The Iowa Caucus: A Democratic Dumpster Fire
Remember the hilarity that ensued last week when a trio of sneering lefties on CNN dissolved into laughter over the uneducated “credulous boomer rube demographic” that constitute Trump supporters? You know, the toothless hillbillies who don’t know nuthin’ about readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic?
Well, that slice of snark didn’t age well. At least Republicans can manage to tabulate a few thousand ballots without setting their entire party on fire.
And that’s what the Iowa Democratic caucus was: A raging dumpster fire. An unmitigated disaster. An ungodly mess.
How is it that Americans know the results of a presidential election within a few hours of the polls closing nationwide, yet Democrats struggle to count ballots in Iowa for more than 24 hours?
At midnight Tuesday, Iowa results were stuck at 71 percent.
Worse, turnout was low. A bad sign for Democrats, but one that should have made tabulations easier.
Conspiracy theories abounded. No surprise there. After the DNC rigged the primary process in 2016 to deny Bernie Sanders a real shot for the party’s nomination, who can blame Sanders’ supporters - and others on the far left - from suspecting some sort of chicanery was afoot again.
I dunno. This looks like garden-type ineptitude to me. With such a large field of weak candidates, party leaders don’t know what they’re doing. Their excuses - such as they were - were lame.
It’s difficult to rank the biggest losers from Monday’s caucus. But let’s try.
At the top of the list is Joe Biden. It looks like he finished a distant fourth. Behind two socialists and a small-town mayor. If the numbers hold, this could be catastrophic. After all, Biden was the hope of establishment Democrats and he spent the past two months in a bus crisscrossing the state.
It’s clear that the impeachment of the president has backfired badly and Biden’s a casualty.
Not only have President Trump’s approval numbers been steadily rising since the impeachment process began, but playing gotcha over his phone conversation with Ukraine’s president inevitably dragged up the pungent issue of Hunter Biden.
Did Democrats in Washington not know this would happen?
There was only one reason a corrupt Ukrainian gas company wanted this feckless man on its board: To curry favor with Joe Biden, Obama’s point man on Ukraine.
Joe Biden took shrapnel from the doomed impeachment process and it may have killed his chance at the nomination.
That was a strategic error on the part of Democrats.
It’s still unclear who was the overall winner in Iowa, but - ironically - he was also a loser. The party’s snafu deprived Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders of jubilant Tuesday morning headlines and the “Big Mo” heading into New Hampshire.
There’s a reason candidates spend so much time and money in Iowa. It’s not for the state’s meager 41 convention delegates. It’s because the quaint caucuses serve as the grand opening of the presidential campaign season.
For one glorious night every four years, all eyes are on the Hawkeye state.
And with the world watching, the Democrats fumbled.
Tuesday’s headlines were of the debacle in Des Moines, not the winner of the caucuses.
Today’s headlines will be the State of the Union address - and Nancy Pelosi’s petulant shredding of the speech.
Tomorrow’s will be Trump’s acquittal.
The Democrats blew it. Missed their moment.
Troy Price, Iowa’s Democratic party chair and master of the understatement, apologized for the mess and called the situation “unacceptable.”
In a scathing analysis of the state of the Democratic party, Washington Post political reporter Matt Viser decreed that with the botched Iowa caucus, “The Democratic five-alarm fire has begun.”
Two days after the fiasco, no one has a hose.
