Iowa Caucus Follow-up

The first thing to get out of the way is--well, I'll be damned! Maybe Mayor Pete had the right idea to declare his pleasant surprise at the Iowa results (that weren't, exactly, yet) Tuesday night, because he did pretty damn well.* You can chalk that up to a handful of things, of course. Warren, Sanders and Klobuchar did have to do their duties in the Senate. His campaign speaks fluent "heartland."  Also, although he polls well, previous primary campaigns have left me wondering how former VP Joe Biden does in reality versus on paper.  

I know the Shadow/Acronym stuff looks really shady, but for the love of democracy, let's not do conspiracy theories. For one thing, the whole Iowa caucus thing is close and weird and the results are wonky, historically. For another, it looks like folks just wanted to up the digital game and inserted an app where it overpromised and underperformed. In the grand scheme of things, that's a far cry from any kind of "rigging" that I can tell. 

And I just want to talk for a minute about how cool it is that Buttigieg did well here, in the home of the FAMiLY Leader and all that. There's a lot of tolerance out there, and it's growing. (Despite the example of this person, who is getting her information about candidates from some very questionable sources. Of all the things I think one might have known going in about Buttigieg...that he served in the armed forces and is a happily married gay man: those are the two things.) 

Also, the other thing that's going on this year, again, and why people should keep the hell off of conspiracy theories, is that the fuckery is still very much with us:

Yeah. So, when Trump and his little fans want to discuss the caucus as a Democratic clusterfuck, um, no. Maybe a little bit of a cluster, but they helped. (And keep in mind, they want to divide the party by heightening any grievance felt by Sanders backers vs the establishment, so some of that shit needs to be recognized as enemy action on these internets.)  Also, the RNC is coronating a smooth-brained  impeached and acquitted but not exonerated wanna-be tyrant, so they have earned exactly zero democracy points.

Anyway, on to New Hampshire!

* But it looks like Sanders probably did actually take Iowa on the basis of raw votes. So what do I have to say about that? Um, cool? The Plan B for a possible total Biden implosion (which would hilariously make Trump/Giuliani Ukraine exploits to get "dirt" on him totally irrelevant to the Democrats and totally still damaging to Trump) is to smear the "Commie". But Democrats have been called "commies" since McCarthy. (Tail-gunner Joe, not Kevin. Except probably Kevin, too.) So I am all for "taking it back". This is a referendum on Trump's perfidy, but there's no reason to shy away from how to accomplish the 3rd of FDR's Four Freedoms.