The Iowa Caucuses is a weird bird in American politics. For decades, the Iowa Caucuses have served as the starter’s gun to the nomination race that culminates in the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties.
From a strictly mathematical perspective, the Iowa Caucuses are inconsequential. Of the 4,366 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, only 56 will be from Iowa. The same rough proportion holds for the Republicans. But there’s more to Iowa than the delegate count. Iowa is the first event of primary season and it attracts media coverage far and away disproportionate to its delegate count. Historically, Iowa has served as an early leading indicator of the general election in November.
If that history holds, Iowa in 2020 is a disaster for the Democrats.
Unlike 2016, Iowa is of no consequence to the Republicans. The Republicans have an incumbent president who has no serious challengers for the nomination. Accordingly, all eyes this primary season are on the Dems.
Republicans couldn’t have scripted a worse Iowa Caucuses for the Democrats – especially so-called “establishment” Democrats – if they had tried.
The Iowa Caucuses were held Monday night. At this writing Wednesday morning, the Democratic Party in Iowa still cannot say officially who won. A new app, developed by a company with ties to the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, was supposed to tabulate results quickly and transparently. That app failed in a way reminiscent of the Obamacare website fiasco of 2013. Official results stillaren’t in.
Iowa has 1,681 voting precincts. Caucus sites in those precincts attract an average of about 100 caucus goers. That’s roughly 170,000 votes to count. In past years, precinct chairmen simply phoned in their results to party headquarters in Des Moines. Simple. Low tech.
But new technology was deployed this time around and it has proven disastrous. Instead of the media reporting that one or another Democratic candidate emerged victorious from Iowa, the media is instead forced to report on Democratic Party incompetence. The Republican campaign ads practically write themselves.
In Iowa, Democrats couldn’t run a simple election. Now, they want to run your health care.”
“It’s on to New Hampshire,” declared establishment favorite Joe Biden Monday night. That’s because the limited voting results that were available showed him coming in at a dismal fourth, behind Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Biden couldn’t get out of Iowa fast enough Monday night.
The establishment types in the Democratic Party have been counting on Joe Biden to prevail over avowed socialist Bernie Sanders. They fear that Sanders’ radical agenda will be a bridge too far for independents and centrist Democrats in the heartland. Many in the Democratic Party establishment still have vivid memories of the shellacking that far-left George McGovern suffered at the hands of Richard Nixon in 1972.
Take all of this, layer upon it a certain impeachment acquittal for President Trump later today and a State of the Union address last night that enumerated policy success upon policy success, and you have a bad primary season launch for the Democrats.
On to New Hampshire indeed.