Iowa & Beyond

I think my mom has covered the Christmas holiday update pretty well, so I'll just add this photo from one of the best days of skiing I've ever had. We were at Vail a few days before Christmas and the powder was unbelievable. It seemed to validate our entire decision to move to Colorado in the first place. It also validated my increasing disdain for east coast skiing. Vermont and New Hampshire are nice, but they just don't have the space and the snow that Colorado gets.

New Hampshire... why does that state sound familiar these days? Oh right! The primary. I have been asked by other members of the family to weigh in with some analysis and prognostication on the 2008 presidential contest. Last week, 200,000 very white people got together in high schools and churches across the state of Iowa engaged in an arcane, undemocratic process called caucusing. I had the opportunity to watch a caucus as it happened on CSPAN, and my reaction was that if we were watching a foreign country choose their president this way, we'd be discussing regime change and sending in troops. Don't get me wrong - I think Iowa and New Hampshire have earned their spots at the front of the line when it comes to primaries and caucuses. They place a value on personal interaction with the candidates that you don't see in other states.

Despite that, I'm with Karl Rove, Christopher Hitchens and Jeff Greenfield on this one - the early, compressed process gives too much weight to Iowa. Caucuses are a fine way for a party to choose delegates to a convention, but they're not fit for anointing the nominee. The Secretaries of State have a decent plan to make the whole process go a bit smoother by rotating regions and allowing every state a chance at the early spotlight, while still preserving the traditional spots for Iowa and New Hampshire. There are a few other good plans out there as well. It's time for the states to come together with a plan that shortens the whole process (picking our president should not take two years) and gives all states a chance to weigh in on the nominees.

OK - insider process rant over. Now to what's going on. Hilary's going to get clobbered in New Hampshire's primary tomorrow (I predict by 15 points), and she's likely to lose in Nevada and South Carolina as well. There's simply no time for her to reverse the overwhelming swell of victory surrounding Barack. That will prompt days of questions from the press as to when she's going to drop out. However: never underestimate the Clintons (Barack Obama certainly hasn't). If there's one candidate in this race that can survive a series of losses and come back to be competitive in the ridiculous Tsunami Tuesday de facto national primary on Feb 5, it's Hillary Clinton.

You should expect to see some sort of shake-up in the Clinton organization after New Hampshire. The conventional wisdom is that Mark Penn will be demoted or fired. You should also expect to see a lot of contrast (negative, if you prefer) advertising from Hillary in the Feb. 5 states. She has the money to compete full force through then, although Barack's early victories will give him a fund-raising edge over the next month with which to fight back.

I'm sure some of Aunt Jean's commenters are wondering why I've left out John Edwards. Well - because he's toast. His message right now is "I beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa" but the truth is, he staked his entire campaign on Iowa and essentially camped out there for four years, and finished worse than he did in 2004. He's going to lose to both Hillary and Barack in NH, as well as South Carolina, which is supposed to be his stronghold. I don't see any way for him to gain momentum going in to Feb. 5. Also, he's opted in to public financing, which subjects him to strict spending caps in advance of the August 2008 convention. If Hillary drops out before Edwards (unlikely, but possible), the line you're going to hear over and over again from the Obama campaign is that John Edwards has tied one hand behind his back by taking public financing.

So in short: it's Obama's to lose, but don't count Hillary out just yet. OK, time for me to get back out on the slopes.