Who Will Surprise?

Beating expectations in the caucuses can be more important than winning, and most everyone has a theory on who's going to surprise on Thursday.

There are several good candidates, but let me throw my three cents (inflation and all...) for Ron Paul. Here's a few reasons why:

1. His supporters are Committed (a lower-case "c" doesn't seem sufficient). Paul raises money and draws crowds almost literally without effort. He's a conduit completing an untapped circuit with a great deal of power, a power he seems a bit unsure how to use. Most of these people need no organization to turn out.
2. His opponents' supporters are not committed. Oh sure, each candidate has their hard-cores, but no other Republican engenders nearly the intensity of support.
   
3. He doesn't really have competition. Every time I go to a Paul event, someone asks him if he'd consider running as an Independent. The thing is, he already is in everything but name. His supporters are by and large not drawn from other candidates, they're people being drawn into a system they'd given up on. A surge by another Republican isn't going to hurt him much.
4. Polls underrepresent him. I don't have proof of this, but given that Paul's supporters are largely outside the mainstream and obsessed with privacy rights, it's hard to imagine that a lot of them are picking up a lot of calls from pollsters.

He will not win the GOP nomination no matter how much the true-believers would like to believe so, and it's not because the media isn't giving him a fair shake. But I think he'll outperform his poll numbers, and it wouldn't shock me to see him in third place on caucus night.

Obama and the Independents, Part II

I was talking to a local Iowa journalist friend of mine this morning. He said he is a registered Independent, and was quite surprised to be called yesterday on his cell phone by the Obama campaign. It's a number that he said only 15-20 people have, and he couldn't figure out how they got it.

It's just one data point, so no reading too much into it. The top three Democratic campaigns have amazing organizations in Iowa, though, probably all better than any past candidate's effort. I have a feeling political consultants will be dissecting for years to come what some are doing here today.

The Game-Changing Register Poll

Like the most desperate of political junkies I am, New Year's Eve had to wait. The dog had been walked for the evening and a change of attire had taken place, but I wasn't going to leave the house until the Des Moines Register poll came out at 9:00.

The Register poll is influential here if only by virtue of its being the state's largest paper, and because of its impressive reputation on politics. But it was also last week voted by far the most reliable poll by professional pollsters.

Every other poll showed Clinton stabilizing, Obama down, and Edwards up ever since Christmas weekend. Huckabee had been dropping from his earlier heights as well, leading many to wonder if he'd peaked too early, and whether his gaffes and Romney's tough attacks were taking their toll.

A shocker it turned out to be. The Register showed Obama widening his lead since last month, now leading Clinton by seven and Edwards by eight, outside the margin of error. Huckabee stayed up on Romney by six.

The big story is on the Democratic side, where the poll predicted nearly 50 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers weren't Democrats. Forty percent of Independents and five percent of Republicans said they would caucus for Democrats on Thursday.

Rival campaigns were highly critical, saying such numbers would be unprecedented, and indeed they would be. Clinton's campaign was quick to point out that if only Democrats were polled, Clinton led Obama.

But don't be shocked if it actually happens. In months on the trail, I constantly run into Independents and Republicans who are disgusted with the GOP, and the vast majority of them favor Obama. How many will overcome the psychological barrier of changing their party registration to vote in the Democratic caucuses?

I won't pretend to have a read on that, but if ever there was an election for it to happen, this may be it.

All the candidates have been making their best cases for electability. I did a couple of pieces on Obama's appeal to Independents and Democrats back in October, and the most striking thing about my research for them was that the analysts and non-Democrats I spoke to were more optimistic about Obama's appeal than his campaign representatives. I don't think they've been pushing the issue enough, honestly.

But one thing is clear: if the poll bears out, Obama will have largely proven his general election viability in the first contest.

Obama Brings in the Canvassers

There must be an explicit code among non-Iowa journalists that one must complain about how cold Iowa is as soon as one gets here. Maybe it's part of a union contract.

When I read these words, I inwardly...chortle? That sounds about right. Having grown up quite a way to the north of Des Moines, I find the idea is silly that 32 degrees is frigid.

But today I agree. Walking the two blocks from my car to Roosevelt High School was physically painful in 10-degree temperatures and a strong headwind. So now someone in Calgary can laugh to himself at what a wimp I am.

Weather, and the fact that it is New Year's Day with its college football buffet, didn't stop 1,000-plus people from coming to the Obama canvass kick-off here, however.

The pre-caucus mania is cresting, the result on the Democratic side of a tight race and numerous likeable candidates. Lots of people are ready to go to the wall for their candidates. I don't know how many blocks people are going to get today going door-to-door, but they've cleared a big psychological hurdle even getting this far.

* Photo: Obama on stage with wife Michelle, and daughters Malia Ann and Sasha

This Answers So Many Questions

Psychiatrist Paul Steinberg has a fascinating article in the NYT about binge drinking and how it affects long-term brain function in rats.

...after a longstanding abstinence following heavy binge-drinking, adult rats can learn effectively — but they cannot relearn.

When put into a tub of water and forced to continue swimming until they find a platform on which to stand, the sober former binge-drinking rats and the normal control rats (who had never been exposed to alcohol) learned how to find the platform equally well. But when the experimenters abruptly moved the platform, the two groups of rats had remarkably different performances. The rats without previous exposure to alcohol, after some brief circling, were able to find the new location. The former binge-drinking rats, however, were unable to find the new platform; they became confused and kept circling the site of the old platform.

Why? The toxicity brought on by heavy drinking lingers long in the brain.

From a political perspective, though, this quote warrants the double take:

Even after longstanding sobriety this inflammatory response translates into a tendency to stay the course, a diminished capacity for relearning and maladaptive decision-making.

"Stay the course?" President Bush isn't mentioned in the article, but he appears to be there in spirit, so to speak.

The obvious question is whether results like these can be extrapolated to humans. Maybe not, although the author thinks there's a good case to believe they can.

Our understanding of how the brain operates is experiencing giant leaps forward. When future historians try to piece together how such a disastrous presidency happened, it's an area that will receive substantial attention.

Hat tip to the High Plains Bull Moose.

How Negative Will Clinton Go in Iowa?

David Corn asks, and the answer from inside Clinton sources seems to be, as much as we have to.

An interesting flip of conventional wisdom from one:

"We once thought he had to win Iowa to stay alive," this Clintonite says. "We now think that we might have to win to stay alive." Will the fight get even more nasty as Iowa approaches? "There's still plenty of time for that," this person says. "And that's how things go in politics. There may be no choice."

From a politico's point of view, sure. But in the context of this race, doesn't going negative, especially by the book, feed right into Obama's narrative? Voters are always fed up, but this year seems worse than usual. Obama is telling them he's the one who can change that for good, that there is a choice in whether a candidate has to attack.

Of course, it depends on which attacks voters believe are unfair. It appears Iowans believe Obama and Edwards were on the right side of the line with theirs. Clinton's have sounded harsher, and she also faces a problem that plenty of voters think she's a bit nasty underneath anyway.

Little doubt she's tough as her campaign sells her. How much toughness will voters want?