The Obligatory Post about the Iowa Caucuses

 

Trump won the Iowa caucuses. It wasn’t close, and it all came out pretty much as the polls predicted. There was no race on the Democratic side. 

Pity the poor media, who have to make it sound exciting; for them, no news is bad news.

And now, already, both the Republican and the Democratic nomination races seem to be over. That leaves a big hole in the prospective news year. 

I am troubled by the bad blood evident among the Republicans: how everyone is sliming Nikki Haley, how Ron DeSantis is crying foul because the media called the race too soon. It’s dumb, now that the nomination is pretty much decided and nothing much is at stake. It starts to look like a circular firing squad. Nikki Haley is not a real threat to the MAGAnauts, she was a good governor; and DeSantis would never have won if the media had held off. Moreover, his platform and Trump’s are barely distinguishable.

I lament the lack of civility and decorum; it is one of the great problems with America today. It is profoundly unhealthy when politics becomes such a consuming passion.

And no, Trump is not to blame for this; populism is not to blame for this. Trump and populism are a reaction to this failure of civil discourse, not its cause.

Democracy Dies in Darkness? Democracy Dies in Des Moines

Feminist icon and 45th governor of Alabama Lurleen Wallace

With 62% in, Buttigieg seems to be edging out Sanders in Iowa.

I had predicted a blowout for Sanders.

On the other hand, the delay in counting the vote, makes the results look dubious. That, and the poll just before the vote that was pulled; and the other polls showing Sanders way up, and Buttigieg flagging.

We know the backrooms would prefer a Buttigieg win. We know the Dem establishment’s history of stacking decks against Sanders. We know the Dem establishment is prepared to rig the process, because they did in 2016.

It is generally better to assume typical human incompetence before suspecting active malice. And yet, the series of circumstances seems implausible. It seems odd that, if the app was not working, it was not possible to fall back to the system they had always used, and accept results by phone. It seems odd that, a day later, they could report only 62% of the vote, with no update since. Anywhere else, such a delay would mean only one thing: they need the time to doctor the results.

Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself, and Pete Buttigieg did not win the Iowa caucuses.

But let’s pretend he did.

Conventional wisdom is that Iowa usually leaves only three viable candidates. I think that is true this time. Buttigieg has overtaken Biden and Klobuchar as the establishment favourite. They are probably done.

Sanders has established himself as leader on the left. Warren may hang on to try her luck in New Hampshire.

The other candidate still viable is Michael Bloomberg. He avoids the cut by not being present.

Buttigieg has a puny resume; and this is a weak, dubious win. Bloomberg probably has a shot at challenging him for the anti-Sanders vote once his weakness sinks in.

In the meantime, the media operatives have their lede. They are making much of Buttigieg’s supposed win as historic, in overcoming or suggesting the end of public prejudice against gays. “The first openly gay candidate to win Iowa.”

I think this is fake news. Buttigieg’s qualifications as a presidential candidate are absurdly slight. Mayor of South Bend? Being gay is almost his only qualification for the job. If we won, he won BECAUSE he is gay, not in spite of it.

And this continues a familiar pattern.

Barack Obama was conspicuously underqualified as a first-term senator when he won Iowa and the nomination in 2008. People voted for him because of the colour of his skin—as Biden noted at the time.

Hillary Clinton had, on paper, qualifications to justify her selection in 2016. On the other hand, hailing her as the prospective “first female president” was another gimmick. She would be far from the first wife or a former politician to stroll into office on his coattails. Nobody hailed it as historic when Lurleen Wallace succeeded her husband George as Alabama governor back in 1967. Or when Isabel Peron succeeded her husband Juan as Argentine president in 1974. She succeeded not despite being a woman, but because she was a wife.

The moral of it all is that there is no discrimination against gays, or blacks, or women. They are systematically favoured now by the establishment, and have been for some time.

On the other hand, nobody makes anything of the fact that, if Bernie won, he would be the first Jewish president.

Certainly not the Sanders campaign. They know if they did, it would lose, not gain, votes.

Our Correspondent Reports Live from the Iowa Caucuses

‘What I was going to say,’ said the Dodo in an offended tone, ‘was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.’

‘What is a Caucus-race?’ said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

‘Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.’ (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (‘the exact shape doesn’t matter,’ it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no ‘One, two, three, and away,’ but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out ‘The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, ‘But who has won?’

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, ‘Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’

‘But who is to give the prizes?’ quite a chorus of voices asked.

‘Why, she, of course,’ said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger; and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out in a confused way, ‘Prizes! Prizes!’

Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand in her pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits, (luckily the salt water had not got into it), and handed them round as prizes. There was exactly one a-piece all round.

There is a reason why it is called nonsense literature.
Well done, Democrats!

Iowa Prediction

Iowa caucuses are today. Let me make a fool of myself by making a prediction.

I expect a Bernie Sanders blowout. I expect that Biden will underperform.

I base this largely on the fact that the caucus process is complicated and rewards organization on the ground. This favours the more committed.

Two other candidates who may do surprisingly well are Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer. Yang’s followers also have a high level of enthusiasm. Steyer has the money to buy organization, and may benefit as a broadly unobjectionable alternative when Biden or others fail to gather enough votes. 

We shall see,,,

Iowa Forecast

My prediction: Bernie Sanders wins the Iowa caucuses. He is surging at just the right time. Warren’s attack on him for supposed misogyny will garner him sympathy votes. And the caucus system favours candidates whose supporters are more committed. Sanders’s supporters are.

I think Biden will disappoint. It is not just that his supporters are likely to be less fervent. The caucus system also favours those with second-choice growth potential. As the front runner and with his name recognition, and running on electability, those who are inclined to support him are already on board. As well, a huge proportion of the Iowa Democratic electorate are reported in polls as undecided. It more or less follows that they are looking for someone other than Biden, whom they all already know well.

This offers a big opening for a surprise by some dark horse candidate with really strong on-the-ground organization.

I think, thanks to her assault on Sanders, Warren will perform worse than expected, which may be a crippling blow to her candidacy. The proverbial wisdom is that only three candidates tend to remain viable after Iowa. If Warren badly underperforms expectations, her support naturally moves over to Sanders; and it handicaps his most dangerous regional rival in the New Hampshire primary soon to follow.

Buttigieg’s fifteen minutes have passed; I think his support is on the decline, and so he is unlikely to surprise in Iowa.

I look to some darker horse from the second tier to surprise, but I cannot predict which one.

Iowa and New Hampshire, Six Months Out

Where's Trump?

Back to the political junk, as a dog returns to its vomit. What’s the state of the US Presidential race as of today?

In the normal course of things, both parties generally come out of Iowa and New Hampshire with just two or three viable candidates. Who will they be?

Note that we are forecasting events six months from now. A week is a long time in politics. So we are quite likely to be wrong. Still, it’s fun to speculate.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s campaign hot-air balloon is now steadily losing altitude. I don’t think this will stop. The server/email scandal is going to stay in the news for months, if it does not absolutely scupper her before that. Some of her supporters may not want to shift to Sanders, feeling that he is too far to the left or too white. But there are other candidates in the race.

Those looking for a Joe Biden to replace her, are looking in the wrong direction. I don’t think Biden will get in—his poll numbers are too low to look like a draft. He risks embarrassment. In any case, all Biden getting in will do is help Clinton, by dividing the opposition.

More likely, Clinton support will start going to Martin O’Malley. He’s a dark horse, and Democrats like dark horses. As a former mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland, he has shown an ability to win black votes, if Sanders cannot. Iowa likes to upset front-runners, and there is reason why it does. Iowa is a caucus state. That means actual polls are less important. More important are organization, fervor, lots of gladhanding at county fairs, and appeal to the politically well-informed. Sanders should do well on fervor. O’Malley has been doing a lot of slogging, retail politics, on the model of John Edwards, and this is what is inclined to win through in the Iowa context. Since he beats the polls, it looks to the media like big momentum. Suddenly O’Malley is everywhere. Then New Hampshire, which likes to go against Iowa, goes for Sanders instead of Hillary—he is already leading there. And it’s almost all over for Hillary. She probably has the money to stay in the race until the end, but that doesn’t get her any wins. Bill Bradley had the money.

Among the Republicans, it is more complicated. It doesn’t particularly matter whether Trump comes in first in Iowa. He might; but he is more or less certain to do worse than the polls say, since it is limited to high-information voters and party stalwarts. So the story will still be “Trump loses,” and a spotlight will shine on someone else. There is room for two more candidates who are not Trump coming out of New Hampshire: an establishment pony, and a right-wing pony holding the outside position. The establishment colours are likely to be on Jeb Bush. His support could collapse before then, but I doubt it. He has the money, and enough experience that he is unlikely to blunder badly. He is a bit rusty from being out of politics, but that means he will probably get better on the stump quickly, and this may look like momentum.

The right-wing pick is more dubious. Over the last two cycles, the right-wing pick has been more specifically the favourite of the religious right, and the religious right has been powerful enough in Iowa to deliver their man an outright win—Huckabee and Santorum. Both pretty dark horses going in. No reason to assume the Christians are less powerful this time.

There are a few candidates who are going to look good to the Christian right: Santorum and Huckabee are back, and Cruz, Rubio, Perry, Walker and Jindal are also angling for their support. The Jesus people might split their votes and end up ineffective. But I doubt it. They seem to be well organized. In Iowa, the word gets out: we support X this time, as a group. Huckabee is probably the candidate closest to their heart. However, the last two times, when they backed dark horses, they only succeeded in propelling them into a second-place finish. That’s not really good enough. If they think they can in good conscience, they would probably rather back someone who could eventually win.

This argues, I think, for Walker or Rubio. Possibly Cruz if he keeps rising in the polls; but Cruz is too unpopular with the party establishment to be a likely winner. Walker seems to be fading, too, and Rubio rising. So let’s say it’s Rubio they settle on.

So we have the following top three when the Iowa votes come in: Rubio, Bush, and Trump, in any order. Possibly a top four in any order, including Rand Paul in the mix. Rand Paul should be able to do well too, on the strength of the libertarian vote. But neither Trump nor Paul really matter, because they cannot win the nomination. The real race then boils down to Bush and Rubio.

Then Kasich will be lying in wait for Bush in New Hampshire. If Bush does not make a pretty strong showing in Iowa, besting Rubio, he will be vulnerable in NH. Put simply, if Rubio comes out of Iowa with more votes than Bush, Bush is in trouble, and Rubio is the probable nominee. If Bush does better than Rubio in Iowa, the race goes on.

But anything, anything, could happen.