Obvious Question
Are Monmouth and Suffolk correct or are Iowa State University, Emerson, and Siena?
Wrong Question!
Curiously, that is not even the right question.
It may not matter.
Iowa Caucus Rules
The reason it matter is because of Iowa Caucus Rules.
- The Iowa caucuses have multiple rounds.
- Voters opting for a candidate who gets 15% of the vote in the first round or more are locked in.
- The rest are free to change their minds.
Full Scorecard
Warren and Buttigieg Wildcards
What happens in Iowa will largely depend on what Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg do.
If Warren tops 15% in most or all of those districts, that will roughly be her percent of the delegates.
The same applied to Buttigieg.
Four What Ifs?
- What if Warren tops 15% but Buttigieg doesn’t?
- What if Buttigieg tops 15% but Warren doesn’t?
- What if neither tops 15%?
- What if both do?
Those questions are crucial, yet I have not seen any analysis of them.
Crucial Questions Answered
1: Votes for Buttigieg are more likely to go for Biden than the others.
2: Votes for Warren are highly likely to go to Bernie.
3: I suspect Bernie is the winner but it is harder to say.
4: I suspect Biden will pick up more of those for voting for Klobuchar, Yang, Steyer, etc.
More Complications
It’s even a bit more complicated than that.
Warren might not get 15% nationally yet get 15% in most of the districts. Only in those districts where she fails to get 15% will those initial votes get recast.
The same applies to Buttigieg.
Two Winners
What Warren and Buttigieg do greatly matters.
Bernie can easily win the first round, yet Biden can come away with more delegates.
Who’s the winner? Both or the one with more delegates?
Who’s in the Lead Now?
The media is universally discussing Bernie’s lead.
Does Bernie even have a lead?
Curiously, those rooting for Biden should want Warren to exceed 15% in every district.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I believe people are thinking about this caucus in the wrong way. The big divide is age. As a New Yorker article put it yesterday: “ An Emerson poll of Iowa this week found that forty-four per cent of Democrats under fifty support Sanders; ten per cent favor Elizabeth Warren, and no other candidate reached double digits.” That means this caucus is all about turnout. If Bernie can figure out how to bring out the youth (and even the middle aged), he will win easily. If the Pelosi/Schumer/Nadler crowd (the hippies from the 1960s) show up in droves, Biden will dominate in Iowa.
I am shocked and amazed that Warren and Biden are still showing their faces in public after the fiascos they’ve been associated with. Even more surprising, even though it shouldn’t be I guess, is that most of the public doesn’t seem to care and continues playing along as if these 2 haven’t done anything wrong.
The rest are sure losers against Trump.
Tulsi was the only candidate that could’ve given Trump a challenge and hope for the American people and the rest of the world.
Now Bloomberg is gonna represent the democrats.
I almost feel sorry for my fellow Americans that vote democrat.
Gabbard, the DINO moron? She is the closest thing to Sarah Palin that ever ran as a democrat, and in fact she is NOT a democrat and all democrats know that, she only calls herself a democrat because a republican can’t win office in Hawaii. She is no different from the far fringe left socialist “progressives,” in that she is a parasite on our party and the only reason these non democrats call themselves democrats is that ours is the largest party.
But, you feel sorry for anyone calling themselves a democrat or voting for one? Considering it is virtually impossible to decern a Trump voter from a straight up Nazi I think the shoe really should be on the other foot, and given the GOP ass kissing that just happened in the senate you ought to be prepared to see your senate majority lost in the November vote, and your house minority whittled down even more than it is now. The republican right has now a corrupt threat in office and has become so radical that you are not going to win. Not only that but it will be a landslide. Those that still fool themselves into thinking Trump has any chance at all are fooling themselves and most know it, you may not, but that will not change the outcome.
Tulsi Gabbard “ is NOT a democrat and all democrats know that”
I tend to agree with you. There is no longer a place in the democratic party for someone whose main political philosophy is peace and opposition to military interventionism (note that Bernie is not a democrat either), even if she is an outspoken advocate of Medicare for All. Despite having Mike Pompeo as his Secretary of State, Trump will likely be to the left of the Democratic nominee on foreign policy.
For the record I had to vote for an idiot who didn’t know what Allepo is.
Trump was the least worst choice so I’m glad he won for that reason and I do believe he wants the best for America but he’s still a terrible representative for America…or maybe just an accurate one? An arrogant jerk.
Herkie comparing someone with moderate or conservative opinions ( compared to your own) to a Nazi is ridiculous and over the top dramatic. You must have some idea what the nazi party did. Is that what you see happening? Is that what’s happened in the last few years?
Bernie has, for all these years, “caucused with the Democrats”. The DNC could not be thrilled to have old Bernie leading the party he’s not a member of.
If I were a DNC person, I’d be upset with Biden. He’s tired and driving 45 MPH in the left lane, keeping the D bench from getting starter experience in the current game.
Four years ago, the pro R’s didn’t like that stealth D, Trump, but the D’s fixed that problem by viciously herding the R’s and Trump in to a tight bunch. That’s a great strategy if, in fact, Trump were the bozo that the D’s make him out to be. But, reality does affect politics sometimes, so, oops.
Entertaining, this is. Last election we had the choice between Eva Peron and Biff. This time it’ll be like a Ukrainian election – one billionaire against another.
Har, har. Hey, somebody toss me another brew.
The democrats allowing Sanders to run as a democrat YET AGAIN was suicidal. We could win in a landslide if he were not a factor. But, because they allowed him to run as a democrat once again he and his communist borg will play spoiler, they will be so pissed as they were in 2016 that some will vote Trump and the rest will stay home.
I am a lifelong democrat but one which has always reserved the right to vote for a republican if the party did not produce a nominee I could vote for. I voted for Reagan against Carter, and for McCain against Obama. And the only candidate that could possibly get me to vote for Trump is Sanders, and that is saying a lot because I see my vote as sacred and a duty, because I see Trump as a criminal with zero morality and probably going to end this country, yet Sanders as president would make Hugo Chavez look like a moderate.
I sincerely think that polarization is now so solid in the USA that we cannot survive as is, both sides are now too radical for the vast majority of voters and people are exhausted with our political system. If the right insists on doing it’s Nazi-Lite routine then the left is going to be doing it’s Satlin-Lite routine. I do not like either, but I see Trump as doing catastropic damage, where I see Sanders damage as total. The caution for the right is that their voter base is both smaller and demographically shrinking by the day. More than 7,500 older people die each day, and they are far more likely to be GOP voters than democrats. That is a fact that denial just is not going to alter.
BTW, rewrite “7500 older people die each day” as the uninformative, “some old folks die each day.” Otherwise, you can fool yourself by comparing those dead folks to slippery, imaginary numbers of younger people dying and being born.
The median age of Americans is going up. Which is another way of saying there are more older people than in the past, relative to younger people. Yep, demography is currently on the side of the old.
I think that historically, Iowa is a rather poor predictor of who will eventually head the ticket, for either party.
Pocahontas, Warbucks and seven more mental dwarfs. Karl Marx would be an upgrade, and Adam Smith’s turning in his grave.
Biden + Klobuchar
Bloomberg + Klobuchar
likely a landslide IMO
Bloomberg and Klobuchar combined have the charisma of a watermelon.
” charisma of a watermelon”
Precisely!
People sick of Trump arrogance
You have got to be kidding. The entire Bernie base would just stay home on election night.
It will be Hillary Clinton. The DNC is an extension of the Clintons. She is already laying the groundwork
If a post is 100% pure politics – I am going to use this forum again. If mixed, then economics. I have a bunch
Biden is done. He was there mainly as a foil for the Coup 2.0 Impeachment deal. He’ll be done within a few weeks.
I predict Bloomberg and Buttigieg.
The only problem with the latter, despite the huge positives of being young, gay and a Rhodes Scholar, is that his name is just going to be too easy to make cracks about (oops!). And as we all know by now, the one thing forbidden in anything to do with politics Democrat style is
Humor!
PS. And Bernie is an Idealist par Excellence. Such people should be barred from running but it doesn’t matter: naive young people and SJW types will flock to him and scare off the rest of the population, so there is a self-correction mechanism built in.
Trump might well surpass 400 this time…
(there I go, trolling Mish again!)
I ain’t votin’ for no Booty Greg!
Are these names even real?
Like CIAramella?
Or CashnCarry [ph] in Treasury a few years back?
Or (gay) Buttygeek [ph]?
You just can’t make this stuff up.
My current model – or filter as Scott Adams might say – is that the USA is a Reality TV Republic (In Name Only) currently finishing off a Reality TV Impeachment influencing an upcoming Reality TV Election.
It can’t be true, but it better explains what happens than any other filter I’ve come up with – like the world being run by Satanists in a hidden oligarchy, like ‘they’ are all either corrupt or stupid or both and so forth; such speculations have merit, but don’t properly explain the stubbornly surreal tragi-comic-tacky nature of the whole thing.
No, ongoing reality more resembles the ‘doesn’t make sense but keeps happening episode after episode’ reality of B-grade hits like LOST or the last three Star Trek failures than anything substantive like a serious conspiracy for world domination or something!
Evidence Item #1: