Earlier this month, I did a post recounting all the reasons it was exceedingly weird to find John McCain doing a campaign appearance in Iowa.

Now, more than two weeks later, with the McCain campaign having told reporters that Iowa is already lost, and with its efforts now being focused on PA, VA, NC, IN, FL, and maybe NH, guess what? Both John McCain and Sarah Palin are going to spend time in Iowa this weekend.

The only thing that's changed in the last couple of weeks is that the one polling outfit that failed to show Obama ahead in Iowa at any point during the entire year--the Big Ten Battleground consortium--now shows Obama up by 13 points. The RealClearPolitics average of Iowa polls for the last month has Obama up by 12.5 points, and comfortably over 50%.

The irony is that if McCain had shown anything like this sort of stubborn interest in Iowa during the Caucus seasons of 2000 and 2008, he might well be in a position to win the state.

But hey, I'm sure the one person who's happy about this is Sarah Palin, who may be getting a head start on her 2012 Iowa Caucus campaign.