Trump Won, What Happens In Iowa Often Stays in Iowa & DeSantis Isn’t Done - Top 3 Takeaways – January 16th, 2024
- Trump won in Iowa and bigly. For most Floridians, for most Americans, it’s been a long, not quite, three years with Joe Biden as president. Seriously, think about that for a moment. How long does it feel like the country has been suffering under the failed leadership of Dementia Joe? He will only have been president for three years this upcoming Saturday. We’re all familiar with the expression that “time flies when you’re having fun”. What we’ve been living through politically is the anthesis of this. And as always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts and the fact of the matter is that while it’s certainly my opinion that Joe Biden is the worst president of my lifetime, it’s almost certainly your opinion too. As the Iowa Caucus officially kicked off election season last night for Republicans, with Democrats yet to come (Democrats start a week from today in New Hampshire), Joe Biden is set to enter the season with a lack of a major challenger to his nomination as the DNC did their best to clear the deck for him entering the primary season (something they may already regret). President Biden has the lowest approval rating, 39% on average (including just 33% in the just released ABC News poll), of any first term president in American history at the onset of the nomination season. It’s not just my opinion that Joe Biden is the worst president of my lifetime, it's the majority opinion in this country. What that necessarily tells you is that, should Joe Biden in fact turn out to be the Democrat’s nominee (there’s growing semi-conspiratorial sentiment that Democrats do the old switch-a-roo at the convention with perhaps a Michelle Obama for example), whomever wins the Republican nomination figures to be a heavy favorite entering the general election cycle. But ‘ole Joe won’t know what those on the left in Iowa think of him in comparison to his light competition until March 5th. That’s the date Democrats decided to hold their caucus in an effort to minimize the influence of states that Joe didn’t perform as well in four years ago. But what we do know, with one state down and 49 (plus D.C. and some territories to go) who’s currently best positioned to be the Republican challenger to the eventual Democrat nominee...whomever that may be. As no one is likely surprised to see...it’s the former and perhaps future President of the United States as Donald Trump, who polled with a 34% lead in Iowa, his highest lead of the cycle heading into the Iowa Caucus, easily prevailed. So that Trump won rather easily amid freezing temps and often over a foot of snow in the first state to go comes as no surprise. But here’s the thing about Iowa...
- What happens in Iowa...often stays in Iowa (including Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign as he dropped out after finishing 4th and has endorsed Trump). While Iowa historically has officially kicked off the election season, what they often haven’t kicked off is a winning campaign for the eventual winner of a party’s nomination in contested primaries. In fact, there’s been no state which has picked fewer eventual winners (since the union included 50 states) than Iowa. Just ask last night’s winner, Donald Trump, about that as he lost Iowa the last time the GOP had a contested caucus in Iowa. Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee...know what those three have in common other than having all unsuccessfully run for president? Those are your last three Republican winners in Iowa in contested nominations. You have to go back to the 2000 election to find the last time that Iowa voted for an eventual Republican winner. So, for that reason what happens in Iowa has most commonly has stayed in Iowa which means two things. One, that there’s certainly still hope for someone not named Donald Trump to win this race, but that there’s another philosophical question to be asked. Is Trump running as an incumbent? The last time a former President of the United States was running to once again become President of the United States, FDR was in power and Florida’s entire population was about the size of Palm Beach County’s current population. In other words, we lack modern political context in more ways than one for what the former and perhaps future President of the United States represents in this race. It was clear heading into Iowa that Trump would win. The real number I was watching in Iowa was 50%. The question that’s worth asking and that voters are set to answer across the country is whether Donald Trump is effectively running as the equivalent of an incumbent president? Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are both highly credible candidates. What that means is that however voters may have split between the two of them, and to a much lesser extent Ramaswamy, the biggest question of all is whether it really matters. In the current incarnation of the two-party system an incumbent president running for reelection has never lost their party’s nomination – in either party. If most Republicans view this process as an opportunity to stay with their president of choice, as opposed to a process to determine a nominee, the rest of the process is academic. The last time there was an open Republican nomination process in Iowa, Ted Cruz won the state and Donald Trump only carried a little over a quarter of the vote. In other words, Iowa wasn’t Trump country originally. That’s what makes Iowa a potentially bigger than usual tell. Given a choice of highly credible alternatives, if most Iowans want Trump – which is how they voted last night with Trump capturing most of the GOP vote, history suggests most voters across the country will want Trump. And at that point, it wouldn’t matter how credible the DeSantis and Haley campaigns might be...it would effectively be a fait accompli. But speaking of Trump challengers...
- DeSantis isn’t done. Given Trump’s outsized lead entering Iowa in the polls the biggest question wasn’t about whether Trump would win but rather who would finish second. In many ways Iowa felt, heading into the caucus, as a DeSantis or bust state in the race to be the top non-Trump candidate given that of the first four states to vote, Iowa had consistently been the one where he polled best. It’s also the state where he raked up key endorsements, visited literally every county, and where he effectively has operated as Florida’s governor for the past two months. For those reasons, Iowa in the minds of many, represented the potential for DeSantis to be one and done should he finish third behind Nikki Haley. It was close, but in the end, DeSantis beat out Haley for second place in Iowa. As he said he got “his ticket punched out of Iowa”, which would seem to suggest that if he’d finished third, he may have called it a day. Instead, his presidential campaign will fight for another day, or at least a week. The nomination process has only just officially begun, and DeSantis’ decision to remain in the race into New Hampshire, following Christie’s recent exiting of the race, should provide Nikki Haley the best opportunity she has to make a statement in New Hampshire – the early state where she’s been polling best, and incidentally, the state where Trump’s been polling worst – with his support consistently showing a number below 50%.