The Incredible Shrinking Frontrunner

As Brian McCabe points out, Howard Dean's poll numbers look good in New Hampshire, but the other shoe dropped this morning in Iowa. Dean, who has been leading the polls in Iowa for some time now, is trailing Richard Gephardt by seven points in today's Des Moines Register Iowa Poll.

As the newspaper's Jonathan Roos notes, "That's a gain of 6 percentage points for Gephardt and a 3-point drop for Dean since late July, when the last Iowa Poll on the race was taken."

Look for Dean to drop even more in the weeks ahead. That continuing slide will most likely benefit Gephardt and John Kerry, standing a solid third at 15 points. That's only up 1 percent from July for the Massachusetts senator, but the dynamics of the caucuses and camapigns are such that Kerry's in an awful good spot right now.

Speaking of awful, John Edwards' position is just plain awful now in Iowa and that sure doesn't seem likely to change. He dropped a bunch of cash on ads to attack President Bush and boost his own profile. His reward: Edwards is stuck fast at 5 percent, which is where he was in July and where Joe Lieberman is despite already pulling out of Iowa altogether. Stick a fork in the Edwards' Iowa campaign because it's done.

Wesley Clark's candidacy is proving to be a flash in the pan in Iowa, with 4 percentage of the Iowa Poll respondents saying they support him. Look for Clark to have about one-fourth of that level of support on Caucus Night. And, that's just about where the rest of the field will be when Iowa Democrats gather to give their assessment on their presidential candidates to the rest of the nation.