There was an…election event yesterday. That gives it more attention than it deserves. Election spasm? Political twitch? Republican fart?
It was a caucus. I’ve attended a few — these are weird little parties where a select few show up and are given a platform for their often weird ass opinions.
It was in Iowa, a conservative rural state with a bloated status in politics for the sole, and trivial, reason that they schedule their primaries to be first.
It was a solely Republican event. Democrats were put in the shade.
And yet, all of the newspapers are running this as a front page story, headline news that’s going to be trumpeted endlessly. The Republican also-rans, Haley & DeSantis, were negligible. The media are ready to crown Trump after this trivial and pointless event, that we all knew how was going to turn out. They are happily feeding the illusion that Trump is inevitable without acknowledging that he’s only inevitable among the most contemptible people in the country, MAGA freaks who will ignore his record and his crimes.
Except in the sense that a corrupt criminal is dominating the Republican party, why should I care what happened in Iowa? The media are just playing the horse race game, again. Who cares that this man could destroy the country and that a significant fraction of the electorate are ignorant assholes? We got us a competition! Let’s see who gets first place! Wheeeee! Time to sell more ads!
At least Republicans are running a primary. Meanwhile, the so-called “protectors of democracy”, the Democratic party is busy manufacturing consent that the old Joe is the best person to take on the fascist.
No, the cartoon is wrong.
“Trump wins Iowa, in a one contestant caucus” gets the first entire page, around page six is “The world blows up and we’re all dead”.
Now, let’s go sell more ads. While giving away entire pages to the god-emperor Trump, who will outlaw us once he becomes dictator for life next year.
Honestly for a whole lot of conservatives (even ones who won’t publicly identify as MAGA) his crimes and record of terrible behavior are why they support him. They aren’t overlooking them, they’re glad he’s an aspiring dictator and fervently want him to win and destroy the political structures they hate so much.
As usual, passive voice doesn’t get it quite right: Democrats put themselves in the shade (film at eleven).
IIRC, it was the Democratic National Committee who decided to put off Iowa until later. My memory of what I’ve read is that they wanted Super Tuesday to be even “superer”…or something.
lotharloo@1 who is the “magic bean” that is supposedly more likely to beat Trump than Biden?
@5: Yeah would have been nice to have an actual primary to find out, specially since Biden’s approval is in the gutters.
@5 It sure ain’t Dean Phillips, which also makes me wonder who the DFL plans to run for his house seat. Or are they thinking he will flame out early and go “Just kidding, put me back in the house”?
Bad look either way.
I’m glad I’ve got “Boring Betty” McCollum repping me in MN-04. These days, it’s nice not having your rep in the news daily. My one regret, I lived in Michelle Bachman’s district for one year (ugh), but couldn’t vote against her, because off year election. Then I got the hell out of there…
@4
DNC decided they were done with 2 unrepresentative states hogging the front end of the primary process. So they decreed “if you hold your primary/caucus too early, we won’t seat your delegates”. What the hell else were they supposed to do?
Iowa Democratic Party listened and rescheduled. NH legislature (controlled by republicans) did not.
If the State is going to be involved in choosing the candidates for a party the parties should not have any influence on the process, no ‘only party members can vote in this part of the state-run election’, if it is a state-run election every voter in that (district/county/state) gets to vote in that election regardless of party status. If the parties want to do it all by themselves without the State being involved that is fine. My preference would be to groups states into 10 relatively contiguous groups of approximately around one-tenth of the US population. Then randomly choose which grouping goes first, second, third, etc. (Except that no grouping could be last in consecutive elections, or first in consecutive elections.) That way pretty much everyone gets to go ‘near first’ or ‘near last’ or ‘stuck in the middle again’ at pretty much the same rate as everyone else.
“You are in I-O-WAY!” — The Music Man, 1963. There was nary a black, ethnic minority or woke liberal in good ol’ River City back then, just a plethora of white, “Christian,” uber-conservative, small-minded assholes running the show.
“He’s one of them Lithuanians, I tell you!” Except there were no Lithuanians, just others that might have looked or acted different. They weren’t in the movie, but they’re in today’s Iowa, and Trump’s got Iowan voters’ blood up for sure. On to New Hampshire!
The DNC is garbage. I knew that years before the Russian hacks corroborated. Only reason to vote for Superpredator Hillary and MBNA Biden was keeping Trump out.
The only interesting takeaway from the Iowa primary is how low the turnout was. Even accounting for the weather, that turnout was very low.
@17 Also… it was only a win by 52%. This is still utterly mad, but the chimp, and his supporters, and others, really, truly, thought that it would be a landslide in his favor. But, barely getting more than half of the people that bothered to even show up to vote was not what they expected. Still nightmare, but, barely squeaking past 50%? Nope, not expected at all. Then there is the fact that there have been an unknown number that have recognized his madness, and seen that the rest of the “top candidates” are just as nuts, and really have stated they have no intent to vote for him at all (or anyone like him). How many of them may have skipped this vote, with the intent of voting against him later, if he is still on the ballot?
Though, one has to ask how many of them will also be suing their own states, after the final vote, when the assholes in charge of their elections remove them all from the rolls, before the final election, on BS grounds that they failed to vote in the first one, so don’t qualify somehow to vote in the second one (or worse shenanigans). This is literally a case where voting for “anyone” on the ballot was voting for the wrong person, if you are a Republican.
Source : Jim Wright of the Stonekettle Station blog on, ahem, facebook.
It occurs to me that, say, California, Hawaii, New York and maybe a lot of other states should pass laws that their primaries always go before the Iowa one by X period of time eg. a month or at least a few weeks.. Why giove Iowa such oversized influence – ditto New Hampshire, etc ..
Yet again, I really don’t understand what the fuck is up the USA’s politicla systems and its obvious but never even trying tobe fixed flaws..
Yeah, the Aussie system isn’t perfect either but just .. for fucks sake.
Given that he’s complicit in war crimes it should be, but from a comparison I saw (can’t find it right now) it’s about average for incumbents at this stage, and most of them went on to win.
@kg:
Check 538, Biden has the lowest ever approval rating at this stage.
lotharloo:
Ah, a lazy sod. Never mind. I’m in the mood, and obs up to it.
No need for stinking links or supporting data, that’s for feebles.
<clickety-click>
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[enables as many domains as necessary]\
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Almost since its founding, FiveThirtyEight has published comprehensive averages of polls for a wide variety of questions related to U.S. politics. In June 2023, we debuted a new set of models for these averages that aims to improve the models’ accuracy and how the results are visually conveyed to our readers.”
Ah, right. Apparently, “ever” means as long as they themselves have been doing it. Don’t care to examine the wriggly lines on the screen, but I notice stuff.
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[crossref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating%5D
Huh. Harry Truman, 22. Biden, as per 538, 43.
Lowest ever, eh? I suppose “at this stage” does a shitload of lifting, there.
I reckon it’s more “at this stage of credulity”, but hey.
Could be ‘at this stage of the news cycle’, or suchlike.
[oops, tsk, etc. ]
This is what I checked, as was suggested: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
(Not quite so lazy, am I)