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.