Apparently, the journalistic and punditry worlds have lost their ever-loving minds over the Iowa primary last night. Take a peek at memeorandum for this morning and witness the hyperventilation for yourself. Here are a few samples.
The New York Times: “The Two Earthquakes”
Opinion Journal: “Out with the Old, In with the New”
The Politico: “GOP Race in Total Disarray”
LA Times: “Ron Paul Gets Some Revenge”
Wall Street Journal: “Beginning of the End for Romney”
And that’s just the serious, sober, professional journalists. You don’t even want to know the sort running around and screaming that was going on in blogospheria.
Read on for more amateur wonkery. It’ll be fun!
So, okay, there were a couple cool things that happened last night. Barak Obama proved that you can be black and appear to a bunch of white Midwesterners without race-baiting or appealing to liberal guilt. Doing that made Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton a lot less necessary in the Democratic party. I think Obama’s message is extremely naive and more gossamer than a honeymoon pegnoire, but good on him for being able to get it across without reverting much to the same old identity politics. We’re better off as a country for it.
Mike Huckabee did something that’s not easy to do – he beat a guy with a lot more money than him by turbo-charging the grassroots. That’s what Howard Dean tried to do in 2004 but couldn’t quite manage. It didn’t hurt that Huck played the identity politics game better than it had been played on the Republican side since…ever. It’s disheartening that the Republican won because of what he is as opposed to what he believes or what he actually did during the campaign. That’s playing the game Democrat-style and it doesn’t have any business in a party with real conservatives. But it’s still kind of neat to see how he managed to leverage a slick presentation and Chuck Norris into a win over more experienced and better funded opponents.
The rest of the analysis you can get via the indispensable John Hawkins. Before you head there, though, and fill up on the prime punditry and good analysis, let me give you all you really need to know about last night’s Raucous Caucus.
The Iowa Caucuses, not even an actual primary election, is the first election of fifty. Barak Obama and Mike Huckabee, who needed to do really well there to build buzz and credibility as candidates, did really well there. Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, who are running a national campaign and didn’t need the early win, didn’t. Some others – Fred Thompson and John McCain notably – did better than expected there given that they didn’t campaign there all that much up until about the last month or two, which gives them some idea of how to campaign better in real, Honest-to-Gosh primary states.
But – and this is the biggie – no one’s won any delegates yet, so the score, to borrow a sports cliche, is still 0-0.
That’s it. That’s all that really happened last night.
Oh, for sure you’re going to hear about momentum and fundraising and all the stuff that makes the MSM get all wiggly. You’ll hear it because that’s all the stuff that the MSM has real influence over and boy do they like that influence. It makes them important. It justifies their salaries. It keeps them in printing ink and little fedoras with the word “PRESS” written on a card sticking out of the brim.
But it’s not real.
The real stuff happens very soon, starting in Wyoming and South Carolina. That’s where we step out of the carnival sideshows of Iowa and New Hampshire (which is the closest thing to a free-for-all you can get in a system like ours. It’s one step removed from dropping colored rocks in a jar) and we start taking our duty as citizens seriously. Wyoming and South Carolina are where we see which candidates can deliver their messages to more than just one state and to more than just one particular group of people.
Don’t sweat the big headlines and the pundits that you’ll see all weekend. The press has a lot of money invested in making sure you buy into their narratives. You don’t have to. You can hear the candidates for yourself. There will be two debates over the next couple of days – one for each party – and the stage won’t be quite so crowded. Oh, you’ll still have choices, but you won’t have to worry about the debate looking like an Earth, Wind, and Fire reunion concert. Keep an eye on the debates and see who is making the best case on the merits of their positions and who is using rhetorical flash powder and trapdoors to make you see something that’s not there. If you can’t watch them, or record them, find the transcripts a day or so later and read over them. See who has a good handle on who knows their stuff and who really doesn’t. Find the person whose positions and plans do what you want to see done.
Take your time and don’t believe the hype. Like I said, the game hasn’t really started yet. The score is still 0-0.
