A lot of people have been asking this week who benefits most from Huckabee likely winning Iowa, Guiliani or Romney. The answer is exceedingly simple: Huckabee himself.
Others are criticizing Obama for harboring the dream to be president for a long time. I'm sorry, but I've known a lot of people who would like to be President, and its hard to believe that most politicians wouldn't jump at the chance. The trait that separates naked ambition from a dream to be President is the willingness to say or do anything to get elected.
This past week we've seen the shift everyone's been waiting for. On the Democratic side we're seeing the shift away from Hillary as people start to sit down and realize that she's the least electable of all the Democratic candidates. Well, not least, she sits right between Dodd and Kucinich on the electability scale. On the Republican side, Huckabee has grabbed the mantle of the religious right and made a dash with it far away from the other candidates. The title for the fiscal right probably goes to McCain (I suppose Thompson's next, but one of these days he'll get around to having that press conference where he announces that he's dropping out of the race) and I think at this point he's actually the best bet to stop Huckabee.
If Huckabee and Obama win Iowa, they'll get a nice 10-20 point bounce which will be more than enough to give them New Hampshire, SC, and almost all of the Feb 5th states. And this underscores the whole problem with the polls everyone's been following all summer. They don't matter. Finding out what message resonates with voters when they start paying attention matters, and matters enough to move poll numbers in dramatic fashion if you have the platform to get that message out. Obama and Huckabee, the most optimistic of the candidates, have the right message. Lucky for us, with the exception of McCain, I think they are their parties' best candidates (although I think Richardson would make a better president than Obama). As others have observed, Obama seems to be coming to where he is at exactly the right moment in our country's history, and I think the presidency will easily be his.