• Hotline On Call
• The Corner
• Memeorandum
• Ground Game
• BlogNetNews/Iowa
• Google Maps
• William Beutler on Twitter
• IowaCaucus on Twitter
• Drudge Siren alerts, via Gmail
• Several Gchat windows, also via Gmail

Feel free to recommend something in the comments; I’ll add anything that I end up following.

For the record, I’m hoping for a strong third-place finish for Fred Thompson, and a Huckabee win to keep Romney from getting one. For the Democrats, I’m hoping for a persuasive Obama (not Edwards) victory to keep things interesting. One thing I am definitely rooting against: respectable wins by Romney and Hillary; that is to say, I’m rooting against Iowa.

8:58 update: It’s not even 9:00 Eastern and Fox News is calling it for Huckabee, with Thompson third: 36-23-14. Haha, only if she’s 5'3".

9:28 update: Half an hour later, MSNBC calls Iowa for Obama first, Fox follows close behind. Things will get more interesting.

9:32 update: The Google Maps Iowa caucus page still says:

Come back tonight for live results!

9:45 update: You know, the Dem results came back a lot faster than expected. So much for Edwards’ momentum, though it seems to be playing as a Hillary loss. Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty guessed correctly this morning in a piece that should get a second look.

10:28 update: Back and forth between the non-concession speeches [updated: and in 2OT, victory speeches] on CNN and the down-to-the-wire Blazer game on TNT. For once I need picture-in-picture. [Final update: "115-109, THE HOTTEST TEAM IN THE NBA GOES TO 20 AND 13!"]

11:58 update: Looks like Chris Dodd already had his throwing-in-the-towel banner ready to go:

Whereas it appears that Joe Biden did not:

No great surprise, Mike Gravel’s website hasn’t been throwing rocks into the lake since December 31. [Update: Gravel is still in the race, eh? That'll teach me to believe what Keith Olbermann says.]

12:37 update: Not to pile on Dodd, who wasn’t the only sub-1% Democrat tonight, but the best headline of the night belongs to Eric Pfeiffer:

Chris Dodd .08!

12:52 update: While the most unlikely reportage is Isaac Chotiner’s:

TNR friend Charles Barkley writes to say that Obama winning Iowa is a “great start” and he hopes it leads to Obama “winning it all.” And who wants to argue with Sir Charles?

1:01 update: Calling it a night.

No, wait. One last update: If you’ll allow me to indulge, via Twitter:

If Romney loses Iowa after having spent $1.8 billion there and then loses in his backyard in New Hampshire he’ll be in bad, bad shape. The horrid press over the following few weeks would likely kill him.

(ed.note: I had meant the reference to Mitt’s $1.8 billion in spending in Iowa to be an obvious bit of sarcasm at Romney’s expense. But it seems Romney’s efforts to buy the Republican nomination have become so notorious and proverbial that many readers are asking if it’s really true. So, no, I believe his spending is well below $1.8 billion. But he wants it really bad and there’s still a day left. So who knows.)

$1.8 billion sounds plausible? Using what counting system?

Elsewhere on the web today, a Des Moines-based WFAA reporter says Romney has spent $4 million on TV ads; also today, Fred Thompson [disclosure] aide Rich Galen writes in a column for CNS news,

according to the Professional Guessing Class, [Romney] may have spent upwards of $8 MILLION here

If Romney has in fact spent $8 million, which doesn’t sound like a bad guess, then he would have to spend 225 times that in order to spend $1.8 billion. CNN says all the candidates combined have spent $40 million on TV ads; I’d be surprised if there was a billion dollars worth of TV time to be had in Iowa in an entire year.

If Romney really dropped that much money in the state, Iowa could practically retire, and hey, maybe accede to another state or system its coveted first-in-the-nation status. Which would probably be a good thing for everyone. Except, of course, Iowa.

P.S. For example, see this from First Read:

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa — A woman who famously switched from volunteering for Clinton to Obama has changed her mind… again. …

“Probably I’ll caucus for Richardson,” she said after Edwards spoke. “My guess is he won’t be viable, and then I’ll probably scoot right over to Edwards.”

Are Iowans really so serious about their vote? Or are they spoiled and self-indulgent? In another state, I’ll bet voters would not feel so entitled, political observers would not ascribe such mythical status to their choices, and just maybe, subsequent states would have a bigger say in the primary process.

Alas, as my former Hotline colleague Reid Wilson explains, attempts at reform might be about as easy to properly implement as the Fair Tax.

P.S. After some consideration, I actually wish I had called this “Josh Marshall’s Readers Are… Not So Good With Numbers.”

The blog bills itself as

THE FIRST UNOFFICIAL HUCKABEE FOR PRESIDENT CAMPAIGN BLOG FOUNDED FEB. 14,2005

but I think that might be underselling it. I’m pretty sure Mike Huckabee President 2008 was the first unofficial 2008 blog for any candidate, period — launched February 14, 2005.

Compare to Evangelicals for Mitt, which launched in June 2006. That was before Romney was actively running, but still more than a year after MHP2008 got its start. Mark Coffey at Decision ‘08 actually launched in November 2004, which is about as far back as you can push it (his tagline until recently: “Because it’s never too early”) but he’s an observer, not an advocate.

I’m sure if you looked hard, you could find blog-carcasses strewn alongside the information superhighway. A quick Google search turned up Grassroots for Gore, launched in May 2005 and abandoned about a year later.

It takes some confidence — to say nothing of stamina — to start backing a candidate three years before the Iowa caucuses. Not only do you have to be reasonably sure your candidate will actually run, but you’ve got to stay interested as the months and years drag on.

Congratulations, Mike Huckabee President 2008. I look forward to reading Mike Huckabee President 2016.

P.S. Primary disclosure: I’m with Fred. Secondary disclosure: If you’re reading this on Firefox for Mac, the heart symbol isn’t going to show up, and I haven’t the slightest idea why not.

Thanks to ornery Texans like Ross Perot and anti-war doctors like Howard Dean, I can see why Paul’s supporters might think he has a chance. And nobody’s been feeding that perception more than Patrick Ruffini.

As he wrote about you in late August:

Ron Paul Will Place Second at Ames … You heard it here first.

Last night, after the results came in, it was:

Also, Ron Paul finished fifth.

And it’s not the first time he’s burned you like this. On the first of July, he wrote:

My surprise prediction on the Republican side: Ron Paul will raise at least $4 million.

But later that week it was:

Ron Paul’s Fundraising Disappoints

Sorry, Paulbots — Ruffini isn’t doing you any favors. His projections might have made you feel good over the past month or so, but the hangover is worse. Heck, last night Paul finished behind Tancredo — with Tommy Thompson nipping at his heels. What happened? Maybe your enthusiasm raised expectations a little too much, and maybe Ruffini helped set those expectations among Washington insiders.

As for Ruffini, hey, he’s just making the kind of bold predictions that Beltway pundits love: You’re a genius if you’re right, and no one remembers if you’re wrong. The problem for you Paul supporters is that he’s been doing it at your expense.

Of course, I’m not your friend either (disclosure), so make of this what you will.

In just the past month, a few very large states have started talking about moving their presidential primaries to the first week in February. Those states include Illinois, Florida, New Jersey and the fifth-largest economy in the world, California. This shouldn’t be a surprise: the parties want a bigger say in presidential nominations, and the rest of each state wants a bigger slice of that billion-dollar pie. What’s more, Illinois would like to give favorite son Barack Obama a major boost — and they can’t do it if their primary still comes after Super Tuesday. According to The Green Papers, at least nine other states have taken steps to move their primaries up.

Primary front-loading is a perennial good-government gripe about the nomination process. Coincidentally or not, it continues unabated. And it’s not just the primaries — the presidential debates are starting even earlier this year. The rules are different on the Republican side, but over time, Republicans have generally adopted changes first proposed by the (more process-oriented) Democrats.

This time around the Democratic National Committee, under superlative-magnet chairman Howard Dean, deliberately enabled some noteworthy front-loading: Nevada’s caucus and South Carolina’s primary were both moved up to late January so union members and African-Americans would have a say in the process, whereas they would not in right-to-work Iowa and 97% white New Hampshire. Everybody else can go starting Feb. 5.

Remember that when Howard Dean ascended to party chair in early 2005, the Washington establishment balked. Dean’s support among liberal bloggers might have been a foregone conclusion, but one idea they shared with Dean — a plan to rebuild the party’s national reach by contesting races and spending money all around the country, even in districts previously abandoned to the GOP — helped him win over the state-based committee members who put him over the top.

Needless to say, this has been controversial inside the Beltway, especially after Dean’s slow fundraising start. The party has enjoyed fundraising success under Dean since then, but he’s given so much of it to state parties that the old complaints gave way to new ones.

Of course, the state parties love the arrangement. State party executive directors — they control state party budgets, not the unpaid, figurehead party chairs — queued up to accept their party-building money. For Dean, it was probably a smart move — it may have pre-empted James Carville’s would-be coup before it got very far.

But Dean’s indulgence of the state parties cuts both ways: Yes, he has their support when negotiating with the Beltway establishment. But the nomination process isn’t about that — it’s every state for themselves. And the state executive directors also know Dean won’t be in charge of the party forever: once a nominee is chosen, he or she becomes the de facto leader of the party, and who knows what happens after that. Are the states pressing their advantage now because they know Dean won’t say no to them?

I bet this wouldn’t be happening under Terry McAuliffe. To be sure, McAuliffe was complicit in front-loading the process himself — his big idea was to front-load things just enough to produce a nominee early to take on Bush. In practice, the John Kerry electability meme took hold around the same time and was decisive. (What meme will be temporarily entrenched a year from yesterday?) But his base of power was firmly inside the Beltway — the Clintons and their donors — and not in the states.

The DNC chair can invalidate a state’s primary, or withhold funds, or threaten to do these things. Certainly in public, Dean has said nothing of the sort, even though New Hampshire secretary of state William Gardner is ready to hopscotch Nevada and Florida is openly talking about moving its primary to Jan. 29 — a week ahead of the agreed-upon window.

When it comes to the nomination schedule, how far can the state parties go? What, if anything, can Dean do about it?

Let’s imagine that the big four states move their primaries up to the first Tuesday in February. (If not 2008, then 2012.) Along with the states already camped out here, that day will be worth more than 1,000 delegates (1,098 using 2004 figures). That’s almost exactly what Super Tuesday (March 2) was worth in 2004. If this happened, there wouldn’t be much of a Super Tuesday left, and the whole thing could be settled two weeks after the Iowa caucuses — where’s the fun in that?

So what do we call this… Mega Tuesday? There’s already been one of those. Uber Tuesday? Perhaps a little too Teutonic. Colossal Tuesday? You can never really count on naming these things, but for now I’m calling it Ginormous Tuesday.

Pat named her cat Hillary and when she heard that Hillary, the presidential candidate, was coming to town, she got a friend to help her and they managed to get Hillary (the cat) to make a paw print on a picture of Hillary (the cat) to give Hillary (the candidate.) …

She also said, “I have never heard a national candidate with such a fine-tuned knowledge of children. Thank you for your service to children.”

Hillary voter, right?

“I am not satisfied with her explanation about the Iraq war,” Pat said.

But come on. After the cat, the blue eyes, the paw print, the red blazer, the knowledge of children, the 12 TV cameras and international press corps taking down every word, after all this, you are really not going to commit to Hillary?

“Well, she is one of my top three,” Pat said.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, how much money you have or how much star power you bring to the table. They don’t care if you are not right on their issues.

These are votes you have to earn.

And there’s a very simple reason about why they are able to put you through the ringer to earn that vote: the caucus rules.

The rules are very complicated and the longer someone is a participant, the better they know them. Rural areas can yield you as many delegates as urban ones because of the previous year’s attendance and because many committed activists over a large area are grouped together into a caucus location. You have to attend a 3 or 4 hour meeting to cast your vote and then the viability rule might nullify your first choice.

Then the real fun kicks in. Every staffer who’s ever set foot in Iowa will tell you a story about the one “activist” you had to get because that guy or gal was the person who could reel in the delegates who pick candidates that don’t meet the viability rule.

Markos and other bloggers don’t like this system.

Sometimes I wonder why. After all, there’s something special about a group of people who both have power and are unimpressed by it.