Jon Margolis is a political columnist for VTDigger.
Winners and losers from the Iowa precinct caucuses, as follows:
BIG WINNER: Donald J. Trump because the Democratic Party in Iowa (and by extension everywhere else) stands exposed as a bunch of incompetents.
“And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system?” asked Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager.
BIG LOSER: The hapless-with-the-app Democratic Party of Iowa (and by extension everywhere else), which seems to be run by people who cannot tie their own shoelaces.
BIGGER LOSER: The first-in-the-nation Iowa precinct caucuses, whose swan song may have been sung.
When it comes to individual candidates, the rest of these winner/loser designations are conditional. Finally, there is no finality. At least not yet. So these assessments are based on the 62% of precincts the Iowa Democrats reported Tuesday evening.
WINNER: Pete Buttigieg, because he seems to have won, and even if it turns out that he came in a close second, that’s pretty good for a young man nobody had heard of a year or so ago. He gets some favorable attention (momentum) heading to the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday.
WINNER (with an asterisk): Bernie Sanders. Leave it to Vermont’s own favorite democratic socialist to lead the ambiguity category. He actually led in the initial popular vote and is a close second in his percentage of delegates.
But he was supposed to do better. He seemed to be surging toward the end. The surge bumped into his 25% ceiling. That’s what he got. That’s where he is as he leads the New Hampshire polls. He can get 25% of Democrats anywhere. He has not shown that he can get more.
LOSER: Joe Biden. No, Iowa was never the most fertile ground for him. But fourth place? He’s the former vice president of the United States and still the poll leader nationwide. Fourth place is not a good showing. He now limps into New Hampshire, where he’s running second in the latest polls, but not that far ahead of a possibly surging Buttigieg.
LOSER: Elizabeth Warren. Ending up more than eight points behind the leader speaks for itself.
LOSER (with an asterisk): Amy Klobuchar. Fifth place in double digits was better than expected.
WINNER: Mike Bloomberg. The Iowa debacle lends credence to his claim that trying to win those early contests means playing by “the old rules.” He’ll spend even more of his effectively unlimited fortune on ads in the 14 states (including Vermont) which hold primaries March 3.
BIG LOSER: The Democratic Party, and especially Bernie Sanders. Iowa Democrats said caucus turnout was “on a pace for” matching the 2016 level of about 170,000 participants. That’s far from the 240,000 who turned out in 2008, energized by Barack Obama.
So what happened to all that anti-Trump enthusiasm that would clog the caucus sites with voters determined to oust the president?
They didn’t show up. Yes, it was cold. Some high schools had basketball games scheduled. Still, it’s hard not to consider the possibility that the anti-Trump sentiment is less widespread than Democrats hope.
Or maybe that their candidates aren’t very exciting.
Who else did not show up were the throngs of first-timers, young people, and the ones Sanders claimed he would bring out to vote, those “who have not been involved in the political process.”
They stayed uninvolved. According to entrance polls taken by the Associated Press and CNN, about one third of the participants were attending their first caucus, fewer than in 2016, many fewer than in 2008.
There has never been convincing evidence that hordes of people whose politics are farther left than center-left have been staying away from the polls because no candidate was radical enough for them. Monday provided some evidence to the contrary.
LOSERS: The citizens of the United States of America, forced to choose from a list of unimpressive candidates. The weak Democratic field includes three old men, one very young man with a modest (if impressive) public record, and a few senators who never really caught on.
Well, Elizabeth Warren did for a while, even leading in some polls in the middle of last year. But then she blew it. Recovery is not impossible, but seems unlikely. Amy Klobuchar could be on the verge of catching on; her poll numbers kept edging up in Iowa in the last days, and she ended up in double digits, but still without enough strength to get even one delegate to the Democratic National Convention. It’s possible that she’ll continue to gain support, but it’s hard to see where she could break through.
Still, one of these weak candidates is going to be nominated, at which point he or she will run against another weak candidate – the only president in history (since polling began) whose approval rating was never higher than his disapproval rating. Not for one month.
He’s lucky he’s not likely to face a strong opponent.
