The
time has come. Tonight Democrats gather at over 1600 locations
throughout the state of Iowa to begin choosing delegates to the next
Democratic National Convention. By most polls, Bernie Sanders has a
slight edge, followed by Biden, Buttigieg and Warren and Klobuchar.
The
caucus is a strange animal. It is not the same as going to the
polls, casting your vote and going home. You must commit to caucus:
be prepared to spend several hours in which you go to a designated
place in your area and literally stand with your friends and
neighbors who support your candidate. You must publicly demonstrate
your support.
Then,
if your candidate does not reach a threshold of 15 percent of those
present, you can either go home or shift your support to someone
else. Joe Biden is hoping, against all hope, that perhaps Mayor Pete
will fade and he can pick up his supporters, or perhaps someone
else's supporters who fail to reach the threshold (there are still a
dozen or more in the race) will race to the 'safe' side and join his
effort.
But
the underlying trends don't bode well. According to msn. Com (1).
“Roughly
two-thirds of Iowa caucus-goers said supporting a candidate who would
fundamentally change how the system in Washington works was important
to their vote, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of voters who said
they planned to take part in Monday’s Democratic caucuses.
That compares to about
a third of caucus-goers who said it was more important to support a candidate who would restore the political system to how it was before Trump’s election in 2016.” (2)
If
that's the case, Biden's goose is cooked.
As
it stands, we are groping in the dark, not only because of the nature
of the process but the quadrennial gold standard of opinion
measurement leading into this event, the poll taken by CNN and the
Desmoines Register, was pulled from the news stands. Incredibly, one
supporter of Buttigieg
said that when he or she was called by
the pollster, they didn't mention Mayor Pete's name, a flaw evidently
serious enough to cancel its publication.
CNN
is a notable supporter of the Clintons and the DLC mossbacks in the
Democratic Party. In 2016 they gave massive coverage of tRUMP
because the corporate bigwigs ciphered that he would be the easiest
Republican for the most unpopular and least trusted Democrat
(Clinton) to beat. We have seen how this strategic move worked out.
Now,
it appears, the corporatists—who, having failed to prop up a viable
candidate—are determined to supress the news of the revolt. With
two-thirds of those going to caucus having no stomach to return to
the good old days, it is difficult to see how Biden and his ilk will
tonight find justification.
Tonight,
Iowa decides whether progressive politics breaths life or whether it
gets strangled in the crib.
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- Ibid.
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