Obama wins!

Well, I got the winners in both parties wrong.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney was much weaker than I had expected. And among the Democrats, I had figured that John Edwards had a better ground game than Barack Obama and that Hillary Clinton was fading.

With some precincts still to report, it looks like Clinton will finish third, a psychological disaster for her campaign.

Clinton has enough money, organization and popular support to soldier on, but if she finishes third tonight, she is badly wounded. Edwards, in second place, has dodged a proverbial bullet.

What if Edwards wins Iowa?

If John Edwards finishes first in Thursday night's Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa (which I predicted here a few days ago), the race for the nomination might last a lot longer than would otherwise be the case.

BooMan analyzes the situation here.

POSTSCRIPT: I have to admit that I've lost a little of the confidence I had in my prediction that Edwards will win in Iowa. My radar is picking up on a last-minute rush toward Barack Obama. But I'll stick with my Edwards pick.

Ouch!

This TV spot (h/t to DailyKos) for John Edwards delivers some pretty good hits on Hillary Clinton:

Hair, schmair!

The John Edwards campaign is out with a good video response to all the foolish media attention paid to haircuts rather than more important matters.

(H/T to Talking Points Memo.)

So-called liberal media overlook GOP falsehoods

Paul Krugman notes here that even the Washington Post gave Mitt Romney a pass when he wrongly stated earlier this week that the war in Iraq could have been avoided if Saddam Hussein had let in weapons inspectors.

Saddam did, in fact, allow weapons inspectors to enter the country. They didn't find anything, so the Bush administration ordered them out to make way for the U.S. invasion.

Romney's version of events is entirely, provably, scandalously false. But the media mostly have ignored his prevarications in favor of focusing on relatively trivial matters.

So, what's the latest on John Edwards' haircuts? What's Hillary wearing today? Have lightning and thunder interrupted any of Rudy Giuliani's speeches lately?


UPDATE: Here's another take on Romney's lie and how it echoed George W. Bush's fiction on the same subject.

John Edwards lays it out well

I'm beginning to pay more attention to what John Edwards is saying these days, and it's making more sense to me that anything I'm hearing from...well, from Hillary Clinton, for example.

Edwards delivered a speech today to the Council on Foreign Relations that showed nerve, brains and vision.

I wouldn't rule this guy out for the Democratic presidential nomination, no matter that Clinton and Barack Obama are the front-runners at this point. It's a three-way race, as I see it.