I'm sitting at my desk on the 19th floor in Shanghai doing work and listening to bad 80's music.  I started to feel a little woozy, as if I was dizzy and needed to lay down for a minute.  That's when I noticed that the cords on my window  shade were swinging back and forth.  Earthquake!

The swaying lasted about a minute or two here.  I'm sure it was much worse near the epicenter - no word on that yet.  

More on the flip side...

Seems like everyone's trying to do the impossible - guess the final result in this crazy, unpredictable Caucus.  What's missing, and what we should be pushing as the media narrative of the night, is something we can all get on board with.  

Given everything that's been written about how our side has a great field of candidates, and how their side has a odd assortment of escapees from the Island of the Misfit Toys, what we really should be pushing tonight is a story about turnout.

Democrats turnout in record numbers.

Republicans stay at home.

I know that everyone will be trying to spin a narrow win (or close 3rd place finish) in the best possible light.  That's to be expected and everyone who has worked so hard on the ground in Iowa has a right to spin things in their favor.  But on the whole, the party - and the progressive cause - is better served by spinning a different narrative.  The Dems generate excitement and interest; the Republicans are yesterday's news.

McCaskill has a 13,000 vote lead as of 1:23am ET.  Based on partial county returns, and assuming that the late precincts in those counties come in at the same proportion as the early results, she should get 40,284 additional votes in those partial counties.

That leaves 5 counties that are reporting no results:

- Clay

- Jasper

- Maries

- Pemiscot

- Polk.

I used the WP site to see how votes in those counties split for Bush/Kerry in 2004.  In those 5 counties, Bush beat Kerry by 31,600 votes.  Presumably, turnout will be lower this year (no presidential race), and Bush wouldn't fare as well in 2006 as he did in 2004.  So I think we can reasonably assume that as long as the demographics didn't change hugely, that we're looking at less than 30,000 shift to Talent in these 5 counties.

With those assumptions, I think McCaskill leads going into the recount by roughly 23,000 votes.