For all the talk about South Carolina and Nevada and all the rest, Iowa and New Hampshire still play a massive, massive role in the presidential selection process. The generally accurate conventional wisdom is that Iowa has extremely conservative conservatives and extremely liberal liberals. I was just hearing some pundit on TV explaining how Iowa’s conservatives are more weighted towards evangelicals while New Hampshire’s have a more libertarian hue. All true, as far as it goes. But there’s one overwhelming reality about these two states: everybody is white.
Not everybody, of course. But pretty close. Let’s look at the numbers.
We can now see how important it was for the FBI to release the video of the final moments of Oregon standoff spokesman Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum. Before the video’s release we were moving rapidly on our way toward a version of events where Finicum was cowering on his knees with his hands clasped behind his head when an FBI agent put a gun to his head and said, “Barry told me to give you this message.”
Of course, we’ve now all seen the video. There’s room for interpretation at the margins. But a few things seem very clear. Finicum, in the driver’s seat, made a run for it after a brief stand off where his vehicle and two FBI vehicles were parked together on an isolated road. He raced about a mile before running into a police/FBI roadblock. After coming close to running down an FBI agent, he plowed his vehicle into a high embankment of snow. He darted out of the car, either with his hands up, with his hands out to steady himself in the snow or motioning to people to back off. After two law enforcement officers emerge, his arms go down and he makes a couple quick moves to his hands to his waist before falling to the ground. But now his family is coming forward to allege a ‘coverup’.
When you’re the tough guy and the alpha you can’t seem subdued, weak or frankly, ridiculous. Trump’s getting close here.
As you can see in this update here, The Intercept announced this afternoon that it had “discovered a pattern of deception in the actions of a staff member” named Juan Thompson. They further said that Thompson had “gone to great lengths” to produce fake stories. For anyone who has seen these fabulism controversies erupt it is a familiar set of alleged infractions: fabricated quotes, fake email accounts, sources who can’t remember speaking to reporters, quotes that may be valid but can’t be verified. The Intercept made a series of corrections and editor’s notes tied to the affected pieces, including retracting one piece entirely.
Last summer, in our since-discontinued section The Slice, TPM published a freelance story by Thompson, then still a staffer at The Intercept, on the role of criminal violence in his own family. The piece was aggressively fact-checked. I know this because I was peripherally involved in the process at the time. And this has been confirmed this afternoon by a further review of emails, notes and discussions with relevant TPM staffers.
Trump supporters are totally shocked. One woman tearfully says, “It’s just heartbreaking. He really wanted to Make America Great Again."
— Matt Viser (@mviser) February 2, 2016
Marco Rubio came in third place in Iowa, which by most objective measures is just holding on coming out of the first caucus. But of course it’s never that simple. His campaign seemed all but dead and he significantly out-performed expectations. And along the way uber-winner-alpha-lion Donald Trump took a big gut punch. So Rubio becomes the great shiny hope for business and establishment Republicans nationwide. The constrained choice of Trump and Cruz is a choice of catastrophes for Republicans. Rubio is a path to a plausible national nominee. So the Empire is really, really striking back hard now. It has a horse to ride. On the other hand you have a few other folks who aren’t quite ready to join in. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie. Maybe even Jeb Bush, weak as he may be.
Christie this morning dubbed Rubio “the boy in the bubble.” And I think that’s a dig that may have resonance. It captures how Rubio is produced, protected and – truth be told – a tad delicate. Can he really take a political punch when he’s the center of attention? I’m not sure.
I’ve already shared my thoughts on the results of the Republican contest. On the Democratic side, I think Hillary seems to have done what she needed to do – not lose. We don’t know the final results yet. But it seems like she’ll likely hold on to her minuscule lead. I will say, however, that Bernie Sanders speech felt more like a victory speech. Hers was short; his was broad and thematic. I think he wins in New Hampshire where he’s already far in the lead and from the neighboring state. From there, it gets much harder for him. I think she pulls it out. But I wouldn’t say it’s a certainty.
I believe the Republicans came out ahead in the Iowa Caucuses. If Donald Trump had won the caucus, he may have been able to close out the nomination battle by winning Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. But the Republicans now have a three-man race, and one of the candidates, Marco Rubio, would be difficult for the Democrats to defeat in November.
The Democratic results – a virtual tie between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders – suggests that the Democratic contest will go well into March. I love Bernie Sanders, and I think his campaign is making an enormous contribution to America’s future, but I don’t think he can win in November. He’ll run up against deep-seated skepticism about big government and tax increases. For the time being, he is too far to the left to win a national election unless he faced someone who was equally on the far right. And his age could also be a handicap.
That was certainly was a subdued, almost kind-hearted Donald Trump. I don’t have a sense of how that will or won’t play. But I will say this. Trump’s campaign from the start has been about immigration – booted out undocumented workers, slamming the door on Muslims. There was never much to hit Cruz on on the immigration front. There’s a ton to hit Rubio with. He made his pitch to be the Republican who delivered his party for comprehensive immigration reform. And he failed miserably. Trump’s script writes itself. Even more than usual.
I’ll try to expand on this tomorrow. But the Republican results tonight look like a significant win for the GOP – mainly because it provides an opening for Marco Rubio. Yes, Cruz wins – huge victory for him. He looked to be declining in the polls and it seemed like he might even fall to third place. But he won. But here’s the problem for Cruz. Iowa is a where hardcore conservatives win a lot, especially ones with strong evangelical roots. Other states won’t be so easy.
But the big story is what can only be called a body blow for Donald Trump. If Trump had won or won big, I think he would have blown out New Hampshire next week and quite possibly been unstoppable. Now Trump isn’t a winner, but a loser. We’ll see how he responds to that.
But Rubio has a strong showing, greatly beating expectations. He’s clearly the only hope for establishment Republicans. And in a one on one with Cruz, I think Rubio wins. So a damaged Trump, a one on one between Cruz and Rubio, that creates a path toward a Rubio nomination in my mind. Not certainty or perhaps even a likelihood but a path. A path out of the choice between a Trump or a Cruz nomination is a path out of catastrophe. And that’s a win in itself.