Is This Heaven?

No it's Iowa. - Field of Dreams

On Thursday about 250,000 people will take a major step in deciding the President of the United States. While in one sense, having a small state put the candidates through the ringer does force a candidate to actively campaign and allow the voting public to get to know them. If the first state were California for instance, it would be a very impersonal ad driven campaign. A small state like Iowa gives forces the candidate to practically go door to door.

Think about this for a minute. Since June 2nd, John Edwards has made 404 campaign appearances in Iowa, Obama has made 335 and HRC has made 285. That's over 1000 appearances between the three over the course of 7 months. In IOWA!!!!

Now think about the Demographics of Iowa. Think a guy like Rudy Giuliani ever stood a chance? Take a look at the two front runners for the Republicans in Iowa. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have played the Iowans like a fiddle. How else could these two phonies be leading? Mitt Romney has probably spent $20 mil in Iowa about $8 of which is his own money. What is he getting for his money? Probably less than 25,000 votes. And he could lose!!!!

Then there are the caucuses themselves. If you don't know how they work, this is a quick explanation. So now you have to think about what is the Demographic of someone that can spend up to 3 hours caucusing. I'm sure that a good amount of those 1000 appearances were done in retirement communities. Oh, and there is a National Championship Football game competing against this. How many young to middle aged men are going to miss the game to spend three hours caucusing?

The momentum coming out of Iowa is enough to make or break a candidate. If Mitt Romney or John Edwards fail to win, the campaigns are on life support. For Mitt, it would have an adverse effect on New Hampshire and the one two punch he was banking on would be over. John Edwards has gone all in for Iowa hoping that he could use it to springboard up to Obama and Clinton. Obama for that matter also needs the win to pierce the Clinton bubble of inevitability.

On January 3rd, it all comes down to Iowa.