…and that’s Politics for you, Caucus Consternation and All that’s to Follow
With the Iowa caucuses behind us (well, almost behind us), and the New Hampshire primary looming next week, the herd of candidates is starting to be culled, with more undoubtedly on the way, ensuing after this coming contest.
Following the Iowa caucus, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum suspended their campaigns, leaving GOP frontrunners (listed alphabetically) Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump leading the remaining pack, which includes (again, alphabetically) Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, and the Republican version of Don Quixote, Jim Gilmore still attempting to win place or show in the Granite State.
Speaking of Don Quixote, on the Democrat side, hapless Martin O’Malley, the former Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland also ran up his own white flag of surrender, suspending his campaign while the Iowa caucus was still in progress, an unusual step considering the fact that O’Malley did so without releasing his would-be delegates to either of his own opponents, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. O’Malley was, from the start of his campaign, a mystery unto himself- never registering any notice, never engendering any interest, and his presence in the Democrat debates was, at best, an exercise in futility and inconsequence.
With the Des Moines Register calling for a complete audit of the Democrat caucus, it seems that the shenanigans of that party’s caucus even managed to surpass the kerfuffle of the Republican kluster-phuck. At least six Democrat precincts settled their respective impasses with a coin toss, all of which fell to the favor of Hillary Clinton – practically impossible as odds of coin tosses go, there was even more ambiguity regarding how the delegates were allotted in the first place, because the rules in the Iowa Democrat Party eschew the counting of actual popular vote totals. Given the fact that Clinton claimed victory the evening before the tallies were released the following afternoon, it seemed that the Iowa Democrats fixed the outcome, and that Hillary Clinton knew the “fix was in.”
Meanwhile the GOP had their own issues, with the Ted Cruz campaign tweeting to all of their 1,500 precinct captains, a pejorative claim that Dr. Ben Carson was suspending his campaign in an effort to pilfer his own votes to Cruz. Attempting to blame the confusion on CNN, Ted Cruz apologized to Carson the next day, but this did nothing to calm the fears that Cruz “won” the caucus, based on a lie that Carson was out. While it is possible that the resulting votes propelled Cruz past Donald Trump (assuming that merely an average of four votes in each of the 1,500 precincts went to Cruz that might otherwise have gone to Carson), Dr. Carson would still have come in fourth place, behind Cruz, Trump and Rubio. Yet, it may well have denied “the Donald” a victory in the contest, but that is something that may never be known, definitively, in any event. While second-place finisher Trump, third-place finisher Rubio, and fourth-place finisher Carson can grumble all they want about the dirtiness of Cruz’s victory, inane calls for a caucus “redo” are not going to happen, primarily due to the costs associated with a repeated caucus and the fact that, in the end, it would only amount to the shift of one single delegate awarded, for each of Cruz (-1), Trump(+1), and Rubio (+1).
Should the remaining Republican contestants Bush, Carson, Christie, Fiorina, and Kasich, fail to win, place or show in the New Hampshire primary, their campaigns will essentially be finished, leaving the South Carolina, Nevada and “Super Tuesday” contests to be settled amongst the top three, Cruz, Trump and Rubio, as Gilmore doesn’t stand a chance of accomplishing anything, other than appearing to be the south end of a northbound elephant, should he decide to stay in the race.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is expected to win the New Hampshire primary with great ease but, for all intents and purposes, that will mark the high tide of his campaign- setting aside even worse revelations about Hillary’s illegal e-mail operations, because Comrade Sanders has no chance of winning primaries in the South.
However, if that unlikely win by Sanders should come to pass and/or it is followed by an unlikely, albeit deserved indictment of Hillary Clinton, there is a sitting Vice President (Biden) and a Massachusetts Senator (Elizabeth Warren) ready to snatch the nomination away from Sanders, and will surely set DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s curly hair afire.
-Drew Nickell, 4 February 2016
© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.