My Iowa Forecast – and an MLK Day Story
The Promised Land vs the Party that Seeks to Break the Promise
That the temperature will be deep in the negative numbers for tonight’s Republican* caucuses that will officially launch the No-Longer-Party-of-Lincoln’s 2024 presidential campaign is appropriate. The party has become entirely negative. A minus sign should replace the elephant as its symbol.
Before I get to a brief discussion of what I expect to happen tonight, let me relate a story about Martin Luther King Day that seems relevant to the state of today’s Anti-Republic Republican Party.
In early 1973, while I was completing my dissertation, I was working as a “communications consultant” with Southern Bell telephone company in Atlanta. One of my coworkers was a seemingly very nice older—at least when I was 25, she seemed older to me—woman. One day the discussion in the office turned to the proposal to make the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. She remarked:
“They should make April 4th, the day he ascended into hell, a holiday.”
I was dumbfounded, and not just by her apparent belief that hell is above us. I bring this up now because I believe that woman represents the sort of people who populate the Trump Cult.
As for my forecast for tonight:
The weather is likely to be an important factor in what happens, but more reliable than the weather forecast is the forecast that Donald Trump will win by a wide margin.
Here are the numbers in the final Des Moines Register Poll:
Trump 48%
Haley 20%
DeSantis 16%
The brutal temperatures will reduce the turnout at the caucuses, but the cultists are more likely to risk frostbite for the man who can shoot the Constitution in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and not lose a single supporter than are the backers of the other two candidates.
The enthusiasm gap is wide, as Steve Kornacki points out in the image below.
Perhaps more significant than those numbers, which combine “extremely” and “very” enthusiastic, are the separated-out “extremely enthusiastic” numbers:
Trump: 32%
Haley: 9%
DeSantis: 23%
Nikki Haley’s backers apparently are “just not too into her,” and that could result in DeSantis getting second place. If he does, he may try to stay in the race, though it’s very hard to see where he goes from Iowa.
If Haley gets second and DeSantis drops out, she will have a one-on-one race against the Evil One in New Hampshire next week and it is conceivable that she could win there.
To me, the most hopeful finding of the final poll is that 11 percent of Republican caucus goers say they will vote for Biden if Trump is the Republican* nominee.
Let’s keep our focus on MLK Day.