Let the caucuses begin

Caucus time!

The weather is not inclement, so heavy turnout is likely tonight. That favors Obama and Huckabee, who win a higher % of first-time caucus-goers.

Thompson has denied that he will drop out and support John McCain if he gets less than 15%, but the report has a ring of truth to it.

There's a fascinating report of deals going on on the Democratic side from Fox News. Kucinich has pledged his caucus-goers to Obama, should his supporters fail to reach viability. The report says that Biden and Richardson have also pledged their supporters to Obama as well. They deny it. But Obama could gain through the realignment process.

The old saw is that there are three tickets out of Iowa, win, place or show. But all along I've been wondering about a factor that I haven't seen reported on until today in the Politico. And that is the following: in this first primary contest without a clear front-runner for both parties in the modern era (meaning, no incumbent or Vice President successor). What's the media play going to be? There can't be multiple stories. There's really only one story.

Here's Roger Simon:

Even second place sometimes is not good enough in Iowa. Ask John Edwards. He came in second here in 2004 and expected that “bounce” to help him win in New Hampshire. But it didn’t.

Why? The media had a better story. They had Howard Dean’s scream.

As Edwards’ then-campaign manager Nick Baldick put it: “Instead of headlines that said, ‘Kerry Wins, Edwards a Surprising Second’ it was all about [John] Kerry winning and the Dean speech. We were the seventh paragraph. That did not give us a New Hampshire bounce.”

The same thing happened in 1988 when the big story was Pat Robertson's strong second-place finish, and Dick Gephardt's win on the Democratic side was ignored.

Simon continues:

Edwards might face the same problem this time. If he comes in second and Barack Obama comes in first, the headline could be: “Obama Wins, Hillary Third.”

That's right. Edwards needs a win. So does Huckabee. I heard a reporter on CNN a few hours ago say that "Romney has the most to lose" and that's just totally false. Romney can weather a loss; Huckabee cannot. Heres' a report from Time:

[T]he simple fact remains: The outcome in Iowa may very well determine Huckabee's fate as a presidential candidate. With a first place showing, he will fly out of Des Moines tonight as a political golden boy, who beat the odds by taking down the massive political machine of Mitt Romney, without any real money or organization. If he comes in second, however, he risks being sidelined in the Republican contest by the coming fight between Romney and John McCain in New Hampshire on January 8, which will likely carry over to the Michigan primary on January 15.

This framing works best for Huckabee if he is able to pull off an upset. A second place finish, which only a few months ago would have been considered a major victory, would now likely result in legitimizing the big-spending campaign of Mitt Romney, who led the polls in Iowa for months, largely because of his ability to lavish the state with money. By all rights, Huckabee would proudly continue his campaign to South Carolina, which will vote on January 19 and should be receptive to his down-home, conservative appeal. But the chattering classes will dog him for weeks; Iowa, after all, is a state teaming with evangelical values voters. Over and over again, Huckabee, the former Baptist pastor, will be asked the inverse of Frank Sinatra's famous lyric: "If you can't make it here, how can you make it anywhere?"