What a mess.
The results of the Iowa caucuses are, incredibly, still in limbo, awaiting the result of a recanvassing ordered by the Democratic National Committee after three humiliating days of disarray. But this much is clear: Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg did very well, while the previous national front-runner Joe Biden almost certainly finished no better than a catastrophic fourth place.
It’s easy to see why candidates put so much stock in Iowa. In 2016, Sanders was considered a novelty candidate even within his own campaign until he came within spitting distance of defeating Clinton in Iowa. In 2004 and 2008, candidates who had trailed badly for much of the race ― John Kerry and Barack Obama ― won surprise victories, rocketed into the lead and won over the party faithful.
Everyone else in the field, meanwhile, is offering an increasingly unpersuasive version of “I alone can beat Trump!” These candidates have little to say, because they aren’t targeting voters, they’re auditioning for donors. The real message isn’t “I can win,” it’s “I’ll make sure you’re still in charge.”
If Sanders does in fact pull out a win in Iowa, the big story won’t be his victory, but the shocking incompetence of the Iowa Democratic Party. The various candidates vying for billionaire support are busy engaging in their own outrages, with Buttigieg declaring victory before votes had even been counted, and Biden’s press team going around telling everyone that the whole thing was a sham.
After Hillary Clinton’s shocking defeat in 2016, Democratic leaders in Washington recognized it was time to change the party’s internal power dynamics. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, they’d lost nearly a thousand seats in state legislatures, a dozen governorships, both chambers of Congress and then the White House. The party was quite literally in its weakest position since the Civil War.
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