If The Press Says Huckabee's “Meltdown” Will Cost Him The Caucus, It Probably Means It's Irrelevant

         The Iowa campaign media, hungry for a dramatic moment and hypersensitive to anything that looks like a trend, have seized on Mike Huckabee’s press conference yesterday (where he announced he was pulling a negative ad at the last minute but showed it anyway to the press) as a metaphor for a meltdown in his campaign, with Joe Klein, Marc Cooper, and others joining the chorus.
         But here’s the thing: These “dramatic moments” the press is constantly hyping (always on tape, of course, so they can be replayed endlessly) almost never turn out to be the real thing. Howard Dean’s 2004 shriek? It explains nothing, since Dean “shrieked” after he had already stumbled in Iowa, meaning his campaign was over anyway. Ed Muskie crying in the snow in 1972? Go back and look at the vote totals and you may find to your surprise that Muskie still won the New Hampshire primary over George McGovern by a full nine points -- less than expected, to be sure, but still a victory that by itself was hardly the only major factor that derailed his campaign. (Besides, David Broder subsequently wrote that he questioned whether Muskie really wept or whether snow was melting on his cheeks.)
         Maybe Huckabee won’t win Iowa. But if he doesn’t, it will be because Romney’s attacks worked, or Huckabee didn’t have enough money or time to put together an organization, or a lot of other factors that can't be shown particularly well on television and don't sound nearly as compelling on a blog trying to get readers and hits. Think about it: One midday press conference, the day before New Year’s, capable of several interpretations (in the end he's not going negative which Iowans like), that no more than a handful of Iowa voters watched, will cost Huckabee the caucus? If so, it would be unprecedented.