Last night's most heroic moment arrived when CNN called the GOP race with a mere 99 percent of the vote totals in. The most perplexing moment was a protracted affair; John King's repeated references to Donald Trump's splitting of the establishment vote with Marco Rubio. Other than that, all we can say about Iowa, that odd little outpost of democracy, is that white prayers and bleached faith paid off, respectively, for Ted and Bernie.
Of course Sanders was primed to declare victory no matter what. Had the vote been 60-40 or 75-25 for Hillary, Bernie would have juxtaposed the final result with his starting point of 3. The NY Times says he'll now "be able to argue that the Iowa result was a virtual tie" — which it was, even though it was also a loss. But again, no matter. Except for Martin O'Malley and Mike Huckabee's, the spin belching today from every camp will be unendurable.
Yesterday afternoon I listened to Sanders in a network interview and experienced the most peculiar sort of despair. Don't get me wrong, I like Bernie; I admire his pluck and, as a democratic socialist myself, I find his idealism quite agreeable. Yet I had known for months that what Sanders was peddling was pure fantasy (as is most idealism) — all this talk of single-payer and free college and whatnot. As president, Sanders couldn't get from A to B, let alone to legislative P, Z, or even C.
But yesterday in that interview, for some unknown reason the absolute emptiness of Bernie's assorted "We're going to do this and we're going to do that" struck me acutely and crushingly. I felt only pity for him and especially for those who believed his fantasy was real.
We've one more week of ideological inebriation in the second of two very white and unrepresentative states; then, most likely, back to political sobriety.
As for last night's Republican outcome, my emotions were those of ambivalence. I was joyful indeed at Cruz's near 28 percent, the winning plurality, yet my prayers for Trump had gone unanswered. The latter's Iowa-closing-out speech was just downright pathetic. And now whither The Donald's always-triumphant demeanor? The gloss is either gone or it's fading.
On the other hand, there's always that unendurable spin — showman that he is, conceivably Trump can convert his second-place Iowa showing into Bill Clinton's second-place New Hampshire victory. At any rate, I felt sorry for Trump as he stood at the podium last night, trying his billionaire best to act as though he hadn't been reamed by Ted's corn-fed hayseeds.
It is they, one assumes, who constitute the great, Cruz-committed, hardcore, courageously conservative multitudes who shall sweep the republic clean of sin in November? All 28 percent of them — and that percentage within a minority national party? Could it really be that the most detested man in all the detestable GOP is now the frontrunner?
Even better is this astounding observation by the Times: "The five current or former governors [including Bush, Kasich and Christie] still running won a combined 8 percent — less than what the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson received." The youthful Floridian Wunderklutz has his work cut out for him.
The expansive circle of the Great Republican Tail-Chase has contracted. The Huck is gone, Santorum and Carson will soon follow, most of their evangelical fleas will jump to Cruz, Rubio will somehow double down on his piety, and there's Trump — there's always The Donald — for whom I'm still rooting, but I'll settle for Ted.