Iowa in the Rear View Mirrow

By Walter Shapiro at Salon.com
My guess -- based on entrance polls (which had Clinton running second) and anecdotes -- is that John Edwards won second place because he had a better in-the-room operation than Hillary. In Precinct 67, Edwards snagged two delegates when the initial count did not entitle him to any. Multiply that by, say, 25 precincts around the state and you have the margin between Clinton and Edwards. A third- place finish for Edwards and he probably would not be in New Hampshire right now fighting for his political life.
As someone who has watched Edwards closely since 2001, I would like to dissent from the fast-forming conventional wisdom that the 2004 vice-presidential nominee lost in Iowa because his populist message was too harsh. Edwards lost because the fervor for Obama overwhelmed everything else in Iowa. In fact, since turnout was almost 100,000 greater than the Edwards campaign had anticipated, it says something that he still managed to run even with the Clinton machine.
And a final word about Iowa's runnerup: According to a statistic that I read in this morning's Des Moines Register, Obama spent more days in the state this year than supposedly Iowa-centric Edwards.
For all the attention lavished on strategies, TV spots and internal campaign tensions, there are moments when none of this behind-the-curtain stuff matters. Sometimes the right candidate hits the right wave at the right movement. That is what happened with Obama in Iowa. To rewrite that James Carville cliche from 1992: "It's the candidate, stupid."