It's "first in the nation" primary time, which means it is time once again to throw down my own markers and predict the winner of New Hampshire tonight. I've long felt that pundits who merely vaguely describe the race as it stands are craven, because it's a lot tougher to actually try to foresee the results ahead of time in an article under your own name. So I've always publicly announced my picks ahead of time, even if they turn out to be disastrously wrong in the end.

Which brings us to a new portion of the 2020 program, because now we can see how well my prognosticating is this year. My picks for Iowa were (in the order I predicted): (1) Bernie Sanders, (2) Joe Biden, (3) Elizabeth Warren, (4) Pete Buttigieg, and (5) Amy Klobuchar. The actual order (as of this writing, since we're still not entirely confident of the Iowa results) turned out to be: (1) Pete Buttigieg, (2) Bernie Sanders, (3) Elizabeth Warren, (4) Joe Biden, and (5) Amy Klobuchar. I agreed to follow the traditional measure of "winning," the count of how many "state delegate equivalents" each candidate chalked up, and in this count Buttigieg edged Sanders (even though Bernie got more actual votes than Mayor Pete).

As you can see, this was a pretty dismal result for my prediction abilities. I only got two out of five right, although if Bernie had edged out Pete it would have been three. Obviously, I missed how far Biden was going to fall, but I certainly wasn't the only one not to see that coming. Also obviously, I underrated Buttigieg by a mile. Oh well, live and learn. For the record, here's my 2020 stats so far (counting only Democrats, since I never make safe predictions of an incumbent president winning his party's primaries in order to boost my score):

Total correct 2020 primary picks so far: 2 for 5 -- 40%.

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In 2016, Donald Trump ripped up the playbook on how to get elected president and then he wrote his own unique version. Quite obviously, it worked a lot better than anyone expected. Democrats now face a surprisingly similar situation in 2020 with Bernie Sanders, because he seems poised to use almost exactly the same playbook that allowed Trump to succeed against a field of candidates much more acceptable to his party's establishment.

Now, please don't get me wrong -- when I say Bernie Sanders could use "the Trump playbook" I am decidedly not talking about Trump's personal style of campaigning. Bernie's not going to suddenly start hurling playground insults at his fellow Democrats on a debate stage or anything like that. What I am talking about instead is the mechanics of how Trump won the Republican nomination.

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Throughout the presidency of Donald Trump there have been many weeks that have left everyone completely exhausted, because so many momentous events have happened with such blinding speed. Each time, it's been tempting to say: "Trump can never top that week" at the end of it. We've all but given up doing so, because no matter how intense things get, there always seems to be a way to ratchet things up the very next week. However, that temptation was almost overwhelming this particular week.

We had a State Of The Union speech on Tuesday (hopefully, Trump's last one). One day earlier, we had the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus on the Democratic side, which turned into its own sort of spectacular meltdown. Then we had the Senate voting to acquit Trump of the impeachment charges brought by the House. Trump waited one day before doing a victory lap, in an extended "Two Minutes' Hate" broadcast live from the White House. He let everyone know he's got an enemies list and he's now totally unrestrained. And now we're rushing to put together a Friday column before the next Democratic presidential debate happens, later today. Add in, just for the heck of it, a Super Bowl and the Oscars and you've got a week that will indeed be hard to top, at least on the sheer exhaustion scale of things.

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Iowa royally screwed up. That much is beyond dispute. In fact, as I write this -- days after the Iowa caucuses concluded -- the results still are not complete and no winner has been anointed. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are within a tenth of a point of each other in the metric used to determine winners, although Bernie's clearly going to win the popular vote (both of them, in fact). Perhaps by the time New Hampshire votes we'll all know who the winner in Iowa was. But at this point, even that isn't guaranteed.

The easiest thing to point the finger of blame at is the new and untested technology that Iowa relied upon to report the caucus totals. Savvy users of technology know full well that buying the 1.0 version of anything means you could be in for trouble -- big trouble, at times. People in the computer industry whose job it is to test software before release so that bugs can be fixed (software quality assurance engineers) have long had a saying: "The Ford Pinto was released six months early -- but that's not what everyone remembers about it." It doesn't matter how fast you get to market if there's an enormous and embarrassing flaw in your design, in other words. And the Iowa app blew up just as spectacularly as a rear-ended Pinto.

But that's an easy fix: use paper and the telephone. There! Problem solved!

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As I write this, the Iowa Democratic Party has now reported 85 percent of the caucus returns. Perhaps after a full 48 hours we'll know the full results, but at this point I wouldn't bet on it. But while heaping scorn on Iowa is amusing, the results as they stand are realigning the entire Democratic presidential field, so it's worth taking a look at how everything is shifting.

The Iowa caucuses really had one big winner and one big loser. Pete Buttigieg outperformed expectations and is quite likely to win the largest haul of Iowa's "delegate equivalents," which is the yardstick that has always been used to proclaim who won the state. He also appears to have edged out Bernie Sanders in the final round of voting, although Sanders still holds the lead in the first round of voting. So Bernie unquestionably had a good night, but he is going to ultimately be denied bragging rights over "winning" Iowa to Mayor Pete.

On the losing side of the equation was Joe Biden. Biden came in fourth place, and he wasn't all that far ahead of Amy Klobuchar in fifth. This is not the way to prove you are the most electable candidate, obviously. Biden won't have a state race where he's the heavy favorite until South Carolina, either, which means that in both Nevada and New Hampshire he'll be struggling to beat his showing in Iowa.

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As I sit down to write my reactions to the State Of The Union speech and the Democratic response, votes from Iowa are still trickling in. That's a rather bizarre overlap, caused by the total breakdown of the Iowa Democratic Party's reporting system. The spectacular failure of the whizzy new app taken together with the equally spectacular failure of the backup phone hotline reporting system meant it was almost 24 hours from when the caucuses started to when any results were made publicly available. And the only saving grace was that there was indeed a full paper trail to follow, so the votes themselves (we are assured) will all be counted accurately.

Obviously, something's got to change. This is a screwup of epic proportions. If Iowa had been a state voting on Super Tuesday, it wouldn't have been such a big deal (although it still would have been the butt of plenty jokes), but with their "first in the nation" status, it is nothing short of absolutely unacceptable.

Now, the breakdown could be fixed by a better reporting system -- whether technological or just having enough people available to answer the phones. But it brings into question two much larger points -- should Iowa change from a caucus to a primary, and should Iowa still be allowed to go first? Those weighty issues are now solidly on the table for discussion, as they should be. The case against caucuses has always been pretty easy to make, which is why almost every state has now moved to a primary system. The case against Iowa going first is a trickier one, but "You had your chance and you blew it" will now be a big part of that argument.

But given that the Democratic Party has four years to figure all of this out before the next one happens, let's get back to the big speeches tonight instead.

The State Of The Union

Most of President Trump's speech tonight was fairly standard stuff, at least to my ears. About 80 percent of it could have come from any Republican president, in fact. The other 20 percent was mostly about illegal immigrants, and a few other Trump bugaboos.

Overall, I have to say Trump has gotten better at reading his big speech each year off of a TelePrompTer. He sounds a lot less bored, and a lot more interested in reading the words. That's a notable change, for him. Instead of sounding like a fifth-grader reading from a textbook in a class he doesn't much care about, Trump now can manage to sound like an average politician reading a speech off a TelePrompTer. That's progress, of a sort.

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We're finally at the point where Democratic primary voters (or "caucus voters," today) get to register their choices in an actual election. It's been a long and winding road to get here, and along the way 18 of the announced 29 Democratic candidates have already dropped out of the race, leaving us with only (!) 11 remaining. After the Iowa and New Hampshire results are in, that field should narrow down to, hopefully, single digits.

Of course, only 10 of those 11 candidates are actually competing in Iowa tonight (since Michael Bloomberg is sitting out the first four states), which does make it marginally easier to guess what's going to happen. Although maybe not, because Iowa will be announcing not just one but three sets of results tonight. So let's run down what's going to happen tonight. I should mention that I'll only be making picks for the entire primary season on the Democratic side, because Donald Trump is a sitting president who is pretty much guaranteed to win the Republican nomination, so "picking" him over and over again in Republican primaries would make no sense.

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Today's column requires a preface, because once again I am forgoing my usual Friday format to fully address the importance of the impeachment trial. Regular columns will resume next week, right before the next Democratic debate airs, and we'll return to our usual awards and talking points then. I thank my readers for their patience, in advance.

Other program notes for next week: Monday's column will be my first prediction of the outcome of a primary race in the 2020 election season, and will be published before the Iowa caucuses finish. Tuesday's column will be late, as I'll be writing my snap reactions to both the State Of The Union speech and the Democratic response. Normally I would also write my snap reactions to the Democratic debate as well, but because it falls on a Friday (and because this column has already taken two weeks off) I won't be doing so this time around. There will be a total of three debates in February (before New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina vote) so we'll have other opportunities for debate analysis before Super Tuesday rolls around.

Oh, and for those who like fun calendar tricks, this Super Bowl Sunday will be an interesting palindrome: 02/02/2020. Even more fun: this will be true worldwide, since Americans are pretty much the only ones who put the month before the day in our date format, but in this case it won't matter.

OK, with all of that out of the way, let's get right to my reactions, impressions, and other thoughts about the history that is being made in the Senate today.

The impeachment endgame

As of this writing, nothing has been officially decided yet in the Senate impeachment trial. However, one thing seems almost certain at this point: there will only be 49 votes, maximum, in favor of calling witnesses. Both Lisa Murkowski and Lamar Alexander have announced that they will not be voting for witnesses, which leaves all 47 Democrats together with only Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. Murkowski may have been persuaded to vote no because if she had voted yes it would have set up an uncomfortable situation for Chief Justice Roberts, who would have to decide whether to break a 50-50 tie or not (with the safe money being on "not"). In any case, that's how things stand as I begin writing this.

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There will be no column today, sorry. I am playing hooky to watch all of the last day of questions in the impeachment trial in the Senate. Also, next week's going to be a doozy, starting with the Iowa caucuses on Monday, the State Of The Union speech on Tuesday, and finishing with the next Democratic debate on Friday. So I'm resting up for all of that. Again, my apologies for the lack of column today, but promise I'll be sharing all my impeachment trial thoughts in tomorrow's column, as I did last week.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Some constitutional history was made this week -- and it had nothing to do with President Donald Trump, because presidents have absolutely no role in amending the Constitution itself. That power is reserved to Congress and the legislatures of the states. And Virginia's state legislature just officially ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. In doing so, they became the 38th state to ratify, which seems to meet the constitutional requirement that three-fourths of the states ratify an amendment in order for it to be adopted as part of the Constitution. This is a fairly momentous occasion, which coincides with the other constitutional history being made in the Senate this week, as only the third-ever presidential impeachment trial continues.

The United States Constitution has essentially been amended only 18 times. I say "essentially" because while we actually currently have 27 amendments, the first ten were adopted at the same time, as the Bill of Rights. Only 17 times since then have amendments been approved by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures. This week, perhaps, will go down in history as the nineteenth time an amendment succeeded in become part of our government's foundational document.

Again, there's a "perhaps" in there that needs explaining. Because while 38 states have indeed now ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, there are two legal arguments still standing in the way of it being declared valid and part of the Constitution. So far, the government's official stance is that at least one of these arguments precludes such recognition. The whole matter will undoubtedly wind up before the Supreme Court before the E.R.A. becomes the law of the land.

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