Iowa Caucuses

First of all, I stayed up way too late to watch the spectacle, noodling around on the laptop while Matthews chortled and Olbermann cracked wise on MSNBC. Thought about blogging it all, but realized I'm not ambidextrous enough to type and listen at the same time. So I watched and then fell asleep on the couch.

In the end, it was nothing but good news for Democrats. Obama winning handily, successfully turning out young voters and independents; Edwards, who by all accounts had worked his tail off in Iowa, coming in second; and Hillary in third by a fraction of a point, which in my book is the perfect serving of humility for her campaign.

The highlight of the whole shebang, though, was Obama's acceptance speech. I can't remember a damn thing about it -- there was a lot of broad talk about the audacity of hope, having more work to do, and thank you, Iowans, for proving that we want change. It's here if you haven't seen it yet.

But the true success of the night was that he proved he could win. People could and would support him, and stunningly, in unprecedented numbers. He's not just the black candidate. He's everybody's candidate. I think, amongst Democrats at least, there was a holding back of judgement, a sense of wait-and-see. He's so new and his rise so meteoric, that it's hard not to want to take a step back and question his fundamentals, so to speak. In that way, Hillary's initial sense of inevitability might make more sense. If you're looking for someone to project competence, Hillary's your lady; charisma and star power, though . . . not so much.

But, here we are in the caesura between Iowa and New Hampshire, and polls are uniformly showing an Obama surge of 10pts or so over the rest of the field. It's early still, obviously, but if things break the way they're looking to, it may already be a done deal.