not another prediction thread

Groan, I know, can't he leave this to the pundits that get paid to be wrong?

It has not gone unnoticed here around the Third Avenue that every time I predict Mitt Romney will make a come back from second place to win a primary/caucus, he gets a distant second place. In order to test the theory of being the Mittster's bad luck charm, I will predict that he will come in second to McCain in Michigan, despite some polling trends that have Romney making a late surge.

As an aside, while watching the New Hampshire primary results, my dog seemed to be rooting for John McCain. When the senior senator from Arizona made his victory speech, my little 8 lbs. Poodle/Pekingese mix stood on the couch with rapt attention staring at the TV and seemingly following every word that dripped from McCain's mouth. My wife and I cracked up and starting joking about our dog being a closet Republican, at which point he whipped his head around and stared at us as if to say, "Stop laughing, I am trying to listen to the war hero speak!" He promptly went back to staring at the TV. Tonight we will have the digital camera ready in case our dog again acts like a McCainiac. If so, I will be sure to post it on this site.

It has been painful watching the local newspapers spinning Romney's losses as it has been watching them cover the Democratic side. Somehow they found the worst, most crazied picture of Hillary Clinton during her victory speech (as she was opening her mouth to say something, but it looks like she is trying to swallow you whole). And people wonder why Utahns dislike her so much. Even local Democrats are afraid of supporting her too loudly. I just hope that the coverage for Clinton and Romney isn't too ridiculous from our friends in the print media tomorrow morning.

What I am watching for tonight:

1) How big is "uncommitted" (aka Edwards and Obama) in the Democratic primary? The bigger the uncommitted, the more you will hear the media talking about how the Democratic party is rejecting the Clitons. The smaller the number, the greater the potential there is that Dems are crossing over to either vote for McCain, or mess with the Republican primary and vote for Romney.

2) What percentage of Republicans do McCain and Romney get? If either win with Democrats/liberals, the other will try to claim that they had more support of "true conservatives." If the winner wins both GOP and Dem voters, it will be a double digit margin of victory.

3) Where is Huckabee? He too pulled ads out of South Carolina, not because he was saving money for Michigan, but because he was gambling (isn't that a sin for a Baptist minister?) on being able to knock out Romney or McCain by getting second place or better. Right now, he is in a distant third at 10-13% but if the push polls work and he gets his evangelicals out to vote, he could surprise everyone and be much further down the road to sewing up the nomination.

4) Where is Giulaini relative to Ron Paul? In Iowa, Ron Paul beat him, in New Hampshire, a last minute push propelled him to eek out a narrow lead over Paul. If Rudy finished behind Paul again, another round of media reports about the "tanking" campaign of Mr. 9/11 will surely resurface.

I further expect that the winner of this race will either win or narrowly lose South Carolina to Mike Huckabee. If the same person wins Michigan and South Carolina, then they will win Florida and probably the GOP nomination.

On the Democratic side, Nevada is key. Obama has to win both the Silver State and the Palmetto State to recapture his 5-day frontrunner status between Iowa and New Hampshire. If Edwards wins Nevada, the nomination really could get messy. (if HRC wins, I think she wins the nomination) Hillary and Obama's teams have finally agreed to a cease fire on their surrogate-based slime-a-thon, and the Democratic party is better off for it. I wonder who brokered the agreement...the next Secretary of State...or just Howard Dean?

Tonight I guess I will watch CNN, which is less annoying than MSNBC, but it is a race to the bottom as far as I am concerned. Maybe Fox News will provide better GOP coverage. Any advice?