That's the question that a lot of people seem to be asking today. All of this comes in the wake of news that South Carolina is set to respond to Florida's early primary date by moving the Palmetto State's primary forward. This, it is expected, will push New Hampshire forward - and then it will push Iowa forward.

How will this change the primary dynamic?

I have no idea. How could I? To determine how something will be changed, you need two items: (a) a baseline estimate of how things currently are, (b) data of some kind that allows one to reasonably estimate what the change will imply.

Importantly, we have no baseline. Even before this recent spate of events, we were still dealing with an entirely new primary schedule - and thus had no way of knowing exactly what was going to happen. How, then, can we know what will happen if the schedule is changed again?

Of course, this has not stopped people from trying to map out the implications of the change. John DiStaso from the Union Leader writes this morning:

If South Carolina Republican Chairman Katon Dawson sets his party's primary date for Jan. 19, 2008, as UnionLeader.com and news Web sites in South Carolina and Washington reported as a strong possibility yesterday, it will set off a chain reaction that could leave caucus-goers in Iowa voting on New Year's Eve or perhaps even before Christmas this year. If so, that would seriously hurt Iowa's impact on the nominating process. Its "bounce" would pretty much go flat.

Whoa! "Pretty much go flat?" It's a bit early to say that, isn't it? I can think of many scenarios in which an early Iowa is all the more important. Maybe if Iowa offers up a big surprise (e.g. Hillary in third), pundits will be left with no real news over Christmas, so they'll just keep reviewing the results again and again.

This is what the the Washington Post predicts:

But some political consultants who are veterans of national campaigns say that shifting the calendar does not change the basic equation: The winners in Iowa and New Hampshire will gain momentum that could overwhelm their rivals in subsequent primaries.

"Moving the primary calendar three weeks doesn't make this process any more democratic or change the outcome," said Stephanie Cutter, who served as communications director for Democratic candidate John F. Kerry in 2004. "It just means that the front-runners will run the table that much faster."

So, we have two major newspapers making diametrically opposed predictions. Iowa becomes more important or Iowa becomes less important. This is a sign that we simply do not know enough about the landscape to make a judgment - and, accordingly, people who are judging should just keep quiet.

This, I think, is the real story. This is from WaPo:

The calendar changes are infuriating senior strategists for presidential candidates in both parties, who say it is forcing them to plot a path to the nomination through quicksand. The uncertainty is holding up decisions about where to campaign and to devote resources.

Bingo. Information is an unequivocal good for candidates. The more they know about the environment, the more they can develop strategies to maximize their chances of success. Knowledge cuts down on risk. And South Carolina et al. are making all candidate strategies more risky by not setting clear dates well in advance.

This is the sort of stuff that campaign managers think about. Strategy sessions are not like the Meet the Press round tables where everybody just sits around all puffed up on the pretensions of being Washington pundits offering up a bunch of meaningless jibber-jabber. Electoral politics has much in common with the marketplace - and smart strategists know that. It does not surprise me that the best analysis about the shift comes from inside campaigns.