My interest in the Iowa caucuses stems from having lived there for most of two decades. I take mild offense at all the inbred-pig-farmer jokes made by people dissing the caucuses, although many of those same jokers are spot-on about the blinding cultural whiteness of the place. I’ve been to New Hampshire once in my life, for as long as it takes to travel I-95 on the way to Maine. I know less about it, and I care less about its primary. But I was right on my Iowa predictions last week (and on all four NFL games over the weekend), so here I go back into the pool.

It doesn’t take a wizard to say that Barack Obama is going to win on the Democratic side. I stopped paying much attention a few weeks ago to the slow-motion trainwreck that is the GOP field, so I was shocked to learn over the weekend that John McCain is leading in the latest polling. OK, I’ll take him. What’s more interesting is what happens further down, so let’s throw the following against the wall and see what sticks.

I think Hillary’s presumed implosion is being exaggerated. After tomorrow, only 38 delegates will have been selected, and it will take over 2,000 to win the nomination. This morning, Salon explained how she could win even if Obama takes New Hampshire by a landslide. Of course, a few hours later Pandagon chronicled the silly media coverage of her campaign appearances today. The media’s personal dislike of her and their sexist stereotypes regarding female candidates only increase the steepness of the hill she has to climb. (Similarly, the mighty Greenwald wrote how the media’s uncritical adoration of John McCain is fueling his ascent, and how John Edwards—who, if this campaign were a rational thing would be the leading contender—can’t get them to notice him.) Hillary should finish second, Edwards third.

On the Repug side, New Hampshire was supposed to be where America’s Mayor of 9/11 was going to strut. Or maybe it was supposed to be where Multiple Choice Mitt sealed the deal after buying a win in Iowa. Instead, it’s where one of them is going to be on life-support after it’s over. New Hampshire wouldn’t be a place where Huckleberry would do well, even if he were handing out free donuts, so he lives to preach another day. TV’s Fred will pull about what he pulled in Iowa, because at any given moment there’s a fixed percentage of the population that’s clueless. I’d like to see Ron Paul finish in the top three just to spite Fox News, but he probably won’t. My main prediction for New Hampshire is, I guess, more chaos for the GOP. And that couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people.

On a related matter, I recommend you read Lefty’s post on Obama as the man on the white horse, and consider his concerns about whether the Illinois senator is ready for prime time. I’ve shared these worries myself, and have resisted Obama’s charms because of them. (If I had to vote today, I’d be voting for Edwards, yet I continue to pine for Feingold.) But if Obama is going to be the nominee, I’m perfectly happy with him. He simply could not be worse for the country than the clown he would replace, even if the bad stuff Lefty mentions (suitcase nuke, Chinese dollar shenanigans, etc.) goes down. I think Obama is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, and to surround himself with smart people. And if he can use his charisma to blunt the edges of the culture war, or to inspire people to public service like JFK did (and, yes, Reagan on the other side), so much the better. But before we get to see whether Obama can inspire the better angels of our nature, we’ll have to deal with the way he’s inspiring the worst in a way that’s utterly beyond his control. The Obama campaign has already unleashed the ugliest racial passions we’ve seen in many a year—and not just from the unhinged right, but from “mainstream” conservative commentators.

We sometimes think we’ve resolved our race problems in America, but just as there’s a difference between a dry drunk and a recovering alcoholic, there’s a difference between where we really are on race and where we need to be. And the Obama campaign, especially as it acquires an ever-brightening aura of success, is causing millions of our fellow citizens, many of whom would swear to know better, to fall off the wagon.