Iowa Caucuses — Some Thoughts
I did not watch last night’s caucus returns. Mrs. Greenbean and I watched Paddington and Paddington 2. Turns out, that was much more enjoyable. I just love that little bear. Also, history tells me the television coverage of the Iowa Caucus is just a camera shot of a high school gym with cold people standing around. Not riveting. The commentators are usually nonsensical, not because the are nonsensical by nature (though some are) but they are forced to fill airtime but here is no news. No one really knew anything at 8PM last night.
And to be honest, we still don’t. Such is the nature of the process. But here are some thoughts — and as I share these please remember this is not cheerleading for any one candidate or side. Greenbean does not play favorites and he generally distrusts all politicians. However, I do enjoy the horserace and the analysis.
1. It was a good night for Donald Trump. The problem for him on this good night is that it was expected. The pressure was really for him to slam dunk it, and slam dunk it he did. Anything less than that would have been viewed as total failure.
2. However, it was a better night for Joe Biden. Most of the country expects a 2020 redux, and if that is the case, Biden not having to compete was beneficial in terms of time, money, and energy. Not having to compete in primaries and caucuses is one of the reasons why incumbents usually have the edge in November — they don’t suffer from all those shots fired by their own team.
3. But imagine — and this is a very random thought — imagine if Biden had been primaried by three or four competitors last night and he received about half the vote, or just over the half the vote? People would be screaming what terrible shape he is in and that his campaign is in trouble. As they should. The catch — and this is where it is problematic for the former president — the catch is Donald Trump is a ‘de facto’ incumbent running in the Republican field. We don’t have a lot of data in the modern world for this, but there is no comparison for someone like him running who has already served a four year term and run twice before. Ergo, the media should, and if they had any credibility they would, be asking themselves this question: how is it he only got about half the Republican votes in one of the reddest of the reddest states? Again, my argument is that in many ways we have two ‘incumbent’ POTUS candidates here, and now imagine if Biden had only gotten about 51% of the vote in say, a very blue state like Washington or Massachusetts. That’s the problem if you’re a Trump fan and it is a very real problem. About half of the voters last night said, ‘We’d like someone else, please.’
4. Before we get to that someone else, let’s talk about raw numbers. Iowa was in the middle of a blizzard, so that has an impact, but only about 102,000 people voted last night. That is the same number roughly that will fill the football stadium in Austin. For comparison, about 187,000 people voted in 2016, the last time the GOP caucused in Iowa and Ted Cruz won that one. But go back to that 102,000 people. If my information is correct, that represents only about 14% of registered Republicans in the state of Iowa. I know it was a blizzard, but man, that is not a lot of excitement. The Dems got 176,000 in 2020 for their caucus, which was won by Pete Buttigieg, but just barely, over Bernie Sanders. Again, this year is weird, but you know what Cruz, Buttigieg, and Sanders all have in common? None of them became president. And actually, none of them really got that close.
5. So what I saying — the Media is making too much of this, and when they do make a lot of it, it is usually the wrong focus. I am not saying Donald Trump will not win the nomination or will not necessarily win back the White House. What I am saying is that Donald Trump’s win in Iowa doesn’t mean a whole lot.
6. Now, the someone elses. Christie is gone. Hutchinson is gone. Ramaswamy is gone. Now it really is just a three person race. DeSantis has very little organization in New Hampshire or South Caroline. He has about a week to build one. The problem with South Carolina is . . . that is Nikki Haley’s backyard. Early polls in New Hampshire show show Haley in second and within striking distance (especially with Christie out, who had his highest poll numbers in New Hampshire and it is hard to imagine a Christie voter moving back to Trump). If Haley is a strong second — within five points or so, look for DeSantis to receive the knockout blow in South Carolina. Then we have a two person race for the rest of the country, which, could be very, very, very interesting.
5. Let’s talk about Haley for a moment. Some of the reports I’ve read today indicate a belief, especially among Trump fans, that many of her votes were actually Democrats who had nothing better to do than meddle in the GOP caucus. This is nothing new — people accused Republicans of the same four years ago. I don’t think there is much to that because turnout wasn’t that high, and there were no other issues on the ballot. You might have some of that if bonds, council elections, state constitutional issues or such were on the ballot, but very, very, very few real people would go out in bad weather and vote for someone they really don’t care about. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, what I am saying is there is no way it happened to the degree that it had any kind of an impact upon the results. I mean, for that matter, some Dems may have crossed over to vote for Trump because they believe Biden will beat him easily rather than against Haley, who, right now, has a bigger edge head to head against Biden than anyone.
6. Now, this is when I put in a plug. What we have here is about 7% of a tiny state exercising an outsized influence on a nation of 330 million people. And what would it look like if Biden were on the ballot right now? Here is a proposal for election reform that would make it all so much better. Have the individual primaries and caucuses, but work it all as a top two vote getter among all the candidates. So Biden, Trump, Haley, DeSantis — all are out there right now competing. Then, when the primaries are over, the top two then go head to head regardless of party. I actually think if that happened, then you’d get something like a Haley vs. Trump November or maybe eight years ago (2016) there would the been a Clinton vs. Sanders in November. The system we have now gives us the same retreaded binary option every four years, and most people realize this is a sick process. We need open primaries, and we need them very soon.
New Hampshire is next week. And I am sure I will ideas about that as well.
