eight years.  She has lots of friends and acquaintances in Washington, D.C., but I doubt whether that gives her access to the halls of Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the White House (if it happens not to be occupied by a Democrat), or the Treasury.

Once Obama leaves, he would not be much of an insider either; though one can imagine that his emails could get in to certain influential people.  The political actors in Washington are not the insiders.  The insiders are those in the Washington Think Tanks, and the Lobbyists.  To the extent that anyone has friends among this crowd, they are Washington Insiders.

That would make Hillary Clinton a Washington Insider.  This is the single factor that worries me.  To the extent that Hillary Clinton believes that American Business is the Strength of America, we are in trouble.

I do think that Obama pays lip-service to this idea, and he may even believe it to a certain extent.  But I think Obama is fundamentally a Washington atheist, and doesn't truly subscribe to any of the sacred superstitions about How Things Are Done that political addicts spout.

One doesn't really know what Hillary Clinton believes, any more than one knows what Bill Clinton believes.  They both have a certain level of openness that they let the world see; but there is a deeper level that is kept hidden.  That's fine by me; I'm probably the same way.  Obama is probably the same way, but it seems that there is greater overlap between Obama's professed principles and his real principles.

My wife seems to think that Bernie Sanders's big problem is that he wants to butt heads with Business.  "Every State has some big businesses," says my wife, "and it's difficult to go up against them, because they spread a certain degree of wealth around the cities and states in which they're located."

Hah.  Tell that to Seattle.  There was news recently that Microsoft and Starbucks had negotiated such huge tax concessions with the State Government that they paid practically nothing in taxes.  It was the same with Boeing, apparently.  I wonder how it is with Exxon-Mobil?  No.  The big businesses no longer believe in trickle-down.  They do not believe in dividends, either, which is one reason Wall Street has such a bad time.  Prices of stocks go up and down, but the dividends stay low.

Arch