Are you in Iowa with a video camera? Send us your videos and we’ll be including it in our coverage.

Fred Thompson about as enthusiastic about saying he’s staying in the race as he has been about running his campaign …

I flagged this in today’s TPMtv episode and posted a reader email on it yesterday, but if I had my choice, John McCain would not be the candidate I’d want the Democratic candidate to face in November. He’s got lots of liabilities, on a whole number of fronts. Not least of which is the fact that most if not all the big constituencies in the Republican party (with the exception of the largely scribal and numerically small neocon constituency) has big problems with him. But the DC press corps loves the guy. You cannot overestimate that.

And that has an effect. Yesterday, Kos posted some Rasmussen numbers of favorable and unfavorable numbers of major presidential contenders. Kos’s point was that whichever candidate you choose you’ll basically start with one who about half the country likes and about half the country doesn’t.

But there’s one number that’s substantially outside that pattern: McCain’s. Rasmussen has him down at 53% favorable, the highest but by an insignificant margin and 37% unfavorable. The next closest unfavorables are Edwards and Thompson, both at 42%. All but one of the others is 50% or over.

That is a real advantage going in to a national race. Not necessarily one that makes a big dent in the generally unfavorable terrain for Republicans — but it’s still a big deal.

Will Dick Wolf let Fred have his job back at Law & Order even though Jack McCoy has already been promoted to DA?

Will Rudy lose badly enough to keep him permanently off the dating market?

Can heretofore untested animatronic caucus attendees pull out a victory for Romney?

Some thoughts, alternatively depressing and hilarious (often both) from Chris Hayes on the undecided voter.

Compared to the Republican race, I think the dominant (though little spoken because it’s in none of the candidates interests) issue in Democratic race is the relative absence of issue difference between the candidates. Yes, they certainly exist. But compared to what one often finds in periods of bitter and highly partisan politics, the differences definitely tend to be on the margins of the major issues.

That said, issue differences are by no means the only and perhaps not even the most important factors in choosing a candidate.

So who are you supporting and why? Who do you want to win tonight?

Fox News eschews traditional “suicide” modifier:

Incidentally, that is not the AP‘s headline or lede.

Late Update: As a few readers have pointed out, looks like I was late to the ballgame on this one.

A contrary view, with some important insights, from TPM Reader JG …

It’s easy, in the jangle that your nerves becomes as the primary starts, to get caught up in the dip and rise of the roller coaster and forget that it almost always ends up at the same station. As such, I think it’s useful to take a deep breath right about now and remember some fundamentals, insofar as McCain.

McCain is loved by the media, and loved by the New Hampshire independents, but that’s it. He’s not the establishment candidate, its fairly clear Romney is in that role this year. And with the Republican party, you almost never bet against the establishment and expect to win. You can lose both Iowa *and* New Hampshire, as has been proven, and win. McCain is still hated by the core of the republican party, and by the moneyed interests that tend to decide things in the end. The South Carolina firewall will do him in just like it did last time.

More to the point, McCain has no money, and therefore no ground presence. He’s nothing in Iowa, where ground presence is necessary, and Iowa always shapes New Hampshire. Furthermore, what’s going to happen when the rest of the primaries occur?

I could see Mike H. finally raising the successful theocon rebellion to the nomination, Iowa and the south helps, there’s a core of support from a main constituency of the *Republican* voters. But McCain? McCain’s constituency is independents. They won’t even get to vote in alot of the primaries.

McCain might with NH, but he’s not winning anything else. It’s Romney. Romney has the least enemies, and the most (sort of) friends. And he has the constituency that has ultimately decided every modern republican contest: Money.

The guys at Election Central have put together an Idiot’s Guide to the Iowa Democratic Caucus, in case tonight’s proceedings leave you confused.

CIA declassifies the letter Rep. Jane Harman sent to the Agency objecting to the destruction of the CIA torture tapes before they were destroyed.