With less than a year to go until the first caucus in Iowa and all the following primaries and caucuses, it is becoming clear that the War in Iraq - and basically nothing else - will drive this race in both parties.
Other traditional issues - lowering taxes and curtailing government spending for the GOP - and health care and more government spending for the Democrats - are taking a back seat to our national focus on Iraq.
In other words, Iraq is so consuming that it is sucking all the oxygen away from these and other vital issues.
In the Democratic race - which has gelled more quickly - Hillary is the clear front-runner, with Obama and John Edwards on her heels; the others are way, way behind. But it is still early - and a lot can and will happen before next January.
Iraq is huge to the Left - and they are the majority of actual primary voters and caucus-goers. As we saw in the August U.S. Senate primary in Connecticut, the Ned Lamont-MoveOn.org anti-war voters have a passion that skews turnout toward their side. This anti-war slice of the Democratic Party has seized on Hillary's refusal to ‘apologize' for her 2002 vote for the authorization to go to war. And the longer she refuses to say she is "sorry," the more they are going after her.
Meanwhile, they have ‘created' Barrack Obama into a major candidate in large part because he is - in their parlance - ‘pure' on Iraq. That means he was always against it - not this "If I knew then what I know now I never would have voted for it" nonsense that Hillary, Edwards and John Kerry throw about.
Hillary - while refusing to apologize - has now introduced legislation - purely for symbolic reasons - to begin the ‘redeployment' of the troops out of Iraq within 90 days. She hopes this move will mollify the Left; it won't. Many of them blame her as an ‘enabler' for this war.
Meanwhile, on the GOP side, McCain is falling steadily - as predicted long ago here - mainly because he is seen inside the Right as a phony, an opportunist and an arrogant jerk who has treated people awfully through the years. Also, he is leading the charge for even more troops in Iraq - a position no one favors any more except some whacky neo-cons.
His main opponent - for the moment - Rudy Giuliani is also pro-surge but has lately begun to hedge his bets on Iraq. He sees that Iraq is heading down the drain no matter what we do - and he hopes not to be caught up in it.
The other Republicans - Romney, Huckabee and Brownback - aren't getting much traction these days for a number of reasons. But any one of them can catch fire later - and so can a new entrant later in the process.
For now, though, Iraq is the predominant issue - and one that is hurting Hillary, McCain and any of the others who tie themselves to Bush.
One thing they all wish for - and the Iraq Study Group was set up to arrange - was to get out of Iraq by the time of the New Hampshire Primary. That does not now appear to be a likely event.
All politicians running in 2008 fear the consequences of the Iraq War on their re-election plans. Hillary, for example, would much rather run on health care and other ‘mommy issues' than on this war.
And many Republicans would prefer to run on a good economy rather than a bad war.
So, as we continue on into this very odd pre-election year, keep in mind that Iraq is shaping the race in unexpected and unintended ways. With President Bush not really interested in the 2008 race - after all he has no Vice President running - he is not making war decisions ala LBJ in 1968 in order to impact the November election.
All of this means one simple thing: Iraq is a live hand grenade thrown into the electoral process. No one knows what is going to happen, whether the grenade's pin has been pulled and if and when a huge explosion will occur.
So be prepared for unintended consequences - and surprising new developments this year.
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