Flying Pink Unicorns

Well, the Iowa caucuses have come and gone. Finally, some real votes.

First a quick comment on my predictions. They were really right on the mark. Since my predictions were based heavily on polls/conventional wisdom (its not like I have my own polls in Iowa, nor have I been there) this tells me that an intensely polled state has accurate polls as of now in the primary season. This could, of course, change.

On the democratic side, Obama beating Clinton by 8 in a state both campaigned very heavily in, in extraordinarily high turnout does have some meaning, if not as much as the press makes out. I still think, unfortunately, that the race issue is live. Just because democratic primary voters will vote for a black man does NOT mean that swing voters, typical democratic election year voters, or persuadeable Republicans will. The same is true for voting for a woman. I still think there are gigantic electability questions for both Clinton and Obama, alas.

On the GOP side I was very much right that Huckabee beat Romney by more than a hair. 8 points, given how intensely the campaign was waged, was a very decent margin. That Romney got 26% of the vote is remarkable when you think about it. He's the most blatantly false/pandering candidate for ANY office that I can remember, and the Iowa voters got to see that up close and personal-like. That he did so relatively well speaks VERY poorly of the rest of the field, granted that McCain and Rooooooooody did not really campaign in Iowa. And, as I and everyone else has said, Iowa tends to reward the religious candidate.

As truly incredible as this may seem, the GOP nomination is highly likely to be won by either McCain or Roooooooody. Thompson's campaign is openly talking about his dropping out and backing McCain. Romney will lose in New Hampshire to McCain and be widely seen as finished. Huckabee is unlikely to quickly raise the massive amounts of money needed to be a nationally viable candidate, and has the economic nutjob conservatives in the party hopping spitting nails mad.

A wildcard is that independents in New Hampshire can vote in either primary, and Obama's big win may well have a huge surge of indys in NH voting for Obama.

Last point. Turnout in the democratic party caucus was HUGE, more than double the numbers of the GOP. This in a state where Republicans and democrats are in balance, and a state that was frightfully close in both 2000 and 2004 in the general. All of the talk about the giant enthusiasm gap in the 2 parties was borne out in spades last night, and that spells disaster (as of now!!!) for the GOP. But the general election is almost 11 months away, and that is two lifetimes in politics.