The Election Saga Continues

It’s been about a month since my post just prior to the Iowa Caucus, and a number of fascinating things have happened. Just to re-cap:

• Huckabee and Obama win Iowa, with Romney and Edwards taking second.
• Romney takes Wyoming.
• Hillary cries (and wins), Huckabee lies (down), McCain sweeps in New Hampshire, and Bill Richardson bails out.
• Native son Romney takes Michigan; Dems apparently hate the state.
• Hillary “wins” Nevada, while Obama and Romney actually win. On the Democratic side, despite Hillary’s victory in the overall vote, Obama takes more delegates due to the nature of the caucus structure there, and Romney bails out of the sinking ship which was his South Carolina campaign to focus on capturing Nevada.
• Obama destroys the competition in South Carolina, McCain wins out over Huckabee, and the men with hot wives (Fred Thompson and Dennis Kucinich) drop out of the race.
• Clinton wins Florida and nobody cares, while McCain defeats Romney and becomes the party front-runner. Giuliani, who gambled on winning Florida, withdraws from the race, and John Edwards also pulls out.

So, what next? Four thoughts:

• Iowa was atypical. While I would not count Barack Obama out yet, Hillary Clinton’s successes and track record so far, combined with Mike Huckabee’s and John Edward’s inability to gain traction shows that Iowa’s results were quite atypical This just underscores that campaigns are won by “mainstream” celebrity candidates with well-funded organizations following conventional strategies. And, the political casualties thus far (Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani) show that you can’t win on extreme positions (Huckabee, Kucinich, and Edwards) or unorthodox strategies (Thompson and Giuliani) or by blind faith that people will vote for you (all of the above).
• This is a conventional election, following conventional “political rules” and all the candidates should remember that if they intend to win. All the post-Iowa talk about how people “demand change” has not held up. There is no evidence that the top two candidates in either party stand for any radical change, nor do I find it convincing that the sight of Hillary’s tears were more important than her husband’s reputation and superior campaign organization. 
• “Celebrity endorsements” are probably irrelevant for party nomination. Much has been made of the fact that John Edwards has yet to endorse a candidate and that Giuliani and Schwarzenegger have endorsed John McCain. I believe, however, that these endorsements don’t carry much weight for two reasons. The most direct reason is that the few delegates these candidates control have no obligation to listen to the endorsement of their candidates. The second reason is that these delegates and those who actually vote in primaries and caucuses have probably already made up their minds on who they will support. I doubt that Schwarzenegger or Giuliani are going to convince any evangelicals to support McCain, and I think that those they could convince were probably already inclined to vote for McCain already. These endorsements will matter more during the general election, when they can motivate independents (in the case of moderates like Giuliani and Schwarzenegger) or the party base (in the case of less mainstream politicians like Edwards) for the cause.
• This is a race for delegates. People should focus less attention on winning states, and more attention on winning delegates. Although Hillary won the popular vote in Nevada, she lost the election for delegates to Obama. Although Romney has only won three states, prior to the Florida primary, had more delegates than any other contender. And, in the coming “super Tuesday” race where multiple states have primaries and caucuses on the same day, no campaign has the resources to try to win every state. What this means is that the candidates need a strong cross-country organization and a clear strategy for investing time and money only where it will deliver payoffs in delegate count. This is one reason that I believe Hillary will wind up with the party nomination (she has more delegates than Edwards and Obama combined), and the only reason that I believe that Mitt Romney is not out yet — what else do successful businessmen and consultants do but organize and create optimal investment strategies?