Simply not true. Eyewitness accounts suggest at most half of K supporters in most precincts went to E and there weren't that many K supporters, except in college towns. Not true that Edwards "relied heavily..." on anyone except people who decided late to support him, showed up, and supported him.

Joementum!! Ahh, good memories.

I need to get a diary written on why Gephardt and Dean tanked in Iowa. It was not because Gephardt went ballistic on Dean in December.

Steve Murphy, Gephardt's campaign manager, revealed after the campaign that they had convened focus groups in Iowa in September 2003. They were frustrated that Gephardt seemed stuck, and they were trying to figure out ways to raise his numbers. They tried a lot of different messages with groups of undecided voters, but they just couldn't crack the code.

In fact, as the people in these focus groups received more information about all of the candidates, they gravitated towards Kerry and Edwards, just like tens of thousands of Iowans did in December and January when they started to make up their minds.

These focus groups happened in September 2003, when negative ads had not started to air yet.

The undecideds wrote off Dean and Gephardt relatively early in the cycle. Kerry and Edwards had low poll numbers but had more potential upside than Dean and Gephardt did.

I still think there is a strong possibility Joe Biden might win Iowa.

I was in Iowa at the time working for Kerry, and I remember Dean saying that Saddam's capture didn't make us safer.  He took a lot of heat for that statement but I honestly don't think that affected him in the polls very much.  He didn't start to crater in the polls until Edwards and Kerry hit their strides at the end of December and beginning of January, racking up newspaper endorsements (all the big newspapers endorsed Kerry except the DSM Register which endorsed Edwards), demonstrating that a Dean nomination was not as inevitable as everyone believed, and giving an outlet for the discomfort that many caucusgoers seemed to feel with Dean.  This was not so much due to any major screw-up by Dean or any media conspiracy (as so many DailyKos commenters would have us believe) but do to genuinely strong campaigns and messages by his leading opponents.  It was that experience that leads me to believe that Hillary, while the prohibitive favorite, is absolutely not a lock for the nomination.  She doesn't need to screw up to lose, but her opponents need to demonstrate their own credibility.

how could he have said that after saddam attacked us on 9/11?