Assessing the Iowa caucuses 25 days out

Two news item out of Iowa today, both significant especially at this late stage where every single vote moved can determine a delegate.

First, the Valley News from Shenandoah endorsed John Edwards today. This is the first endorsement from a daily and non-student Iowa paper. The Valley News insisted on Edwards's support for "the little guy," and they ended by pushing the electability argument. Excerpts:

Simply put, he represents the best of what this country has to offer. If given the opportunity, we believe the former senator from North Carolina will work tirelessly to fight for the little guy as he has done for the past 30 years...
In an unusually strong field of contenders, Edwards is by far the least polarizing of the other top tier candidates and will clearly provide Democrats the best chance of defeating the Republicans next November.

Second, one of Clinton's 25 Iowa co-chairs has just defected to Obama in a public move that is guarantee to generate lots of publicity. He contends that Clinton has gone negative in the past week -- though the Clinton campaign is saying that they lost contact with him weeks ago, way before the change of tone of the past few days.

With 25 days to go, and campaigning picking up, it's time to offer a quick assessment of the state of play in Iowa. And let's start right up with our first rankings of the Iowa caucuses -- my prediction of what the order would be if the caucuses were held tonight:

1. Barack Obama
2. John Edwards
3. Hillary Clinton
4. Joe Biden
5. Bill Richardson

But these rankings are very much temporary -- and a lot is likely to happen in the next three weeks that will change everything. John Edwards led much of 2007 until the summer, when Hillary Clinton took a steady and consistent lead. Up until the beginning of November, it was rare to see a poll without Clinton leading, though her margin was typically within the margin of error and only once or twice did she reach the double-digits here. Even when her nomination seemed inevitable and she appeared to be marching towards her coronation, she looked stunningly vulnerable in Iowa. And that was confirmed in the past 2 weeks, with Obama taking the lead in the majority of polls, though here again more often than not within the margin of error.

Clinton's challenge now is to take back the lead without looking too negative -- and she has not succeeded in finding the right tone. Her offensive against Obama has been criticized by all as too negative (witness the defection of that co-chair, or Wednesday's devastating cartoon in the Des Moines Register). Clinton runs the risk of increasing her negatives, and that can have more dire consequences in Iowa than anywhere else.

On the other hand, Obama could start being hurt too by Clinton's attacks and his engaging back with her. He has been drawn in to bitter back-and-forths, and that could end up helping the Edwards campaign enormously. After spending months relentlessly blasting Clinton, Edwards has suddenly stopped going negative in any way shape or form. He has done with he needed to do: Clinton is beatable now. And that now puts the burden on Obama to manage the situation, as it is him the Clinton campaign will fall on -- not Edwards.

Edwards once again is appearing as the sunny optimist he was in 2004. And that is making him appear above the Obama-Clinton fray, putting him in an ideal position to repeat his 2004 surge. Then, Dean and Gephardt relentlessly attacked each other for a month, driving their negatives up and setting up Kerry and Edwards's last minute surge. This time, Edwards also benefits from 3 years of preparation. He has a base left over from 2004, and his supporters are probably among the most experienced and committed of caucus-goers -- a major advantage given the complexity of the voting process. Edwards is also particularly strong in the state's rural areas which is a major help since some precincts sometimes only have one voter!

This also explains why Clinton might be looking to weaken Obama -- and in the process might be fine with hurting herself even more. If she is to lose anyway, she would be much better off if Edwards came in first rather than Obama: (1) Edwards is not really within striking distance in New Hampshire right now, and (2) Edwards does not have the resources to compete long term, while Obama does. So one of the reasons Clinton might be fine with driving her negatives up and enter into a suicide attack against Obama: If she senses she cannot win this, she will do everything she can to make sure Edwards carries the state.

Meanwhile, second-choice dynamics will be very interesting to follow; right now, Obama seems to be on top and Clinton lagging far behind but the recent Zogby poll suggested that might be due to the fact that Edwards supporters choose Obama and Obama backers choose Edwards as their second choice. Since the top three are likely to be viable in most precincts (i.e. reach 15% at their caucusing place), it is likely that will not matter too much.

The question is: what will Biden, Richardson and Dodd voters do? Zogby suggested they like Clinton best, and that would make sense for those voters would probably not be likely to be carried by an anti-establishment message. Another question: what will Clinton backers do if their candidate is not viable somewhere? It is likely they will go for Edwards given the Obama-Clinton antagonism, one more boost to Edwards's candidacy since he will get the votes of Obama and Clinton voters in precincts where one of them is not viable.

All in all, this suggests that it is unlikely that the three top candidates will be within a few points come caucus night. The lack of viability, the tilt to rural areas will mean that the candidate with the most momentum -- and the most second-choice preference -- will likely come out with a massive lead.

On the other hand, whoever is third will likely not be viable in many places and will end up lagging very far behind once the results come in because he/she will not get delegates and votes in many places. This is exactly what happened in 2004: Dean, favored to win a few days before the caucuses, ended up 20% behind Kerry. Once things go bad in Iowa, they really go bad.