In his Dec. 31^st entry Best Bet for Next President: Prediction Markets Justin Wolfers offers an interesting analysis on the political climate going into the primaries.

According to Wolfers, in the "general election, the markets are titling strongly pro-Democratic, ranking them a 61% chance of taking the White House." This would seem to indicate that Bush is not just a lame duck president, the GOP is a lame duck party.

An interesting article An Inside Look at How the Iowa Democratic Caucuses Work by Jerald Thomas Hawhee, describes the process. Like many I'm sure, I had dismissed the whole process as some kind of strange, arcane nonsense. Well not for the first time, I think I was wrong! As explained by Hawhee it is really an example of grass roots participatory democracy (remember that word?) in action. It raises some interesting questions for me on the whole of the election process.