About this time every year, news media and entertainment organizations float even thinner skeleton crews than many already run on a normal basis. That results in a proliferation of "Best Of" lists and "Top Story Of The Year" lists littering the media landscape, like holiday decorations strewn about. Some few even attempt to look into the future of the next year, though most of their attempts are usually nothing more than poorly written fiction.
There a few, however - like us - that are still on the job as the holiday draws near.
Thankfully, polling guru Nate Silver and his team at FiveThirtyEight.com are also working through the holidays - and their first look at the 2012 political race is anything but fiction.
In fact, Nate released FiveThirtyEight's first polling-based Iowa GOP Caucus forecast Tuesday night, and in short, the GOP race is without question... wide open.
While Nate's conclusion isn't entirely surprising, the data that Nate released early was very surprising - as it shows that any of five different candidates could legitimately win the Iowa caucus.
To savvy political observers, the conclusion that either Gingrich, Romney, or even Ron Paul could win the Iowa event hasn't been that big of a stretch. The latest poll from the well-known pollster Public Policy Polling released late yesterday proves that while Gingrich's surge appears to have peaked and may now be falling, Rep. Ron Paul may be the GOP's first flavor of the month in 2012.
We agree with many of you - the political horse race IS ridiculous, and attempting to forecast the winner may seem even more ludicrous. There are some very serious problems U.S. citizens should focus on solving - not to mention the potential horrors facing those in politics, economics and media in Europe.
If you truly want to see a political "Ghost of Christmas Present" that will set your hair on end, try imagining the dreams of France's President Sarkozy or Germany's Angela Merkel.
For the Republican Party, though, there's a political ghost of their own that's been waiting in the wings for years, that they'll finally be forced to face in 2012.
To put it bluntly, Republicans don't know how to play as a team anymore - and they're tired of pretending they do.
For much of the last twenty years, the Republican Party has increasingly marched in lock-step, and ostracized or shouted down any dissension within its ranks. Reagan's so-called "Eleventh Commandment" - "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican" - has become an ideological straight-jacket of orthodoxy that has strangled the sense out of much of the Republican Party.
For many in the Democratic Party, watching the upcoming battle royal on the right may be just the kind of political present they've asked political Santa to deliver for years.
Still, if we were in the Democratic Party hierarchy, we'd wait before any champaign corks were popped.
What Nate Silver's data says, and what our own experience tells us, is roughly the same thing that we've always said in political races before they're finished: It ain't over 'till it's over.
There's only a couple of things thing we're certain of when looking at next year's political races: they won't be dull - and they won't be clean.
Batten down the hatches, folks. 2012 looks to be a bumpy ride.
