One Week Out

In exactly one week, voters in the state of Iowa will caucus to decide who they think should be the next presidential nominee. It'll be a snooze fest on the Republican side, but quite the opposite for the Democrats. It will the serve as the beginning of a long primary season and, by virtue of its seemingly immovable place on the schedule, Iowa has what some consider to be out-sized importance for the dozen (technically) active candidates on the Democratic side.

I am of mixed-feelings regarding next Monday. On the one hand, it's time we had real data. Not polls, not political ads, not stump speeches, not hyper-sensitive supporters engaging in online arguments and defenses -- real data. The only way we have that in this situation is for people to vote. On the other hand, results will barely be in when the mighty media wurlitzer will crank into gear, telling us how things really went down. That is the down side to concrete results of an ongoing electoral process -- narratives can develop which may or may not represent reality. They will, however, help shape that reality.

This time twelve years ago, I was all-in for Obama. He was, to my mind, the clear choice, and the best chance Dems had at winning the general election. There were those (on the left) who I talked with that worried his ethnicity would turn some people off from supporting him. I, perhaps naively, disagreed. If there were any such people, they obviously didn't make much of an impact on the outcome. Over a decade later, we are faced with an active Democratic primary field that has women and people of color, though those numbers have winnowed from where they once were.

Four years ago, the first woman from a major political party ran for, and lost, the office of U.S. president. Some have tried to make it into a referendum on 'can a woman win the presidency?' I prefer to look at history overall, and note that over 50 men have run for president in a general election, and they all lost. If we didn't make it into an issue of manhood for all of them, then we shouldn't make into an issue of womanhood for the one female who finally made it through the gauntlet.

But it isn't 2016 anymore. We are now at the dawn of a new year and a new decade, and what happens in Iowa next week will begin to shape the rest of the primary season in incalculable ways. Polls in the states that immediately follow Iowa are nice at this point, but we could see them potentially shift dramatically, depending on how things go in the Hawkeye State. At this point, Bernie Sanders is polling better than he was, though Iowa is still pretty much a four-way race between him, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg. A strong Sanders showing in Iowa -- not necessarily a win -- could bolster his already favorable outlook in the New Hampshire primary.

Buttigieg has been my pick for quite some time. Unlike twelve years ago, I am not hugely excited by his, nor anyone else's, candidacy like I was with Obama. Possible reasons for this could be that I dealt with cancer in 2010, which realigned my outlook on things somewhat. Also, I'm just older, so perhaps am not as excitable as I was in 2008. Obama was also my U.S. Senator when he decided to run for president, and I'd witnessed his grand oration skills in-person. I'm also more concerned with what happens on a local level now and, finally, perhaps no one running really rings my bell like Obama did? On the night he was elected president, someone next to me said, "This is once in a generation." Maybe they were right?

To be perfectly honest, I am not sure Buttigieg will still be in the race when it comes time for my state to vote on March 17. I'm getting the sense that he's putting all his eggs in the Iowa basket, and I'm not sure he'll do well enough there for it to pay off. "Do well" means 1st or 2nd place. I'm just not sure I see that happening. He also doesn't seem to be well enough liked by African-American community as he needs to be if he wants to win the Democratic nomination. I dunno, he might limp along another month-and-a-half 'til the Illinois primary, but it seems doubtful. Of course, maybe he'll come in first in Iowa. Who knows?

If Buttigieg is out by the time March 17 rolls around, I don't know who -- at this stage -- my second choice would be. I'm not as put-off by Biden as some others are, but he also feels like a 'back to the past' candidate. Bloomberg is a non-starter for me. Looking ahead to the general election, it scares me a bit to have someone as far left as Warren or Sanders at the top of the ticket, but I also don't fully trust my judgment on that. Who knows, maybe that's just the sort of thing we need? Andrew Yang actually seems pretty solid, but he just hasn't gained the traction he needs to win the primary season. I could see him doing better in another 4 - 8 years.

All of this is to say, I really don't know. I don't know who's going to win Iowa, I don't know who's going to win the primary, and I don't know who my second choice candidate is going to be. I also don't know if any of these people can beat Trump in November. You've no doubt seen my handy dandy map at the top of the post, which I made at the 270towin web site. It shows my prediction of the lay of the land come the general election, sans the true battleground states. Looking at it (as I've done many times over the last few years), I'm left truly baffled as to how things will go.

So yeah, here we are. We're a week away from the Iowa caucus, and it remains to be seen what the results will be, and how they -- and the media narrative -- will impact things afterward. I am curious and concerned about the primary, but am not enthusiastic. Maybe that will change. Maybe my innate pessimism will dissipate. Maybe my preferred candidate will do well. Maybe we'll know a little more a week from tonight.