Snip.
Biden performed surprisingly well all year in polls, but he headed into Iowa like a passenger jet trying to land with one burning engine, hitting trees, cows, cars, sides of mountains, everything. The poking incidents were bad, but then one of his chief surrogates, John Kerry, was overheard by NBC talking about the possibility of jumping in to keep Bernie from “taking down” the party.
“Maybe I’m fucking deluding myself here,” Kerry reportedly said — mainstream Democrats may not have changed their policies or strategies much since Trump, but they sure are swearing more — then noted he would have to raise a “couple of million” from people like venture capitalist Doug Hickey.
Kerry later said he was enumerating the reasons he wouldn’t run, though those notably did not include humility about his own reputation as a comical national electoral failure, or because there’s already a candidate in the race (Biden) he’d been crisscrossing Iowa urging people to vote for, but instead because he’d have to step down from the board of Bank of America and give up paid speeches. French aristocrats who shouted “Vive le Roi!” on the way to the razor did a better job advertising themselves.
With days, hours left before the caucuses, there were signs everywhere that the party establishment was scrambling to find someone among the remaining cast members to stop what Kerry called the “reality of Bernie.”
But who? Yang said smart things about inequality, so he was out. Tulsi Gabbard was Russian Bernie spawn. Tom Steyer was Dennis Kucinich with money. Voters had already rejected potential Trump WWE opponents like the “progressive prosecutor” (Kamala Harris), the “pragmatic progressive” (John Delaney), “the next Bobby Kennedy” (Beto O’Rourke), “Courageous Empathy” (Cory Booker), Medicare for All can bite me (John Hickenlooper), and over a dozen others.
Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg seemed perfect, a man who defended the principle of wine-based fundraisers with military effrontery. New York magazine made his case in a cover story the magazine’s Twitter account summarized as: “Perhaps all the Democrats need to win the presidency is a Rust Belt millennial who’s gay and speaks Norwegian.” (The “Here’s something random the Democrats need to beat Trump” story became an important literary genre in 2019-2020, the high point being Politico’s “Can the “F-bomb save Beto?”).
Buttigieg had momentum. The flameout of Biden was expected to help the ex-McKinsey consultant with “moderates.” Reporters dug Pete; he’s been willing to be photographed holding a beer and wearing a bomber jacket, and in Iowa demonstrated what pundits call a “killer instinct,” i.e. a willingness to do anything to win.
Days before the caucus, a Buttigieg supporter claimed Pete’s name had not been read out in a Des Moines Register poll, leading to the pulling of what NBC called the “gold standard” survey. The irony of such a relatively minor potential error holding up a headline would soon be laid bare.
However, Pete’s numbers with black voters (he polls at zero in many states) led to multiple news stories in the last weekend before the caucus about “concern” that Buttigieg would not be able to win.
Who, then? Elizabeth Warren was cratering in polls and seemed to be shifting strategy on a daily basis. In Iowa, she attacked “billionaires” in one stop, emphasized “unity” in the next, and stressed identity at other times (she came onstage variously that weekend to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” or to chants of “It’s time for a woman in the White House”). Was she an outsider or an insider? A screwer, or a screwee? Whose side was she on?
A late controversy involving a story that Sanders had told Warren a woman couldn’t win didn’t help. Jaimee Warbasse planned to caucus with Warren, but the Warren/Sanders “hot mic” story of the two candidates arguing after a January debate was a bridge too far. She spoke of being frustrated, along with friends, at the inability to find anyone she could to trust to take on Trump.
“It’s like we all have PTSD from 2016.”
Read the whole thing for a detailed breakdown of how Democrats suddenly changed the caucus rules on people, followed by “a mind-boggling display of fecklessness and ineptitude.” And even if I disgree with some of his lefty conclusions, you have to love this sentence: “Democrats went on to systematically rat-fuck every group in their tent: labor, the poor, minorities, soldiers, criminal defendants, students, homeowners, media consumers, environmentalists, civil libertarians, pensioners — everyone but donors.”
