perfidy

The results from the Iowa Caucus were surprising to me. Not that Dean faded, because for several days his strength has been flagging. What surprised me was the sudden Edwards surge - to second place, no less. I am sure Johno will agree with me that Kerry's win is not exactly a good thing, but then I don't think any of them winning is a good thing.

Speaking of good things, it looks like Gephardt will, unlike Quixote, stop tilting at windmills and withdraw from the race. Three down, seven to go.

Over at Common Sense and Wonder, Max reports that the has been a realignment in the election markets.

Last week I mentioned that I was tempted to short the Dean-NH Contract at Tradesports.com. At the time it was pricing in a 85% chance of a Dean NH victory. And since I could see that Dean would probably lose Iowa, I figured the price of that contract would plummet. Now the Dean contract is only trading at 40. Oh well.

FYI, here are the latest from the political markets:

Iowa Electronic Market probabilities for candidates to win the Democratic nomination:

Kerry - 34.5%
Dean - 24%
Clark - 17%
Hillary - 2%
Lieberman - 1%
Gephardt - 0%
Field (Edwards and the rest) - 22%

(There's a lot of other good stuff there, check it out.)

With Gephardt knocked out, even with his strong labor support, I agree with Max that it looks like Kerry v. Dean for the big nomination. However, Edwards is showing strong and he can't be ruled out. For one thing, even though his positions are almost identical to Kerry's, it's a major plus for him that he isn't Kerry. It will be interesting to see when the Rev. Al either leaves the race, or makes whatever move he had in mind when he got in, because he surely didn't think he was going to win. I predict that Dean, Kerry, and Edwards will be in until the convention, at least nominally. I further predict that the other candidates will leave in this order: Lieberman, Clark, Kucinich, Sharpton.

Lieberman, despite his appeal to the middle, can't crack 5%, and will realize this soon enough. Unless Clark does a lot better in New Hampshire than most people think, he will drop, because I don't think he's getting the funding he needs to persevere. Kucinich is just too crazy to quit early. Sharpton might stay until the convention, just to try to pull some kind of kingmaker move with his support in the black population. Who knows.

[wik] James at Outside the Beltway has a good roundup of the the Caucuses.

[alsø wik] Greg over at Begging to Differ has an interesting thought about the Edwards rise and Dean fall:

Edwards seems to be positioning himself as the Pollyanna of the campaign, someone capable of giving voters positive messages they can feel good about. In Iowa, it seems to have paid off, big time. For Edwards to pull in over thirty percent of the vote is remarkable. It also makes one wonder if Dean's appeal doesn't translate into votes. (Possibly, Democrats feel the same way about Dean that many conservatives feel about Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly: they get a cathartic buzz from listening to their schtick, but they'd never choose either to be their leader.)

This seems to me to be a good take. The calm, cornfed midwesterners of Iowa are not as likely to respond to the Dean anger as some flinty New Englanders or flame hungry internet supporters. I have a hard time believing that Edwards is anything more than a set of carefully crafted policy points with no soul, but hey! I could be wrong.