The last moments before the fire have arrived, with Iowa and New Hampshire set to happen in what is the least important election of your lifetime. No candidate now running with a chance to win has committed to any major changes in direction. When all three top Democrats are proposing health plans which are to the right of what Mitt Romney signed into law as the Republican governor of Massachusetts, and to the right of what Richard Nixon proposed almost 40 years ago as a Republican President, then it is clear that change is what you have in your pocket, and it isn't worth much.

On the Republican side of the ledger the rise of Huckabee and has thrown the pre-fab four of Thompson, Romney, Guiliani and McCain into flux. McCain has risen, Guiliani has fallen and Romney is fighting for his ability to nail out a 1-2 sweep of the first contests that would give him an early down hill run to the nomination.

The major factors involved are Iraq, the economy and Bush-Clinton fatigue.

For those of you who have not been watching, the United States has accepted a de facto partition of Iraq, and withdrawn into a few core areas, leaving the rest of the country to run its own affairs. The public could not support the casualties required to try and occupy the country, but is willing to accept, though it does not like, 40 deaths a month with the attendant casualties.

The result of Iraq is now coming home to hit the economic system globally. Iraq was a giant bet that the United States could put Iraq's oil on line without giving the ruler of Iraq free hand to pursue weapons of mass destruction. It turns out that neither putting WMD out of the reach of Islamicist states, nor the oil is going to happen. The ball bounces to a stop on the roulette wheel, and the American public, which bet outrageously heavily on victory in Iraq with oil, is about find out that betting it all 33 black doesn't look like such a great idea when 9 Red is what comes up. Americans didn't like Bushism very much by 2004, but they continued to stack chips on the table betting it would win.

The winners will be the bankers, in this case, the Saudis and the Chinese, who supplied the money for the venture, but are not going to take the collateral offered, in this case the world banking system and the control of investment that comes with it. Another piece of American autonomy sold out in return for another spin of the wheel.

The first winner in this is John McCain. The Republican Party is going to convince itsel f that "we won the war" and ebb back to its natural place as the warmongering corrupt pork party. John McCain is all of those things, and strong and decisive too. Being a Republican means your right if you say you are.

The first loser is John Edwards, who staked his position on being against the war enough and implying he'd wind it down. Since the war has been wound down, this position is not compelling, and Edwards has faded with the death toll.

This situation means that Obama is now the only anti-Hillary left standing, and paradoxically, or not, he is to the right of Clinton on almost every major issue, and if Hillary ignores the progressives, Obama has openly attacked the progressive wing of the party. With no time left to start again, The race is rapidly collapsing down into a two person race, with Hillary suddenly needing to look better in Iowa than before, when Edwards was assumed to be able to hold off Obama. However, Hillary is still in control of the nomination, so long as she does not squeak too loudly. Obama has the vice-presidency wrapped up, and can now look to find a crack in Clinton's armor that would convince Democrats that Hillary is "unelectable".

The Republican nomination however, is in chaos. McCain has come back from the dead largely because Guiliani, given a chance to put the nomination away, has suddenly become a flaky candidate. Bad ads, bad appearances, whiffs of more scandals and corruption. Poison. Guiliani has a lot of Republican support, in states that the Republicans aren't going to need to win the Presidency. Thompson's failure as a candidate in his media window means that Romney looks like the last man standing, only if you count leaning on a great deal of money and geography as standing.

Strangely the calculus of Romney is that Huckabee is his mirror image. Romney is inauthentic as a social conservative, and that helps Huckabee. Huckabee is not credible as being able to manage economic policy, which helps Romney's establishment credentials. McCain and Guiliani are paired in the polls in the other way. The natural person for a disaffected Guiliani supporter to look to is McCain, the natural place for a disaffected McCain supporter to look to is Guiliani. McCain's advantage is that he is Clinton fatigue embodied: it seems as if you don't need to parse what he says to know what he has said. Guiliani, however, is as slippery as anyone in New York politics, itself a very greasy pole.

McCain's return from the cold is bolstered by the death of Iraq as an issue among Republicans. Not because it is not an issue, but because it is the elephant in the phants pantry: they cannot think about how stupid an idea it was, how strongly they backed it, and how, now that two trillion dollars has been poured down the hole with nothing to show for it, they must now go to the American public and convince that public that a new swarthy peril is coming and they are most able to deal with it.

However, as with 1988, the Republicans have a decisive advantage, and that is that the Democratic Party just signed off on every stupid thing the Republicans did in power, other than trying to have sex with pages. Given a choice of two Republicans, the public will vote for the real one almost every single time. Clinton, Obama and Edwards have not made a clear line, and instead have played the Mike Dukakis card of being more competent managers of a conservative government. But Americans generally don't want conservative government run by liberals, they want liberal government run by conservatives. The last eight years have been a massive keynesian driven experiment in top down government directed social engineering. Without a compelling difference in the size of the pie, the public will choose the way to divide it that ends up with, they think will be best for them. They will be wrong, because the American public has consistently believed that little numbers in pieces of paper that arrive monthly in their mail box are "theirs" and have voted, repeatedly, consistently and emphatically, to give more real power to others in return for seeing those numbers.

Hillary's grasp of the nomination is slipping, but not very far. She needs only to slip past Obama in Iowa, and then defeat him soundly in New Hampshire. The task is to scoop up the Goristas, who vacillated until the end, and the disaffected Edwards voters. And what of John Edwards? Is it too late? No, but his strategy all along has rested on flying under the radar. There is no public thing that he can do now that will change this. Instead, his fate is, as it was four years ago, to be decided by nearl faceless and nameless supporters working the hustings of Iowa. They were, nearly, able to pull him to first place last time, and they need to put him to an upset win. As much as supporters want to see their candidate visible and tangible, Edwards, the less he is seen, the more forgotten he looks, the more a victory, or second place to Clinton, will seem a surprise victory. He is still within range, and the quiet backroom boiler of local politics is what produced his upset Senate win in North Carolina all those years ago. Edwards' team must then execute to perfection on the ground. Get every supporter, arm them with the argument, and have those supporters hold fast and firm in every county possible to scoop up the side candidates such as Richardson and Dodd behind a candidate of conviction.

However, the game is Hillary's to lose, and the only thing that will really lose it is if she rattles apart and speaks one of those angry negatives which have dogged her political career. Hillary is generally disciplined, but this discipline is not iron clad. Since she must be visible, to remind her supporters that the nomination is in doubt, it is this test that will make or break her hold on the first two contests. After that, her money and national name recognition are a nearly insurmountable wall, and if she can walk in as the front runner into Tsunamai Tuesday, she will then be able to glide out in a carriage to the nomination.