The pieces are finally falling into place on the presidential nomination calendar, with Iowa's Democrats confirming yesterday that they will hold their caucus on January 3 - the same time as the Republicans. (That date, incidentally, may harm Barack Obama's chances, since his campaign is said to rely more heavily on college volunteers, who are likely to have gone home for the holiday season.)
Next stop New Hampshire. Read on....
As earlier predicted here, New Hampshire will almost certainly fix on January 8 sometime in the next week or so, and the rest will fall in behind, especially now Michigan has lost its appetite for challenging New Hampshire's "first in the nation" status.
So the calendar is likely to be:
January 3: Iowa caucus January 8: New Hampshire primary January 12: Nevada caucus January 19: South Carolina primary
Michigan and Florida remain sticky, but the above calendar means they could be slipped in before February 5 - the date of the 20-state super primary - with some sort of penalty.
