IOWA PREDICTIONS

Dems:
The winner in Iowa will be John Edwards by the slimmest of margins. I love to make sweeping generalizations about geographical areas, and the primaries are the perfect time to indulge my preconceived notions about midwesterners. The practicality that had Iowa dump Howard Dean in 2004 for being too prickly and Vermontish, will have them dumping Barack and Hillary for being too black and too female respectively. It's not that the good people of Iowa don't want to vote for a black man or a woman, they're just practical. Like me they share a prejudice against different parts of the country. They want a democratic nominee that can win it all, and they don't trust the South when it comes to Obama, and they don't expect anyone between the Mississippi river and California to vote for Hillary. I can't imagine a world where Hillary carries Nevada, and neither can the Buckeye state.

GOP:
Huckabee will win Iowa. The Evangelicals are determined to hold onto the power they've wielded for so long and they've proven themselves to be one of the most dedicated voting blocks in the country. Romney's an appealing candidate to many Republicans, but he won't be able to bring people in droves to town hall on a cold January evening the way Jesus can. The thing I'm waiting to see is if Ron Paul shows up on the radar screen at all.

I fully expect to be eating crow next week, but by then it'll be time for a new round of completely inaccurate and underinformed predictions.