The Audacity of Hope...

So we actually have some votes (more than 200K on the Dems side) upon which to base our future political prognostication. Soon we will even have a one person one vote basis on the Dems side in New Hampshire.* With Obama and Huckabee pulling out clear victories, we now have the potential match up of the author of The Audacity of Hope and the Baptist minister from Hope. Well, I guess Hope does spring enternal.

Huckabee may have won by enough to actually garner some additional resource support, but with the MSM still dogging him as a fluke winner - it will be an uphill battle. Though as Mel-Anon points out South Carolina awaits. He is polling very well nationally and if he can survive New Hampshire he may just cause the GOP to take a truly introspective account of what is going on inside the party.

As far as the Obama campaign goes, the Iowa win was huge. Though I'm not quite convinced we should call it a "defining moment in history" as Obama said in his speech last night.** It is definitely an historic event, but we will have to wait and see if we remember it as a discrete event or as an actual change in direction. The win definitely puts the heat on his opponents, but it also now puts Obama under pressure to keep up with expectations in each successive primary. As any loss to Clinton now will come with a "he has lost momentum" tag line.

As we look forward to the Granite State's primary next week, there are some interesting story lines emerging. Can Clinton recover and pull out a win? Will Edwards hang around for South Carolina, even if he finishes a distant third? Can Rudy keep up the "I don't care about this state" routine for much longer? Will Romney finishing second sink his ship? Can a McCain win push him into the front runner status? When will Thompson go away? Will Ron Paul beat Rudy in New Hampshire too? All very interesting questions, which thanks to the concentrated primary calender we will not have to wait too long to see what happens.

I failed to make a post as to my predictions for Iowa, but I promise my predictions were Obama-Edwards-Clinton and Huckabee-Romney-McCain... which means I only missed the two trifectas by a few votes that Thompson somehow held off from McCain. It is early, but I'll throw in my two cents for New Hampshire as McCain-Romney-Huckabee (with Huckabee closing in on Romney) and Obama-Clinton-Edwards (with the top two taking the lion's share and in a dead heat with around 40% each). The worst I can be is horribly wrong, which is likely.

*What is it with this delegate share stuff in Iowa? I was amazed to see that on a CNN online poll 32% of the respondents stated that they understood the Iowa caucus... They are either way smarter than I (a very real possibility), political organizers in Iowa, unaware of their lack of understanding or drunk. The Democratic process is exceedingly convoluted and confusing. Remarkably, also fairly undemocratic. Oh well, Iowa is old hat now.

** I watched this speech live and I must admit that Obama is a very good public speaker. There were some interesting statements in this speech and I would strongly recommend reading the text. It depends on perspective, but some of the statements, though admittedly politically normal, were a little disquieting (must be the Orwell biography I'm reading). My favorite gem/barb was this: "They said this country was too divided; too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose." A "common purpose" sounds good in some ways and absolutely terrifying in another.