Thoughts on Iowa and New Hampshire:

Barack Obama may really become the Democratic nominee.

I’d say his brother-in-law, Brown University hoop coach Craig Robinson, has the perfect take: Beside himself with excitement about Iowa, yet level-headed and pragmatic as New Hampshire and then other states loom.

“As historic as this is,” Robinson says, “we still have a lot of work to do.”

Or, to put it in language even I can understand, “It’s kind of like being in the first quarter of a basketball game.”

Similarly, Rhode Island Democratic state Chairman Bill Lynch, a Hillary Clinton supporter, cautions that Iowa victors don’t necessarily go on to capture the nomination. “The person that wins the Iowa caucus should not already be measuring drapes for the Oval Office,” Lynch said Friday.

Still, Lynch, in discussing Obama, also turned to sports. “It’s almost like an athletic event,” Lynch observed. “He’s got all the momentum and it’s very hard to turn that around. Very hard.”

Incidentally — or not so incidentally — wasn’t it weird to see third-place finisher Clinton stand Thursday night before a placard saying “Ready for Change” while flanked by a suddenly old-looking Bill and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright?

Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination? I can’t see it happening, and so what that he won Iowa?

Rhode Island House GOP Leader Bob Watson, a John McCain supporter, got it exactly right on Friday morning. He told me, “Huckabee has not been vetted yet, and today is the first day of the rest of his political life … Things get much more complicated as you get closer to the brass ring.”

Governor Carcieri, a Mitt Romney guy, doesn’t sound too worried about the loss to Huckabee in Iowa. Nor does Carcieri acknowledge Romney has to win Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, where McCain is the main threat. “Romney has still got the best chances, the best package,” Carcieri says. But I say: If, wounded by Iowa, a former Massachusetts governor can’t bounce back and carry New Hampshire, he’s flirting with oblivion.

Back to the Democrats.

If nothing else, Obama’s Iowa triumph over former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and New York Sen. Clinton shattered the idea that Clinton’s nomination is inevitable.

She has the backing of a host of party insiders and boasts a ton of experience. But Iowa caucus voters were more attracted to Obama’s theme of change, and that message has more and more resonance the more you ponder the wisdom of stretching the Bush/Clinton White House occupancy beyond 20 years into 24 or 28.

Iowa’s loss knocked Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for a loop. I said to Rhode Islander Lynch, “She has tried to build up this idea that her nomination was inevitable and now it’s obvious that it’s not inevitable. Am I right?”

“I think so,” he conceded, but he didn’t fault Clinton’s strategy. “Who wouldn’t do that? What is Senator Clinton supposed to do? Go out and say, ‘You know, I may not be able to win this but I’m going to try’? That’s just not the nature of the beast. I think that all candidates make decisions and have strategies based on their background and where they’re coming from and how they think that’s going to sell to the American people.”

Lynch was encouraged by the quantum leap in Iowans participating in the Democratic caucuses. He sees it as one more sign the party will recapture the presidency this year. “Clearly, there’s going to be a Democrat elected,” he says. “The question is: Who is it going to be?”

The dimensions of the Iowa victory of Obama, the first black person with a genuine chance to be president, were stunning, especially when you remember that the state is almost entirely white. Obama was a huge draw for new caucus voters and for young voters.

In his victory speech late Thursday night, he declared, “Hope is the bedrock of this nation, the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”

Coach Robinson, confined to Rhode Island because of his team’s schedule, spoke by phone with his sister, Michelle, and her husband, the Illinois senator, just before the speech. He reports, “There wasn’t a whole lot of celebrating and that sort of victory lap type of thing. It was just a calm and quiet sense of accomplishment, sense of history, and a graciousness that they both had and then, it’s, ‘All right, we’ve got to get back to work.’ ”

Robinson said the expectation now is that Obama’s opponents will step up attacks on him in New Hampshire. I’ll be curious to see if he gets thrown off stride. “Like anything else, when you’ve got a game plan, you’ve got a strategy, you just play it out and see who wins,” the coach said.

He said Obama needs to stay with his theme of change. “People have heard that message for a long period of time and they’ve been paying attention for a while and I would imagine the turnout in New Hampshire is going to be as good if not better than the turnout in Iowa.”

I am convinced that many voters, even as they admire Clinton’s talents, have a personal problem with her. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd probably overstated it, but may still have been onto something, when she wrote the other day:

“Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled? … “The underlying rationale for her campaign is that she is owed. Owed for moving to Arkansas and giving up the name Rodham, owed for pretending to care about place settings and menus when she held the unappetizing title of first lady, owed for enduring one humiliation after another at the hands of her husband.”

But Dowd asserted that Barack and Michelle Obama also convey a sense they are owed, in their case ‘for offering themselves up to save and uplift the nation, even though it disrupted their comfortable lives.”

Robinson insists to me, “They’re running because they think it’s the right thing to do.” For whom? “For everybody.”

As for the Republicans:

In my opinion, it is a sad state of affairs that former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, rode to victory in Iowa on the strength of evangelical Christians.

I don’t think it’s healthy for the country for a politician to advertise himself, as Huckabee does, as a Christian leader.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see that in 1998 he told the Southern Baptist Convention, “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,” or that he stood by the comment when asked about it recently on NBC.

It is also to troubling to think that Romney may have been a victim of discrimination against Mormons.

In general, the more that voters around the country know about Huckabee, the more I suspect he will wilt under scrutiny. For example, on ethics: He accepted a plethora of gifts as governor. And, by the way, did you know he wants to abolish the income tax and impose a 23-percent national sales tax?

He also has yet to demonstrate he has the war chest and organization to compete nationally.

In New Hampshire, McCain, who barely competed in Iowa, looms as the chief rival to Romney. Rhode Islander Watson notes that McCain carried New Hampshire in the 2000 primary with George W. Bush and that, at one time virtually written off this time around, the Arizona senator has come back impressively.

Indeed, if McCain wins New Hampshire he could develop some momentum and wind up as the Republicans’ best bet for appealing to independents and even some Democrats in November.

I almost forgot former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who theoretically could be an even stronger nominee. But he has been in eclipse recently, because of personal controversies and for a strategy of de-emphasizing Iowa and New Hampshire and concentrating on the larger states ahead. Which, for all anybody knows, could turn out to be a very wise strategy.

Carcieri says that Huckabee, Romney, McCain, and Giuliani all are “excellent” candidates, though Romney of course is the best.

The governor says, “This is a long tough road. Whenever I see these people and what they have to go through to run for president, it’s a grueling, grueling process, and there’s lots of ups and downs.”

I won’t argue with him about that.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com