Someone said a few days ago that the failed attempt to remove President Trump from office was going to frustrate Democratic voters and likely depress their turnout. (It was me.) There’s a sign that that’s exactly what happened at the Iowa caucuses.
Early reports from the chaos are that turnout appears to be on track with exactly what it was in 2016 with participation from about 170,000 voters. That attendance is down from 2008 when nearly 240,000 voters turned out for those caucuses.
That’s weird! Democrats still have a field of nine candidates competing for the nomination in a year that they’ve impeached a fairly unpopular president. What happened to the pulsing energy we saw in the 2018 midterms that turned control of the House over to Democrats?
A couple of things have happened: First, Robert Mueller’s report found no collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, though elected Democrats had all but promised it would. And second, Democrats followed through on their intent to impeach the president anyway, but now face the reality of an acquittal in the Senate, an outcome that probably wasn’t what their voters had in mind.
It’s just one state, and things could always change in the upcoming primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, but it’s not a good start. Democratic voters don’t have much to get excited for.
