I hope and pray we have heard the death knell of the pre-eminence of the Iowa Caucus, but, for now, it still happened and may be exercising an influence on the New Hampshire Primary, which takes place today. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg tied, at least statistically, in Iowa. Politically, Buttigieg probably won, while Joe Biden, who finished fourth, suffered the most.

New Hampshire and Iowa are not always related. Results in one place poorly predict results in the other. In 2012, Romney and Santorum duked it out in Iowa, but Romney thrashed him in New Hampshire, which predicted the rest of the race. In 2016, Cruz defeated Trump in Iowa, but lost badly to Trump in New Hampshire. Sanders and Clinton effectively tied in Iowa, but Sanders romped in New Hampshire. The race spiraled on for months afterwards. What happens today in New Hampshire matters, but deducing much based only on these results, even taking Iowa outcomes into account, will tell us nothing definitive about the next several weeks or months.

Here is the state of play right now.

Joe Biden is no longer the front-runner. The RealClearPolitics polling average has Biden in a clear second place. He did poorly in Iowa and he is polling to finish between third and fifth in New Hampshire. Biden has struggled in almost all of the debates and the Obama Administration, much less his U.S. Senate career, seems so long ago. However, the fall is not yet a collapse. Nevada (2/22) and South Carolina (2/29) results will give us a better sense of where Biden stands long term. Losses there may spell the end.

Bernie Sanders is now, according to FiveThirtyEight’s model, the official leader, with a 46% chance of winning the nomination. Let’s take a deep breath and reflect. Sanders, an avowed Socialist for most of his career, now has the inside track to winning the presidential nomination of the party built by Jefferson and Jackson. Sanders resembles McGovern more than Obama or either Clinton. Bernie, more than any candidate, now defines the party rhetorically. Everyone else has to react.

Pete Buttigieg had another boomlet after Iowa, but tracking polls in N.H. suggest he is not outside the margin of error for Klobuchar, Biden, and Warren for second place. There is a reasonable chance that any of them can finish 2, 3, 4, or 5. Perception may matter more than the reality of such a finish. For Warren or Buttigieg, a 5th place finish would be devastating, while for Klobuchar a 2nd place result may lift her out of relative obscurity.

To be simple about the primaries, there is probably only one “progressive” or “Twitter Left” slot and perhaps one or two more “moderate” to “centrist” slots. Sanders could be in the process of vanquishing Warren to head the revolutionary guard, while Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar struggle for the others.

Looming over this is Michael Bloomberg’s astonishing ascent. The candidate has pledged to spend up to $1 billion (with a B!) of his own money on the campaign whether or not he is the party nominee. He has at least 2,100 paid staff, which is three times more than the Trump campaign and five times more than Biden. His fourth quarter spending outpaced all other presidential candidates combined. According to recent polls, he is bubbling up into third or fourth position, consistently behind only Sanders and Biden. This is historic. He may not even be a Democrat (or a Republican!).

The impact, if I had to guess, will not be that Bloomberg wins the nomination, but that he complicates the lives of the other more “moderate” candidates in the field. If we take FiveThirtyEight’s model seriously, the second most likely outcome for the 2020 Democratic nomination is not Biden, Warren, or Buttigieg, or even Bloomberg, but a brokered convention.

The battle right now is not for the the progressive left of the party, but for African Americans. Biden has long rested on this foundation, which defines his South Carolina “firewall.” He and Buttigieg have been wrestling over African American support for months, with South Bend’s former mayor suffering in the process. Buttigieg benefits from being the first openly gay presidential candidate, but this hurts with more traditional African Americans. Bloomberg has his own vulnerabilities on this front. While a recent poll says Bloomberg is eating into Biden’s advantage with African Americans, revelations today, that recall, in painful detail, his approach to “stop and frisk” while Mayor of New York, could dissolve those gains.