One always hopes the weather is good, to ensure more people travel to the caucuses. One always hopes the caucuses reveal what voters in Iowa think, because otherwise it is a charade of insiders or activists who do not speak for those voting in November.
More specifically, and more partisan, there is a hopeful sign for Bernie Sanders winning the Iowa caucuses. Bernie is leading in the latest Iowa University sponsored poll. It is, however, disconcerting how much the DNC clique and their handmaidens in the corporate media are behaving. Let's start with the polling data showing Bernie with the most diverse support, the most grassroots enthusiasm, and how military personnel back Bernie more than every other Democratic Party candidate, and also the incumbent president, who regularly wraps himself around the flag and religion. This has to be unheard of in modern politics. If Bernie had been a member of the DNC clique, or stalwart for the DNC, we would be seeing article after article, and continuing corporate media pundit discussions, about the need for the Democrats to quickly unify so as to concentrate on defeating Trump. Instead, it's panic at the disco for the DNC and their handmaidens in corporate owned media.
First, we learned how the DNC, after denying requests for threshold criteria for debate changes for Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, and Andrew Yang, suddenly changed the debate rules for billionaire Michael Bloomberg--whose campaign strategy is saturate the television and radio airwaves and cables for shut ins and otherwise wary corporate Democrats, who pray to broadcast media corporate cable news the way evangelicals pray to Joel Osteen. Bloomberg is now in a position to enter a February debate if he gets polling support of 10%, something he continues to creep towards, and I mean creep in the most punning way possible.
Second, we hear of grumblings among the DNC disco panic people themselves about wanting to revoke the superdelegate limitations the DNC unanimously agreed to in 2018. The DNC disco panic people are now afraid of Bernie's momentum, and that they may not get the brokered convention they have been scheming for since allowing for the 2018 compromise, where superdelegates get to vote in the second round of delegate voting at the national convention if nobody wins outright in the first round. This has been why I think so many of the biography/vanity candidates ran in the first place, hoping to survive long enough to be considered as a "dark horse" presidential nominee or at least VP. * Reading the entire article at Politico, though, makes clear the 2018 superdelegate rule change is not likely at all to change for this 2020 presidential primary cycle. However, it is something these party hacks are dreaming about at their Rules committee meetings this summer at the national convention, for the 2024 rules. If Sanders were to somehow win a first ballot nomination, they can kiss that dream goodbye.
Third, Joe Biden has resurrected the dumbest argument against Sanders: "Bernie's not a Democrat!" Here is why this is the dumbest argument: Contrary to the implication in the argument, Bernie votes most of the time with Democrats in Congress, more than the likes of so-called "moderate" (meaning corporate) Democrats. Also, it scares Biden and other corporate Dems that the most second choice candidates among those supporting the other candidates in this primary is...Bernie Sanders. And Bernie and his policies are popular with most Democratic Party voters. To me, Biden is the living, breathing Senator Payne in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And what is most dumb in this dumbest argument is Bernie's stated independence is precisely what makes Republicans and independents more likely to vote for Bernie than most of the other Democratic Party primary candidates, as Vox recently pointed out a few weeks ago. Bernie's greatest obstacle right now is the Democratic Party establishment and the corporate media handmaidens, which are going to every argument, good, bad, reasonable, unreasonable, wrong, mendacious, etc. against Sanders. Party Unity My Ass. It is what I said in September 2017: The whole idea of unity, civility, and BlueNoMatterWho style arguments from corporate Democrats has always been a mask for their way or the highway. They have been projecting the entire time, and what we are seeing now proves that point.
Final points: I don't know if enough Sanders' voters come out for the caucuses. I don't know how rules will be interpreted when Sanders' voters show up at various caucus sites. I don't know if Biden or other corporate Dems, and maybe even Warren, decide to bolster Biden in second round voting just to ensure Bernie can't say he "won" Iowa. I am happy to see some reasonable speculation that Tulsi and Yang supporters are mostly ready to support Sanders in the second round of Iowa caucus voting. We will see....
* In the January 14, 2019 blog post to which I linked about biography/vanity candidates, I referred to Mayor Pete as progressive, as with Warren. That was at the beginning of Mayor Pete's candidacy, where he was calibrating his message with a progressive tinge, before he began his rather swift descent into corporate power positions and insider strategies. He has been such a disappointment to me. And Warren has not warmed my soul much in the past months, either, as she clearly shifted strategies to compromise with the DNC pooh-bahs.
