One Week To Showtime In Iowa!

After a brief holiday break to catch up with the Curmudgeonly relatives at a family gathering in Raleigh, we're back, with just one week until the Iowa caucuses.

After a year of watching the crowded fields of candidates run their marathon, it's fun to finally get to the sprint, especially with the runners pacing each other neck and neck. Let's take a moment to review where we are, how we got here, and (of course) some Curmudgeon predictions.

DEMOCRATS

For a year now, it seemed like Hillary was inevitable. That is, unless you took her numbers and compared them to the combined numbers of her opponents.

Now, Hillary doesn't look so inevitable. Obama has finally energized his own supporters and emerged as a credible threat, and we think this race could go down to the wire. We've always liked Obama's fairly patient strategy of biding his time and running a national campaign. A lot of folks thought he'd stumble along the way--the fact that he hasn't is enough, by itself, to get him additional support.

We never liked Edwards' strategy, which was to concentrate all his effort on Iowa, and to focus on poverty as his big issue. Edwards comes across as a phony on poverty, and in any event it is about the biggest loser of an issue for the GENERAL election that one can imagine. Edwards may well pull off an upset in Iowa, coming in second, or even first by a hair. But he won't be able to follow that up in either New Hampshire or South Carolina. And Dems should say "thank goodness" because Edwards would he as hapless as Dukakis in a general election contest.

We were hoping Bill Richardson would be able to follow-up his summertime surge with some additional progress, but he's gone nowhere since then, due, in part, to some very shaky debate performances. We do hope he'll stay on the national scene--he'd be a good veep, or Secretary of State.

Our prediction: Iowa will see Clinton, Obama and Edwards get roughly a third of the vote each in a tight three-way race. Any one of them could "win"--it will depend on their ground games, i.e., getting out the vote. But then New Hampshire will just be Hillary and Barack, again a close race, as will be South Carolina. We aren't ready to predict a winner, although we'd say Hillary may have an edge with money and organization when it comes to Super-Duper Tuesday on February 5.

Republicans

Our forecasts have been pretty good on the GOP side. A few weeks ago, we reviewed the candidates' strategies for winning. We said Thompson had no strategy and needed one, predicting he'd be the odd man out. That now looks like a safe bet, despite some conservative pundits' predictions that he could somehow pull it out in Iowa.

We also criticized Giuliani's Florida strategy, which appear to be the work of some political amateurs who thought they were the next geniuses. Sorry, Rudy. While Giuliani will stay in it for awhile, and pick up a good number of delegates from Yankee states--if he sticks around--his shot at the nomination is fading fast. Giuliani will blame his troubles on the bad timing of various damaging revelations, but the fact is that his screwy strategy left him way too vulnerable.

Romney, on the other hand, with his phalanx of political professionals, has always had a good strategy, and just might still pull it off. At one point, he was leading in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, a feat which, if sustained, would have won it all. Republicans should be glad Romney has slipped because his nomination would have been dangerous to the party. Romney is the Manchurian candidate--a good-looking man of no personal conviction, professionally managed, who wants nothing more than to win. He is a plastic robo-candidate, who will say whatever is programmed into him. His only chance for winning would be if the Dems decided to self-destruct and nominate Edwards.

Huckabee's also had a good strategy: position himself as the candidate of the evangelicals. By maintaining a good sense of humor and hanging in there while others faded or dropped out, Huckabee has succeeded. He should win Iowa, and he will do well in South Carolina and other southern states, especially as it becomes obvious that Thompson has no shot.

We also noted that McCain's strategy hinged on New Hampshire and said don't count him out. In particular, we predicted that Huckabee's rise in Iowa would redound to McCain's benefit in New Hampshire, as old-school Yankee Republicans, recoiling in horror, would give McCain a second, more serious look. That strategy is working and McCain could win New Hampshire. A solid second there will be enough to put him in the top three as the field winnows down. Indeed, McCain could yet win the nomination, just as Bob Novak predicted today.

Our fearless forecast: Huckabee wins Iowa, followed by Romney, with McCain a distant third. Giuliani could end up in fifth. McCain will then win New Hampshire, narrowly over Romney, with Huckabee in the single digits and Giuliani possibly behind Ron Paul. In between, Romney will get a little publicity by winning Wyoming. And then we'll see. Will the GOP end up with a deadlock? Or will the party coalesce behind someone--we'd have to think it would be McCain, but we wouldn't rule out Romney, or even Huckabee, or maybe even Giuliani.