THE NOTE: Countdown to Iowa

Dec. 31, 2007 -- DES MOINES, Iowa --

Here's a New Year's countdown to cut through the Iowa fog:

Three . . . different Democrats could win the caucuses.

Two . . . Republicans could win, and two (or more) could drop out (though only one seems to want to already).

One . . . very wealthy mayor who hasn't been trudging through Iowa could hollow out all the primary victories by early spring.

But first -- we're going to miss 2007.

We're going to miss Rudy Giuliani giving himself a well-earned two days off for New Year's. (At least he'll be warm on caucus night.)

We're going to miss watching Mitt Romney have to reap what he sowed. (Whether you find him ironic or Seinfeldian depends on whether you live in New Hampshire or Iowa.)

We're going to miss Joe Biden comments that come thisclose to stepping over the line of propriety.

We're going to miss billionaires dropping big hints about whether they're getting into a big race. (Actually, take that back -- we think we're going to have Mayor Michael Bloomberg to contend with for a while.)

We're going to miss high-profile surrogates dissing Iowa.

(And we'll even miss the ways that Chelsea Clinton disses the press -- even 9-year-old members of the fourth estate.)

We're going to miss waiting for the Des Moines Register's poll numbers to provide the last meaningful figures before the caucus. (And we hope and expect to see those numbers drop a few hours before the ball.)

And we're just plain going to miss Fred Thompson. (Though he's not, apparently, going to miss us -- has a candidate ever so jubilantly set himself up for a way out of the race?)

As we prepare to flip the calendar, the chaotic Democratic field isn't showing any signs of sorting out. If there's anything new left to say, the Democrats aren't yet saying it as they close (generally) how they started: talking change in all its various slices.

"With three Democrats scrambling for the lead in Iowa heading into the voting on Thursday, the candidates tried to paint their opponents as inadequate for the challenges facing the nation," Patrick Healy and Julie Bosman write in The New York Times.

Former Senator John Edwards, in particular, continued that line of attack against Senator Barack Obama, suggesting that he was too 'nice' to fight and win against special interests and big corporations."

And Healy and Bosman refer to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., as the "third leading Democrat here," as Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was out "knocking her husband by name for suggesting that an Obama presidency would be a gamble for the nation."

As for that husband, he tells ABC's Kate Snow that polls don't really matter anymore, and he sounds ready for the caucusing to begin even before his New Year's Eve rally with his wife at the state capitol in Des Moines.

"The crowds are large. The people are listening. All you can ask for is a fair hearing. And I think the people of Iowa have given it to Hillary, and I'm very grateful," former President Bill Clinton said.

USA Today's Susan Page gets the closing arguments direct from the candidates' mouths. "Clinton said she was 'not asking voters to take me on a leap of faith,' an implicit jab at Obama.

And without naming names, Obama said some 'in other quarters' were pushing the argument that the United States wasn't ready to elect a black president." And this from Edwards: "The glitz associated with a couple of the Democratic candidates . . . has waned considerably as we get to a serious judgment about who should be president."

It's not clear who's getting through with what, with bowl games to watch and champagne bottles to pop and snow to shovel.

"The rhetoric fueling the unsettled Republican and Democratic campaigns intensified as candidates spread out across Iowa to close the final weekend before Thursday night's caucuses, bolstered by an unrelenting stream of TV ads from campaigns and independent groups," Rick Pearson and John Chase write in the Chicago Tribune.

"The candidates vowed no holiday letup as they scheduled special events to mark the ringing in of the 2008 presidential election year."

Your bottom line three days out: Anyone who says they know what's going to happen in Iowa is lying.

The Republican race in Iowa is a two-way fight -- and we do mean fight. "On Sunday talk shows and in new TV ads, the White House hopefuls escalated their rhetoric in the wide-open contest for the GOP nomination," David Jackson writes in USA Today.

The three-sentence roundup: "Mike Huckabee accused Mitt Romney of running a 'dishonest' campaign, while Romney's campaign responded that it was only pointing out the 'wrong policies' of the former Arkansas governor.

In New Hampshire, where people vote five days after Iowans, John McCain unleashed a new TV ad hitting Romney on immigration. Fred Thompson, meanwhile, criticized Huckabee and McCain during his turn on national television."

Yet this is where the fight may really matter: "Republican rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney took their battle over Christian voters to the pews as both attended services while their campaigns spanned Iowa in a final Sunday pitch to evangelicals," Perry Bacon Jr. and Michael Shear write in The Washington Post.

With some evidence that Romney attack ads are working, Huckabee is set to push back on the airwaves: "Adviser Ed Rollins said Huckabee would spend part of the day taping a television ad, to run Monday, aimed at making sure that 'the voters know the facts about the governor's record and Governor Romney's record,' " Shear and Bacon write.

(That's the big news Huckabee is unveiling at a noon CT press conference at the downtown Marriott in Des Moines -- a location that's guaranteed to draw maybe a few members of the national press corps.)

Huck hits the "Tonight Show" Wednesday night -- caucus eve, and on Leno's first show back since the writers' strike.

In this Festivus season, Huckabee staffers have as sharp a sense of humor as their candidate. Per ABC's Jake Tapper, "Huckabee's campaign said that the Romney standard for truth-telling is comparable to [George] Costanza's memorable advice that closes this scene, from the February 9, 1995 episode: "Jerry, just remember. It's not a lie . . . if you believe it."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is getting more aggressive with Romney in New Hampshire. He responds to Romney's ads in devastating style: Speaking directly to camera, per ABC's Bret Hovell. "You know I find it ironic Mitt Romney would attack me on the issue of immigration," McCain says in his new ad, which debuted on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

Romney may have the top-notch organization, and he's certainly spent the most getting his message out.

But at the time where he should be closing the deal, he's being forced to reopen cans of rotten worms. Romney is "being dogged by questions about his shifts on issues, questions his aides had confidently predicted would have vanished by now," Michael Levenson writes in The Boston Globe.