Why does Donald Trump’s respectable finish in the Iowa caucuses look so much like a stinging defeat? After all, for a conventional candidate, Trump’s performance could easily be spun as a victory. In profoundly hostile territory – Iowa’s GOP voters are deeply religious, while Trump is … Trump – the New York property magnate came in second. Indeed, he won 15,000 more votes than Rick Santorum did when the former senator won 2012’s caucus. But then Trump’s candidacy has been anything but conventional.
For the most part, the novelty of Trump’s approach has served him well. The massive rallies; the tweets that are anything but poll-tested; the disdain for “retail” politics: These have catapulted him to the top of the national polls.
But Trump made what now appears to be a crucial tactical mistake: He refused to play the expectations game that every other candidate dutifully partakes in. You know how it works; never outright predict victory, say only that you “hope to do well.” Never let on that any result could be ever be seen as a defeat; always leave wiggle room.
Trump threw this approach out the window. “Wouldn’t it be better off if you just said you want to do well in Iowa? No I want to win,” he declared. “I could say I want to do well, that’s the safe way, I don’t want to do the safe way.” His campaign manager went even further. “I’d love to say second place is great but it’s not,” said Corey Lewandowski.
We’ll see in the coming days whether Trump takes a lesson from this. If he starts talking down his chances in New Hampshire (“well, Chuck, we hope to do well”), we’ll know that the Donald has become something we never expected: normal.
