By Steve Clemons

Bill Hartung notes that while Mike Huckabee calls John Bolton an informal foreign policy adviser — when contacted, Bolton said that the two had never met.

This is interesting news. I have worked through the campaigns today — and while I don’t have all the detail on which campaigns did what exact back deals, I know that the Hillary Clinton campaign approached every single one of the others.

From Michael Crowley’s “Air Spin One“: he preternaturally jolly McAuliffe is a good man to have spinning for you in a pinch. But his good cheer dimmed when I asked him about Bill Richardson, who appears to have made an 11th-hour deal to throw his supporters to Obama.

Eric Kleefield makes a compelling case that John Edwards rather than Barack Obama was the real winner of 2nd choice movement last night in Iowa.

A couple of interesting items have come over the email to me yesterday and last night — that are just tidbits worth sharing. One triple-confirmed rumor was that Obama chief strategist David Axelrod was shredding Mark Penn to bits in comments in from of political correspondents Roger Simon and Mara Liaison.

Chris Dodd sent a gracious note tonight saying he is out of the race — but his advocacy for the good things in politics and policy will continue. I salute and thank him.

I went to my final caucus training session last night, and in just a few hours will be heading down to my precinct’s caucus site for the start of the caucuses.

photo credit: Washington Post.

I went out to see Chris Dodd at his final campaign rally for the Iowa Caucuses this morning.

John Zogby just sent out his latest daily tracking poll, and the headline is that Clinton and Romney are slipping and Ron Paul is gaining. Between 30 December and 2 January — on the Dem Side — Hillary Clinton garnered 24%, Obama 31%, Edwards 27%, Richardson 7%, Biden 5%, Dodd 1%, Kucinich 0-1%, Dems 5%….