First: Caucus is an ugly word. Primary is so sweet, but caucus sounds like something that should be done in private, not in the group clusterfuck way Iowa chooses to do it, arcane and complex, which should and does benefit the motivated, the committed, the extremist, the zealot.
And speaking of Bernie Sanders: If this is the best he can do, he might as well hang it up. Iowa is as white as it's going to get for him and he can't pull better than a tie with HRC. A tie isn't good enough for the man who's essentially said he's counting on the caucus states and the whiter, whitish, whitesque states to keep him competitive. It will be all over for him after South Carolina, a winner-take-all state that will crush his hopes like a dialectical antithesis. Congratulations, President Clinton, on the first step of your inevitable slog to victory.
Regarding the GOP: Trump is a loser. Trump got schlonged by Ted Cruz's big Canadian schlong. Or smallish, who knows? Do we really know anything about the plucky Canuck? Do we care? He will be perhaps the least likable major party nominee since...Calvin Coolidge? He's footnoteworthy only in that he schlonged Donald Trump.
Marco Rubio seemed quite pleased with his overwhelming/unstoppable 3rd place victory. And of course it was something of a victory. In a sane world the other so-called "normies" in the GOP would drop out and support him, putting the party above the petty, but Jeb Bush is nothing if not petty and he won't be dropping out soon. Rand Paul has the warmth of Freedom to keep the cold sting of defeat from his free Texas skin. Chris Christie is probably just happy for an excuse to be out of New Jersey. Kasich is, apparently, quietly demented. None of them will be inclined to drop out, though the one way to stop the Cruz/Trump derailment of their party necessitates they do so, they drop out immediately, endorse Rubio, and turn their side of 2016 into a three-way race. Who would win such a race? God, who knows. Clinton will beat any of them.
What else did we learn? That polling is absurd, because it had Trump ahead in Iowa most of the way? No, we didn't learn that. Polling isn't absurd, Trump supporters are. They are infantile, clueless White Nationalists who enjoy bellowing about how their Whiteness is not quite as adequately recompensed as in days of yore and then are easily distracted. A set of car keys jangling-in-the-face distracted. Too distracted to go out and vote. Perhaps in non-caucus states a greater percent will make the bother, and Trump still might win the GOP nomination. Or he could be so devastated by Iowa that he throws in the monogrammed towel.
We can happily say good-bye to Martin O'Malley, who absolutely didn't belong in the last debate, or perhaps should have been placed on a B-stage debate by himself, where his pre-planned responses would have not sounded a note different in stridency or beat. Without his presence we will see a more focused contrast between HRC and the non-Democrat running in the Democratic primary. It should be interesting to see if Bernie Sanders has much to say about much of anything beside the billionaire class. Perhaps he will discuss Hillary Clinton's damn emails. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment