Iowa in the Rearview Mirror

Here’s some thoughts post-Iowa and pre–New Hampshire…

1. If Iowa had been a general election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, here’d be the storyline- a bunch of people trudged through ass-deep snow and sub-zero temperatures down to the local firehouse to pick between Orange Jesus who’s groped half the women he’s encountered and a really old perv who stumbles around sniffing women’s hair.

2. Don’t make too much of the Iowa caucuses, only 110,000 votes were cast in the entire state, about the same as two precincts in NYC. Iowa is conservative, white, rural and has many Evangelical Christians- tailor-made for Trump, but he got less than half of the votes cast.

3. New Hampshire is going to be more interesting. The state motto is “Live Free or Die” and these are tough, crusty people. There are more registered Independents than Democrats and Republicans and far less Evangelical Christian influence. This should get interesting because the Independents can vote on the Republican ticket, which should give Nikki Haley an edge.

4. If I’m guessing right, Iowa was a practice game for Nikki Haley to test the waters, see what worked and didn’t work. She and everybody else got the message that Trump is a messiah to 30% of Republicans and they’re not going to change, 65% of Republicans still think he was cheated out of the last election.

5. Trump, in his recent filing to the US Supreme Court, warned that removing him from the ballot in several states would bring “chaos and bedlam”. That’s an overt threat if I’ve ever heard one. I’ll be very interested to see how this case plays out. The Supreme Court will interpret the Constitution and decide if Trump’s acts and mindset constituted an “insurrection”… or, they could save a little time and just look it up in Webster’s dictionary, tell Trump, “Motion denied” and go to lunch.

6. Fox News keeps talking about the vast number of African Americans, Hispanics, young people and women abandoning the democrats and flocking to Donald Trump. In case you’re interested in joining the flock, they’re holding their meeting in the phone booth down at State & Main, by the Kroeger store…