Hal Eisner's Blog

Non-Partisans ... having problems? This primary you are able to have one of three ballots -- one for NPs (with no presidential preference), one for Democrats or one for the American Independent Party. It seems from viewer calls and some voters speaking with our reporters that in Los Angeles County filling in bubbles on the ballot has some claiming bubble trouble!
In Los Angeles County voters registrered as "nonpartisan/decline to state? but who want to vote for American Independent or Democratic candidates in today presidential primary must mark the bubble saying so at the top of the ballot. According to the regisitrar's office, crossover votes will not be counted unless the "Democrat" or American Independent" bubble is selected in the party field at the top of the ballot.
The concern is that some voters are not fillng in the appropriate bubble which is creating confusion. Some public officials are even saying this could end up because cause for a recall.
Are you having a problem?

Right now I'm writing to you from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley from what's called "The Filing Room." Just across the way ... another special place. Every president debate has one of these things ... the spin room. The idea is after the debate for people from each camp to spin reporters into oblivion with why their candidates did so well and won the debate ... even if they lost!
The spin room stood still for a few moments though just hours before the debate as Rudy Guliani ended his presidential campaign and handed off his dreams to John McCain.
The interesting thing though will be to watch McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul as they stand at podiums under Air Force one in the shadow of Ronald Reagan's library ... all knowing Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow republican.
It took 6 months to build the 3 story stage under and around the the flying white house that served Reagan and 6 other presidents from 1973 to 2001 and was the great communicators airborne office taking him some 600,000 miles around the country and world.
How many times will we hear Ronald Reagan's name during this debate? Kind of like guessing at the number of gumballs in a fishbowl ... want to take a guess?

A story almost always has a beginning, a middle and an end. 2007 brought with it many big beginnings-middles and ends, but one story just chugged along like the beginning never got to the middle. I'm talking about the race for president. For whatever reason it seems to have gone on since I was in Little League!

So, now it's that ever-so-special week between Christmas and New Years and we are literally just days away from the Iowa caucuses. For those of us in Southern California, Iowa seems a long way away!  But media has given us a front-row seat to the cornfields and the town meetings.

The question:

To what extent will what happens in Iowa affect the way you think, the way your vote?

There are people who say it seems odd a few could influence the nation.  But that's the system.  Caucuses... primaries... Super Tuesdays ...

It starts, though, with Iowa and - let's face it - for a time it looked like Iowa was going to go Romney's way because he put so much into that state.  Now, there's Huckabee.  Are you influenced by Iowa?

The latest Rasmussen poll shows that if the general election were held today Hillary Clinton would take California and not just by a eyelash! She beats the competition in all parties largely because of her strength among female and young voters. BUT .. this isn't your average election cycle. There is no incumbent. This sort of thing hasn't happened since 1952 so, there's not a lot of experience with what that means.

 It might mean that if there were a terrorist attack, a big mistake on the campaign trail .. something strangely out of the norm -- all bets are off! Given that, how volatile do you think the next few months might be until our primary here in California and, of course, until we choose a new President of the United States?