Back to Gideon RachmanWell, it seems to me that the Iowa caucus has done two big things. It has narrowed the Democratic field for the White House down to two candidates - Hillary and Obama. And it has broadened the Republican field, giving both Mike Huckabee and John McCain a real shot at the nomination, and reviving the campaign of Rudy Giuliani.
Like the candidates, I am now poised to head for New Hampshire - although since the stakes are rather lower for me - I intend to pursue a slightly more leisurely schedule than John Edwards, who is apparently addressing a breakfast meeting there at 6.15 on Friday morning.
Watching the apres-Iowa speeches of the leading candidates was instructive. Edwards, who came second on the Democratic side, was impassioned, moving - and surely deluded in his insistence that he still has a chance. He staked everything on winning in Iowa and he is running out of money. Hillary was dignified, controlled, generous - but inescapably melancholy. Third in Iowa is a pretty terrible result for her. The momentum is clearly with Obama - and with the New Hampshire primary just five days away, she has precious little time to recover. Against any of the other Democrats, Hillary could still rely on her superior organisation and finance to rescue her in the bigger states. But Obama has raised even more money than her.
Obama himself was particularly energetic and euphoric - "pumped" is the term, I think. But I’m afraid - much as I would have loved to have loved him - his speech left me pretty cold. Perhaps I am a cynical European; perhaps I am jet-lagged. But all that "only in America", "unity not division", "politics of hope" stuff doesn’t get me out of my seat. Still, Obama is clearly bright, charismatic and the man to beat.
The Republican field is still wide open, largely because two of the leading candidates - McCain and Giuliani - in effect chose to sit Iowa out. Tellingly, Giuliani gave his post-Iowa interview from Florida and McCain was already in New Hampshire. Both men seemed genuinely relaxed about their weak showings in Iowa. That left it to Huckabee, the Republican winner in Iowa, to whoop it up.
Given that Huckabee’s image overseas is of a Bible-bashing hillbilly, I was pleasantly surprised. He is articulate, self-deprecating and quite funny. He also plays the plucky underdog with conviction. But the exit polls showed that he relied very heavily on the support of evangelical Christians. And there will probably not be enough of them to carry him to victory in the Republican primary in New Hampshire, let alone in New York or California. In New Hampshire, it is McCain who seems to be edging ahead in the polls. Giuliani, meanwhile, is pursuing a big state strategy which suddenly looks quite plausible.
The big Republican loser last night was Mitt Romney, whose whole stategy revolved around winning Iowa and New Hampshire. I didn’t get to see his post-Iowa speech. CNN were about to show him, when they decided instead to fade him down in favour of Huckabee - which says it all, really.
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