Presidential Politics

With about three weeks until the Iowa caucus, Obama and Huckabee are surging, there and elsewhere. But I'm still betting on the following order in Iowa:

Democrats
1. John Edwards
2. Barack Obama
3. Hillary Clinton

Republicans
1. Mitt Romney
2. Huckabee
3. John McCain

The top two swapping in either race wouldn't be too surprising but the questions for Obama and Huckabee are whether their surges continue, and especially whether they have the necessary organization to be effective in the unique Iowa caucus system.

Maybe the most daring prediction there is McCain coming in as high as third. If he does come in third, he could win New Hampshire. The question is whether the controversies over Romney and Huckabee drive voters to McCain in Iowa. He's probably pretty strong in New Hampshire already.

Among the Dems, even with a second place showing, Iowa might help Obama the most for New Hampshire. Of course a lot can happen before anyone votes. But the sense of inevitability for Hillary and Rudy has gone overall, at least for the moment. Then again, this could be a very weird year, when what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire doesn't matter as much as it did in 2004.

Through political luck or shrewd planning, who knows at this point, Barack Obama is rising above the pack at just the right moment to give him a credible chance to play dominoes with the primaries and come out the Democratic nominee.

Hillary Clinton's campaign appears to be faltering, and it may be the people she employs that's doing her in. I've always felt that I can live with Hillary as the nominee, but I can't live with her staff. In any case, she can survive losing in Iowa and even New Hampshire, and still win the nomination with a turnaround in February's megaprimaries.

Then again, so could Obama. John Edwards probably has the will, money and muscle to hang around long enough to see if these two bump each other off. (I still think he's as likely as anyone to win Iowa.) The polls show the top three are very close, but Iowa is three weeks away. Three days before the voting will be the first time that the opinion polls may suggest the order of finish. Unless one of the other Dem candidates pulls a surprise showing in the top three in Iowa, they're all pretty much done.

Political analyst Craig Crawford seems to think that Obama's confession of drug use in high school could still hurt him--even though it seems to have hurt the Clinton campaign more at the moment, which has reportedly been feeding the story. I don't think it will. Smirk did worse and at an older age, and voters ignored it. They ignored it with Bill Clinton's 60s youth, despite media frenzy. Obama wrote about it himself a decade ago, in the same context he mentions it today--as a cautionary tale to young people.

Of course, Republicans have no conscience about these kinds of attacks, but Smirk also got away with it because of his born again thing. Voters want to believe in redemption, and I think they really want to believe in it in a black man as well as a white fundamentalist. It doesn't tarnish Obama's image--think of all the white evangelists with a checkered past.

Otherwise, it occurs to me that Obama could turn up the wattage in his favor by making service a keynote of his campaign--service to the country and to humanity, like JFK did with the Peace Corps. It's also a way of channeling voter dismay and disenchantment with Bushworld. The U.S. doesn't have enough diplomats to staff its embassies--a call to service would help. A call to serve the needs of the nation, especially of the poor, of children and the old-- Obama more than any other candidate can do this credibly, especially with young people, who seem to be most enthusiastic about his candidacy. Such a call to service could energize his campaign even more, and jolt Obamamania into high gear.

I don't know when the right moment to do this would be, but if the moment is right, it could do a lot to sweep him to the presidency.