With the Iowa caucuses hours away, here’s my guesses as to how the primaries will play out. Although these are simply guesses tinted by my own biases and unsupportable by empirical evidence, I’ll resist the urge to label these “conventional wisdom”. Since I’m the same guy who called “bullshit” on a poll predicting a Kerry win in Iowa four years ago, take the following with a grain of salt.

On the Democratic side, I think Edwards is gonna take Iowa in an upset. The first round of caucusing may resemble the polls we’ve seen, but I think Edwards is going to be a much more attractive second pick candidate than Clinton or Obama. I can’t imagine Hillary would be a popular second round pick. People already know a lot about her and have made up their minds before caucusing. Of the top three, I think her support is as solid as it’s gonna get. Obama, on the other hand, is a much more charismatic presence on the campaign trail, but I doubt that his caucus-going supporters will be able to impress undecideds with platitudes about “hope” and “change”.

Another thing working in Edwards favor is that Iowa has been framed as a two-person race for a while between Clinton and Obama. The caucuses four years ago were also a two way race between Dean (who placed a distant third) and Gephardt (who dropped out that night). If this year plays out the same way, Edwards could sneak up the middle as a choice that combines some of the most appealing qualities of the top two. While he hasn’t been around Washington as long as Clinton, his role in the 2004 campaign gives him a one-up in the “experience” area against Obama (whose last election was against a candidate nobody expected to win). On the other hand, when it comes to Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” campaign-style, Edwards campaign is every bit as status-quo shattering and would provide just as great a contrast with the Clinton campaign.

If Edwards does win in Iowa, I think it’ll mark the beginning of the end for Obama. For one, it would give the press a new storyline about the Obama campaign being a well-funded hype machine that couldn’t translate its enthusiasm into votes (like Dean in ’04). Moreover, it’ll give the Edwards campaign a breath of fresh air and go a long way towards establishing him as the “not-Hillary candidate” (though I could easily see the same working in reverse if Obama beats Edwards).

On the Republican side, I think Ron Paul is going to win because he’s the only candidate that cares about the constitution and freedom. Also, his supporters rented him a blimp.

Okay, let’s try this again…

On the Republican side, I think Huckabee is going to probably win Iowa by default. More important than Huckabee winning, though, is that I think Mitt Romney is going to get crushed. Not just because he’s a transparent phony who’s trying to buy the election (which caucus-goers will resent), but he really sucks at pandering to his base. He’s terrible at it. For example, check out how he slammed Huckabee earlier today :

Mitt Romney, who is spending the final day before the caucuses jetting around Iowa, is hitting rival Mike Huckabee for abandoning the Hawkeye State on caucus eve to make an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

“Well, frankly my focus is on the caucuses here in Iowa. I think Mike is more concerned about the caucus in Los Angeles,” Romney told voters at Bettendorf Middle School.

Any decent Republican strategist would see Huckabee’s caucus-eve trip as a golden opportunity to bash Hollywood and kiss Iowans asses by referring to their neck of the woods as the “real America”, but the best Romney could come up with was some clumsy statement about “the caucus in Los Angeles”. Huh??

Another thing working against Romney is that he’s a Mormon. Although most conservative voters would have a hard time admitting to a pollster that they think the LDS church is a weird (I prefer to think of it as a fanfic version of Christianity), I think a lot of Iowans who might otherwise vote for Mitt will find convenient reasons not to support him. While his flip-flopping may be the official reason for his fall, I think old-fashioned religious bigotry will be his undoing. Since he decided to make his faith a selling point in the campaign, his downfall will be hilarious to watch. Live by the cross, die by the cross.

The other big news on the GOP side will be McCain having a surprisingly strong showing in Iowa that will position him to win New Hampshire and turn the GOP primary into a two-man race with Huckabee. Giuliani’s irrelevance in the early primaries will leave him virtually shut out of the press coverage aside from the occasional “Where are they now?” piece. Like the Dems four years ago, Republicans are in an “anyone but ____” mode and will ultimately go with the candidate they think has the strongest chance of beating the Democrats. That’s why I think “Maverick” McCain is going to beat Huckabee because the corporate whores who own the GOP won’t allow the nominee to be some hick who might raise taxes.

…then again, I could be wrong.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about my support of medical marijuana :

I can understand why advocates would try to find ways around the racist, elitist, hypocritical, and mostly evil “war” on drugs. Even worse, the FDA has been notorious in their unwillingness to even consider approving marijuana for pharmaceutical use. That said, going the state’s rights route towards legalization was pretty wrongheaded at the outset. Even when these laws originally passed, there was always a feeling of “civil disobedience” in the air. The inevitable conflict with federal law was a ticking clock that hung over every “cannabis club” in the country.
. . .
I think the “war” on drugs is awful, but I thought we were talking about the ways marijuana helps ease the enormous pain and suffering of cancer patients. Yes, the two issues are related, but nobody should be exploiting the sympathy for the terminally ill to piggyback the larger, but tangential, issue of the excessive criminalization of narcotics onto this particular fight.
. . .
A far more reasonable approach would be for Congress to pass an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act that would move marijuana from its Schedule I status to Schedule II. While getting Congress to relax drug laws may seem like a pipe dream, the real world implications would be to simply move pot from the class that includes LSD and heroin to the one that includes cocaine, morphine, and crystal meth. While this probably wouldn’t do much to satisfy the “Legalize It!” crowd, it should give doctors the leeway to prescribe the drug for their patients, open the door to FDA approval, and subject it to more than enough regulations to keep the drug out of the hands of recreational users.

Unfortunately, as The Raw Story notes, the overlap between medical marijuana advocates and those who seek to decriminalize recreational use has lead to “chaos” :

In September, the DEA raided the California Healthcare Collective in Modesto and arrested the store’s chief financial officer, Luke Scarmazzo. “They handcuffed me and put me on my kitchen table,” Scarmazzo told 60 Minutes. “One of them … said ‘you knew I’d be coming soon.’”

Scarmazzo acknowledged that he had been earning $13,000 a month for running the dispensary but insisted “I was working a lot of hours.” Scarmazzo’s lawyer described his client’s situation as a case of “selective prosecution,” because the 26-year-old Scarmazzo is also a hiphop artist, with a widely distributed Internet video in which he appears as a high-living drug dealer, chanting “Fuck the feds.”

Complicating the legal situation, California’s pot shops have admittedly become an easy source of supply for people who just want to get high. According to 60 Minutes, the California law was originally intended to provide access only to the most needy, but in an attempt not to exclude any category of illness, it wound up with language so broad that it covers ever the vaguest complaint of pain. Now anyone with a note from their doctor can buy medical marijuana, and some doctors even advertise for patients in alternative papers.

“Fuck the feds”…really mature. This kind of shit is an embarrassment and it completely undermines the movement to allow medicinal use of marijuana.

I’ve had friends with cancer who swear by marijuana as the perfect drug to treat the side effects of chemo (it relieves pain, controls nausea, and increases appetite). Yet it’s hard to make the broader case that the FDA should evaluate marijuana when the most visible examples of the drug in action are “clubs” that intentionally blur the line between medicinal and recreational use. How can you convince the government that marijuana is a safe and effective way to relieve suffering when it’s most visible advocates seem to be spending their time helping provide legal weed to people who are more interested in marijuana’s extra-curricular effects. It would be nice if the medical marijuana dispensaries would take the responsibility to crack down on recreational users and realize that centers for the distribution of controlled substances for medical use are pharmacies, not social gatherings.