After a couple of days digesting Iowa and seeing the expected polling trends (who said Iowa wouldn't matter in NH? Not me!), here's how things seem to stand:
Kerry is easily favored to win New Hampshire. Dean's concession speech, more than his third-place finish, seems to have killed his support amongst the older set. The "WWF Generation" probably loved Dean's rebel yell, but those guys are the least reliable voters. Dean's negatives in NH are now up to a 30+ percent. That number, more than anything, spells out the trouble he is in.
The debate tonight may alloow for some movement. There's no doubt that Sharpton's race attacks on Dean drew blood just days before the caucuses, though I would venture to guess Dean was more affected by the Canada tapes and Gep's attacks than anything else.
But debates can have an effect. And given that Braun and Gephardt are gone, the stage will be less cluttered than at any time in this race. Will the field gang up on Dean and go for the KO, or will they turn on the new frontrunner? We'll see in short order.
In any case, I'll say right now that Kerry should win NH. If Dean pulls of the unlikely victory, he's back to frontrunner status and would cruise through to the nomination. But he probably won't win. So where does that leave him?
Dean still has the money spigot. He has raised more money post-Iowa than Kerry or Edwards combined (over half a million). Of course, if money controlled, Dean would've won Iowa and Bush would cruise to reelection. Lucky for our Democracy, money is just a single factor.
But still, it's hard to play without money, and Kerry is not running ads in a single Feb 3 state. He'll depend on free media, and as we've seen with Dean, you can't depend on the press pack. I'm having a hard time seeing a path for Kerry post-NH.
But that's not necessarily a plus for Dean. Let's be realistic, one week is not a lot of time for Dean to reinvent himself. Or hire a new ad firm to handle their thus-far pathetic advertisement. Or shake up whatever internal staff needs to be shaken. So NH will likely be a desperate battle for second place.
But Dean has the luxury of time and a solid foundation in the Feb 3 states. And money. So he'll try to win a couple of those states and try to survive through to Maine and Washington where he can resurrect his campaign. It wouldn't be pretty, but it's been done before (Mondale).
The clearest path to the nomination, right now, probably belongs to Edwards, riding his post-Iowa bounce into SC and a couple of the other Feb 3 states. But even that is not so clear. This thing is wide open.
I wouldn't put money on any of these guys.