Thankfully, Iowa’s caucuses are over. Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and Mike Huckabee beat Mitt Romney on the GOP side. But other than that, what’s it all mean? Well, the caucuses were interesting in that they showed how a candidate with strong emotional commitments from their partisans can sometimes triumph over the money and organization of a more establishment candidate. But that’s about all. Iowa is a rural state, totally unrepresentative of the US as a whole. Therefore its caucus results are pretty much meaningless in terms of trying to figure out who might win the general election in November.

Yet from all the noise incoming from the pundits, chatters and bloggers from nearly every point in cyberspace, you’d think that Obama and Huckabee have just been crowned with their party’s nomination. They haven’t. There’s still about 30 caucuses and primaries to go, and they are all going to be compressed within about a two month period.

What people forget, is that since 1972, when the Iowa caucus system started, no winner in Iowa has been ever been elected president. In any event, there’s only so far that emotional commitment can carry you. A successful candidate is going to need good organization and establishment backing in order to carry forward in a long-term general election campaign. It’s still not clear if Obama and Huckabee have those kinds of resources or will ever get them.

In any event the Iowa caucuses, while fun to watch as a form of direct democracy in action, the results so far, are not dispositive of anything.