I mentioned this the other day: The media is more interested in narrative than facts. The Iowa caucuses provide a perfect example.
Donald Trump won. That’s news, but of the dog bites man sort – everyone knew he would. But that’s not a very compelling narrative, so political reporters gave us others, based mostly on what the candidates themselves wanted printed.
Ron DeSantis eked out second place, so he proclaimed, “We’ve got our ticket punched out of Iowa.” The translation: He won’t fold his campaign before New Hampshire, where voters are more likely to punch him, not his ticket (he’s polling at 6%).
Nikki Haley’s third-place finish with 19%, about 2,000 votes behind DeSantis, prompted her to say it was now a two-person race. She counts herself as one of them, which shows that math isn’t her forte, and the “mainstream Republicans,” at least those willing to put in the effort, are outnumbered 4-1 by MAGAts. She’s polling well in New Hampshire, though, so they’ll ignore that until Southern states voters make it undeniable.
Those narratives aren’t interesting, either, but they have the benefit of requiring no effort to assemble. So let me help them out. Here are my two takeaways from the 2024 Iowa caucuses.
1) Trump’s two main rivals split the rest of the vote almost equally, which means half the non-Trumpers want a less alienating, more “normal” candidate, while the other half want someone even more alienating than Trump. If they report that, though, they won’t be able to write their “why Trump keeps winning among Republicans” thumb-suckers
2) Donald Trump won the caucuses with 56,260 votes. No, there’s no missing sixth digit. That’s it, not even 60,000 people. Everyone else split an even smaller number.
Iowa’s population is about 3.2 million. About 110,000 of them participated in the caucuses. That means a paltry 3.4% of the state’s populace took part. Sure, the weather played a role, but the most votes ever cast in the GOP caucuses was 187,000 in 2016. Granted, the caucuses are a time-consuming nuisance – you have to sit there and listen to people tell you why you should back this person or that before you can vote, which surely cuts down on participation – but that’s no reason to downplay the real story: MOST IOWANS DIDN’T GIVE A FUCK.
At least a little good news came out of the frozen cornfields: Pestiferous pipsqueak Vivek Ramaswamy “suspended” his campaign. The bad news: Some of the reporters on the Ramaswamy beat will probably be reassigned to pestiferous nepo baby RFK Jr.
If anything else happened yesterday, it was buried under large drifts of the obvious.
The floor’s yours.