And the long trudge begins

With 85% of Republican precincts reporting, it looks like Ron Paul is pulling right at the top of what the polls said he'd get: 10%.

That's good enough for fifth place, ahead of Benito Giuliani, but behind Mike "Jesus is my social worker" Huckabee, Mitt "the incredible plastic man" Romney, Fred Thompson's reanimated corpse and John McNasty. That's a disappointment to those of us who dreamed of a third-place finish and hoped for fourth place, but it's credible leading to New Hampshire. That's especially true, since he was the preferred candidate among independents who voted in the GOP caucuses.

Unfortunately, the result suggests that there may not be a vast swarm of unpolled, unmeasured Paul supporters out there -- the promised horde of independents, young first-timers and traditional non-voters who are supposed to carry Dr. No to victory. If Paul is just going to draw at the upper end of the polling results, he's not going to shake up the race. It's not certain yet, but New Hampshire's primary, in a state much friendlier to his libertarian message, will likely settle the question of whether Paul has more supporters than the pollsters can find.

Virtually complete results on the Democratic side confirm the near-certainty that we're not going to see a relatively palatable Bill Richardson vs. Ron Paul match-up. Richardson is polling toward the back of the pack under the complicated rules adopted by the donkey party to make picking a candidate roughly as clear-cut a process as divining the future from animal entrails. That's a shame, since Richardson is the only one of the Democrats who isn't pandering to a bread-and-circuses (and band-aids) constituency.

Fortunately, though, John Edwards, the metro-sexual Huey Long, hasn't taken the day -- that honor belongs to Barack Obama, the candidate who has mastered being everything to everyone, and seeming really sincere about it. Right now, Edwards is on CNN talking up his squeaker second-place finish, just ahead of Hillary-the-anointed, and silently wondering where in God's name he's going to get the money and organization to carry him through to Super Tuesday.

But it's e-e-e-a-a-r-l-y yet in the selection process. There's still time to firm up the chances for my nightmare scenarios, such as a horrific Edwards vs. Huckabee race pitting warmed-over class warfare against theocracy, or a three-way, New York-only contest among Clinton, Giuliani and Bloomberg, with everybody living in the U.S. guaranteed to be a loser (I'm assuming that Paul doesn't run an independent campaign).

There's even still time -- lots of time -- for something half-way decent to come out of this race. But don't tell anybody I said that -- I don't want to be blamed for jinxing us all.

Results here.