While the most entertaining story of the Iowa caucuses was either the utter chaos and incompetence that unfolded or the sinister machinations of the Democrat party, depending on your take on the events, the more important story is getting far less attention.
When given the first opportunity to turn out and vote for a candidate to oppose President Donald Trump, Democrats largely shrugged and said, “Meh.” Turnout was down almost 30% from 2008.
This is by far the most important story out of this primary, which is why it will be largely blacked out by the media.
While Barack Obama was not on the ballot, Democrats clearly expected a greater show of voter force when they were given the chance to do something other than howl their Trump derangement rage at the moon.
Smart Democrats understand this reality all too well. Harry Enten is one of the smarter ones.
“If you go back to four years ago, what the Iowa Democratic Party has said is this is about the same exact turnout,” Enten observed. “That is not particularly good[.] … There’s supposed to be all this excitement around the Democratic Party wanting to beat Donald Trump. And this isn’t the only data point that shows that.”
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“Not particularly good” in liberal speak translates to catastrophic.
The problem for Democrats is that only one of their candidates excites anything resembling passion, and he is the one candidate that the Democrat establishment power players are doing everything in their power to torpedo. At the same time, they are desperately pushing the least inspiring candidate in the entire field, although that impossible dream might be over post-Iowa. For Democrats, voting chicanery is practically a national spectator sport, but one would have thought they would have at least kept their fraud powder dry until they actually faced a Republican.
In one precinct, Bernie Sanders beat Pete Buttigieg 111 votes to 47 in the first round. They both landed two delegates in that precinct in the Democrats’ version of “everyone gets two trophies.” The Sanders camp has to be concerned that a repeat of 2016 is underway, when they almost certainly won the state, perhaps decisively, and yet were declared the narrow losers. The fix was in, and, while I am thankfully no expert on the psychology of anyone who would actually consider pulling the lever for the Marxist madman, I have to think most of his supporters know that the fix is in again. It just so happens that the “chaos” benefited the candidate of the establishment while hurting Sanders. Nothing to see here.
The media have been assuring America that we are at a national boiling point of pent up anti-Trump rage against the worst person to ever walk the Earth and that voters are dying to get to the voting booth in a collective cathartic purge. Iowa is the canary in the coal mine for the media and Democrats, showing that relying purely on opposition to Trump is about to blow up in their faces.
While the complete caucus disaster (or Machiavellian machination) is more fun to talk about, the poor turnout is the story that matters.
Will the behavior of Iowans be the start of a trend?
President Trump’s policies in combination with Democrat extremism has created a decisive political realignment that moved working-class voters out of the Democrat column and into his. Expect Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan to follow a similar path, with Democrats left to scratch their heads about the turnout that didn’t happen.
