One of the more remarkable aspects of the 2008 presidential selection process is that no one knows when it's actually going to start.
And no one will know for weeks to come.
This ongoing uncertainty has the potential to influence the outcome in ways impossible to predict, political strategists say, while complicating life for the candidates and their campaigns.
When this all shakes out, the voting will start earlier than ever, much as the campaign for the presidency already has.
"The current system somehow has ended up being both too long and too short," Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I., Conn.) told a congressional hearing last week. "It starts too early and ends too soon."
Iowa seems most likely to hold its first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses immediately after Jan. 1, turning the holiday week between Christmas and New Year's into campaign crunch time.
The New Hampshire primary, an early-March event not too long ago, figures to take place no later than Jan. 8.
It's not out of the realm of possibility for one or both of those events to take place in December, 13 months before the next president is to take office.
For now, Iowa is waiting to see what New Hampshire does. And New Hampshire is waiting to see what happens with Florida and Michigan, two states whose late moves to stage early primaries have upset the traditional pecking order.
And everyone knows that Iowa and New Hampshire will do whatever is necessary to be first.
"The reason this is such a mess is that it falls on two different fault lines," said William G. Mayer, professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston. "One is between the federal government and the states, the other between government and the political parties."
Which is his way of saying that no one's in charge.
Spokesmen for several presidential candidates say they are coping with the fluidity of the situation. For now, the Democratic candidates (but not the Republicans) have agreed to boycott Florida and Michigan, at least most of the time.
None of this is what you want to be dealing with if you're running a presidential campaign.
"You've got to make really hard choices about the allocation of finite resources against almost infinite possibilities," said Bill Carrick, who managed two campaigns for former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D., Mo.). "The uncertainty in the calendar just throws all that planning into a tumultous mess."
