For years, the Iowa Democratic Party had time to perfect their caucus proceedings for the most potentially robust primary in modern history. For months, left-wing commentators have sought every reason to discredit the disproportionately white state’s voting mechanisms as prohibitive, and in just one night, Iowa gave them their leverage. In a stunning display of incompetence, Tuesday’s caucus results will spill into the days following the much-anticipated foray into the 2020 election.
Officials cite “quality control” efforts, while “Bernie bros” back conspiracy theories and just about everyone blames Hillary Clinton alumni.
But the “why” doesn’t matter so much. Monday night’s proceedings will taint Iowa’s preeminent primary status and the caucus system as a whole simply as a result of their effect on the election.
Prior to the caucuses, second-string candidates such as Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg were deemed all but dead if they failed to produce strong showings into the Hawkeye State. Seeing as they both play the media well enough, now they still have a fighting chance even if their results are lackluster. But the repercussions of the wait could prove profoundly damaging to Bernie Sanders, the insurgent second-place candidate who was on the cusp of overtaking Joe Biden in his front-runner status.
The media has spent nearly a year nipping at the heels of the former vice president, predicting an impending downfall that never actually came. Yet, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Sanders seemed slated to unseat Biden, undercutting Biden’s electability argument, the salient but core case for his candidacy. If politicos had gone to bed or even woken up with results announcing Biden’s demise, the commentariat would have written the obituaries paving the way for the Vermont senator’s supremacy by breakfast.
But Biden will now live to see another day, and the next primary, next door to Massachusetts, will give Biden a boost in Elizabeth Warren’s ability to cut into Sanders’s base.
The participatory process informing caucuses posits downsides, such as inaccessibility for voters working long hours, that ought to be offset by its populist merits. But, if Iowans willing to take multiple hours out of their nights to grease the wheels of the democratic exercise cannot even reap the results of their endeavor in the form of an electoral and media response, the case for caucuses is all but moot.
