Iowa Democratic turnout

The thing that jumped out at me about the Iowa results was the size of the Democratic turnout.

Every news report I heard quoted local party officials as saying it was at least twice as high as any previous year. And I heard quotes from caucus goers who said they'd never participated before but decided to this year to prevent another Republican from winning the White House.

The message here, to me, is that Republicans are in big trouble in November. That probably doesn't surprise anybody who's believed the pundits' predictions ever since Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, but the Iowa turnout results were a lot more concrete than a bunch of prognostications.

Iowans had months to get to know the Republican candidates, with the exceptions of Rudy and McCain who essentially skipped the whole exercise. None of those candidates were able to excite voters there, and Huckabee's victory might have never materialized if he weren't a Baptist preacher appealing to rural voters.

Republicans will probably win the dependable red states like Georgia, South Carolina and Texas, but probably lose the toss-up states like Ohio, Missouri and maybe Florida.