Candidate With 91 Felony Counts Wins Iowa Republican Caucus

Trump! Trump! Trump!  The media horse race narrative about the (probable) GOP candidate for president in 2024 continues. A wannabe strong man garnered a majority of the votes in the Iowa Caucus. And now we’re supposed to believe his election is inevitable.

Before most caucus-goers had cast their ballots, Donald Trump was declared the Iowa Caucus winner, beating Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley by about 30 points.

Given the political circumstances (a cult-like following) and hella freezing weather the results were predictable. The only question remaining at 7:30 pm when the first results were reported was whether or not Trump would win by more than 50%. He did.

Let’s pick apart those Iowa results.

• There are 2,083,000 registered voters in Iowa.

• 718,901 of them are registered Republicans.

• 102,000 Iowans attended the caucuses,

• 53,219 supported Trump, representing 7.4% of GOP registered voters and 2.55% of the total electorate.

Gosh, those numbers don’t seem to indicate inevitability, given Iowa’s failure to predict the eventual winner in presidential contests. In the seven contested Republican races since 1980, only two winners in Iowa have captured the party’s nomination: Senator Bob Dole of Kansas in 1996 and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas in 2000.

Nonetheless, an MSNBC commentator suggested that nobody running against Trump could possibly compete after his victory.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nicki Haley and Florida Gov Ron DeSantis didn’t see it that way, with both candidates giving faux victory speeches and pledging to continue their campaigns. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy got the message and folded their campaigns.

Via the (yes, I read everything) National Review:

• His margin of victory of roughly 30 points sets a new record for dominance in the caucuses. According to the entrance survey, he won almost every single demographic group. Given that he’s currently leading in New Hampshire, too, he must be considered well on his way to a third consecutive Republican nomination.

• Ron DeSantis banked everything on Iowa, and, while he managed to beat out Nikki Haley for second place after a long war of attrition, it was a distant second. Even if he’s determined to forge ahead, he’s very weak in New Hampshire and running far behind in South Carolina, while fundraising is not going to get any easier. Obviously, running against Donald Trump this year was always going to be difficult, and even more so after the indictments, but the DeSantis campaign still has to count among the most disappointing and poorly run in recent memory.

• Nikki Haley didn’t get the second place she wanted to generate more momentum going into New Hampshire. She’s been rising in the Granite State, though, and, based on the polling trend alone, has a chance of catching Trump there. If she does, it will boost her campaign and create some possibility of a fundamentally different dynamic in the race, although that seems unlikely. Haley has already over-performed compared to expectations, but the Iowa result and New Hampshire polling suggest her coalition is too dependent on moderates and independents to be built for victory in a Republican nomination battle.

The victor gave a (relatively) conciliatory speech and flew off to New York, where he is facing a trial to determine damages owed to E. Jean Caroll. An earlier trial determined that Trump had sexually assaulted the woman and awarded $5 million in damages for defamation. Then the defendant repeated the same words that got him sued in the first place. 

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has already ruled that, based on the outcome of last year’s trial, Trump’s comments as president were, indeed, defamatory, and that he is liable for them.  The only thing to be decided by the jury in this trial is how much money Trump should pay in damages. Carroll is asking for $10 million in compensatory damages. 

Parker Malloy weighed in on the underwhelming Iowa caucus vote, noting that Trump ran his campaign as if he were the incumbent, and that kind of showing would be embarrassing if he were really still in office.

• First, in the Des Moines Register poll, more than a quarter of likely caucus-goers would not vote for Trump if he were the nominee.

• These are not soft Republicans, RINOs, or passive political participants; these are Republicans who told the best pollster in the business that they were planning to brave subzero temperatures to go to a two-hour meeting on a Monday night. According to the Pew Validated Voter study, 92% of Republicans voted for Trump. Therefore, his performance in this caucus is a warning sign of erosion within his base.

• If that number holds across the battleground states, Trump will struggle mightily to return to the White House.

• Second, according to the entrance polls, 32% of caucus participants believe that if convicted, Trump won’t be fit for the presidency. From a moral/common sense perspective, that number is shockingly low, but it does speak to the massive political danger that Trump’s legal problems pose to his candidacy.

The question in my mind is: why is a man in so much legal trouble, with a history of poor job performance so popular with GOP voters?

Jill Filipovic has the answer, I think. 

• This word — strong — comes up reliably often when Trump voters talk about their preferred candidate. They want a big daddy back in the White House, and their preferred (or perhaps familiar) father figure is a harsh and abusive one, at least to outsiders. Because that’s the thing with the voters who love Trump’s purported strength, which often manifests as malevolence, bullying, and cruelty: They are confident that that strength will be used against others, and to protect and elevate them. Someone like Joe Biden, who seems fundamentally decent, may want the best for them and everyone else, but at the end of the day he’s still worried about everyone else. 

It is important to realize that Trump voters aren’t making a political choice–it’s a moral decision. So the effort that counts in 2024 is getting as many people as possible to the polls understanding the nature of what is at stake.  

As for mainstream politics, the media will ramp up stories about third candidate efforts. The group with the most dark money behind it, No Labels, has a shot of landing a candidate with name recognition. Their plan is to run a unity campaign with a democrat and a republican slate.

This is a terrible idea, but if you’re a low information pundit looking to call a horse race, it will get some traction allowing news outlets to step away from the horribleness that is Donald Trump. Of course, this No Labels deal will throw the presidency in Donald Trump’s favor.

There is simply no way a third party can win with just a top of the ticket campaign and a boatload of Dark Money. The American system of elections is rigged.

Here’s Obama’s 2012 Campaign manager Jim Messina:

• The question of whether Americans are willing to vote for a third party comes up every presidential cycle. Consider this: Two months before the 2016 election, Gary Johnson polled at 10 percent. In June 1992, Perot led all candidates at 39 percent. These polls were mirages — neither got anything close to that number of votes. Third parties often poll well during a campaign, but that support vanishes on Election Day.

• This points to a larger truth: Americans think a third party is needed, even if they won’t vote for one. Voters want to express discontent with their party. Sure, nearly half of the electorate thinks a third party is necessary, but No Labels mistakenly assumes this means those voters will actually vote for one. Once Americans get a good look at the alternatives, like Perot or Johnson, they end up sticking with the major parties.

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Trumpless Tuesday News Clips

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Demolition notice posted on gate of battered Ocean Beach Pier Via NBCSanDiego.

• The demolition notice said the city's Developmental Services Department has filed an application with the city of San Diego to obtain a permit for the demolition and replacement of the pier. A public hearing will be held to approve or deny the application.

• As concerning as it was in the past few years when the Ocean Beach Pier was damaged by high surf, things took a turn for the much, much worse earlier this month when the king tides took out one of the structure's supports.

• Those bracketed supports every 20 or so feet that are part of the iconic pier's design do more than just look good when risk-breathing surfers shoot the pier, which is why, when a particularly brutish wave snapped one off during the last week of 2023, including its so-called hammerhead top, Obecians and engineers alike feared the worst. The waves, some possibly as high at 18 feet, kept coming, though, and before the surf returned to normal and the calendar changed to 2024, the rest of the support, called a "pile," disappeared from view.

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A Potentially Huge Supreme Court Case Has a Hidden Conservative Backer Via the New York Times

• The case is one of the most consequential to come before the justices in years. A victory for the fishermen would do far more than push aside the monitoring fee, part of a system meant to prevent overfishing, that they objected to. It would very likely sharply limit the power of many federal agencies to regulate not only fisheries and the environment, but also health care, finance, telecommunications and other activities, legal experts say.

• “It might all sound very innocuous,” said Jody Freeman, founder and director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program and a former Obama White House official. “But it’s connected to a much larger agenda, which is essentially to disable and dismantle federal regulation.”

• The lawyers who represent the New Jersey-based fishermen, are working pro bono and belong to a public-interest law firm, Cause of Action, that discloses no donors and reports having no employees. However, court records show that the lawyers work for Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by Mr. Koch, the chairman of Koch Industries and a champion of anti-regulatory causes.

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Parents’ rights groups mobilize as California advances a ban on youth tackle football Via CalMatters

• The committee’s 5-2 party-line vote from Valencia and his fellow Democrats last week to advance the bill set in motion what’s likely to be one of the more emotionally charged issues California lawmakers will consider in 2024 as they wade into yet another contentious debate over parental rights.

• This time, instead of vaccine requirements or LGBTQ policies at public schools, they’re debating the future of the country’s most popular sport, one that has a documented history of its players getting debilitating brain disease from repeated blows to the head. Several high-profile examples of former players – most notably the suicide of legendary NFL linebacker Junior Seau who suffered from a degenerative brain disease – have prompted the NFL down to youth leagues to try to make tackling safer. 

• Researchers say tackle football is still dangerous despite the changes to the game. For instance, Boston University published research last year finding that players who’ve spent more than 11 years in the sport have an increased likelihood of brain trauma, leading to poor impulse control and thinking problems.