Josh Marshall has an interesting post on
his site today about the closeness of the Iowa race. His most shocking conclusion: Kerry might actually win the thing.
One of the campaigns has tracking numbers out of Iowa which shows each of the top three -- Dean, Gephardt and Kerry -- clumped to within a point or two. And today's Zogby poll seems to point in the same direction Dean 24%, Gephardt 21%, Kerry 21%.
As things run down to the wire, you hear a lot of things, many of which aren't confirmable. But I know that several days ago one very high-level Iowa Democrat (one who hasn't endorsed anyone) told folks that he thought that if the caucuses were held then (late last week) that Kerry would probably beat Gephardt and possibly even win the whole thing.
I don't think anyone has any really solid clue what's happening. But it does give you a sense of the fluidity of the race -- and not just the Dean-Gephardt contest we've all been focusing on.
A lot of people here give Josh shit because he hasn't jumped onto the Dean bandwagon yet, but I think he's still a valuable resource, if only for finding out what the Washington branch of the center-left establishment thinks. This is interesting because it illustrates how close the Iowa contest really is.
And it begs the question, what happens if Kerry wins? That completely defies expectations for the man, and might open up a whole new world of possibilities. If Kerry wins Iowa then suddenly Dean's gotta play hardcore defense against both this new Comeback Kid and Clark in New Hampshire-- if Dean loses there he'll be in a tight spot. It also would mean that Clark would suddenly have to do an about face and handle Kerry's threat as well as Dean's in New Hampshire. And it would throw the result of Super Tuesday into completely unpredictable territory.
On the plus side, coming back from such a huge deficit would be almost Clintonian in its political skill. So if Kerry can pull off an Iowa win then maybe he's got more political acumen than any of us thought.