Coop Scoop: What Really Happened in Iowa Has Little to Do With What the Media Reported

Trump has already won the primaries. We are on the road to authoritarian rule

January 16, 2024

By Marc Cooper

A lot happened in Iowa last nite but very little of it got reported by the media who continues to cover this aberrant and extremely perilous election like every other one that has preceded it.  If you did not find the outcome as totally depressing, then please pass me some of your meds.

Let’s sum it up neatly. 

Donald Trump staged the biggest victory in the history of the Iowa caucuses, crushing his two rivals who never showed the nerve to directly confront him.  He took more than 51% of the Republican caucus vote with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley dribbling into second and third place respectively trailing Trump by a whopping 30 percent gap.  Even putting their votes together, DeSantis and Haley still fell 10 points short of Trumps total.

Bottom line: The Republican primary is basically over. Indeed, it never really started as the near entirety of his rivals raised their hands during the first big debate saying they would vote for him if nominated. Trump has shown himself to be the uncontested master, lord and leader of the Republican Party and barring any legal issues over the next year, he is now stampeding to the GOP presidential nomination. And quite possibly to the White House.

DeSantis has nowhere to go and is now irrelevant, polling at an anemic 6 percent in New Hampshire. He put all of his chips in Iowa and came in a very distant second and will soon evaporate.  Haley is getting a huge media boost as the media wants a real contest but there isn’t going to be one.  Given the unique characteristics of the New Hampshire primary a week from now, yes, it’s possible she will have a strong showing and she might even edge out Trump in NH as it is just about the only Republican primary state that allows Democrats and Independents to vote and she might be able to cash in on that.

That is until a month from now when Trump torches her in her home state of South Carolina and then washes her away as millions of Trump Republicans come out to anoint their leader during super Tuesday.  Just ask President McCain about what it means to win in NH.  Zilch.

There is no need for Trump to campaign much more in any primary. He has no need to debate Haley in NH this coming week nor anybody anywhere else.  And I doubt that he will. Trump will probably spend this coming week shoveling garbage on Haley, including a new round of Birtherism.  But soon enough, Trump will no longer even mention any Republican rivals (if any are left) and will turn his guns on Biden.

For all intents and purposes, the general election begins today Tuesday.  Its Trump V. Biden. 

The second takeaway from last nite is that the Iowa caucus was it the first round of voting in an election that easily could lead to an authoritarian regime.  Somebody better push the panic button somewhere because pretending this election is like every other could not be more mistaken. I listened to hours of Iowa coverage yesterday and late into last nite and not a single solitary pundit as much as mentioned the word, authoritarian or illiberalism.  Of all the pundits, the one who stood out as best understanding the moment was former RNC chair Michael Steele, but he was a lone voice in a issuing a stern warning of what is to come.

The data coming out of Iowa should make your hair stand on end.  You have to be a sub verbal moron to not understand that the Republican Party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization and its declared goal is to establish an outlaw government that will use the DOJ to punish his political enemies, that will close the border, deport those immigrants who are “poisoning” our national blood line and that will slash social welfare programs.  Just for openers. If you dare to criticize The Leader, you will immediately invoke the wrath of an overwhelming majority of Republicans who you could say, without much hyperbole, who  now worship the Orange Jesus.

Yes, it is time to start marking the clear coincidences between the rise of MAGA and the German National Socialist Workers Party.  Those who voted for Trump tonight eschewed all logic and rationality and voted, indeed, as if they were ratifying a dictatorship not selecting a candidate to run in a democratic election.  And this was not just about “economic uncertainty” though that is part of it.

Consider the figures.  It made no difference Trump has been indicted on 91 felony counts including plotting against the US government.  A whopping 2/3 of those who voted for him said they would elect him even if he’s convicted of any of those felony counts.  A majority of god-fearing, church going, deeply reactionary self-identified “evangelicals” also voted for the man who has been accused of groping two dozen women, who boasted about grabbing pussies, who has already been found legally liable for sexual assault, who must appear in court today for a second trial for his defamation of the woman he assaulted (and already ordered to pay her $5 million in damage). These uber-Christians also had no problem lining up for a candidate already judged guilty of massive business fraud in New York and who will soon be hit with a judgment of up to $350 million along with being banned from doing business in New York state.  There is probably no major politician today who engages in such vile characterizations of his rivals and critics, but so what? No problem for these Church Ladies and their mates who would probably scold you for using “off color” language but who squal and applaud when Trump calls his critics vermin who are poisoning our sacred blood line.

Everything that is repellant, disgusting, deplorable, off-putting and stomach-turning about Trump are all the qualities that now endear him to his fanaticized supporters. 2/3 of whom claim Joe Biden is not the legal president of the U.S.  We are also witnessing the spectacle of drop-out candidates and other party operatives all loyally lining up in support of this turd.  The man who represents an existential threat to American democracy is now the undisputed darling of one of the two American political parties and will be coronated as the official presidential candidate. He is basically being nominated by acclamation by a party that has no official platform other than total loyalty to Donald Trump.

Perhaps most disturbing, is that Hitler came to power as Germany and the rest of the world was plunged into the 1929 depression.  You bet economic uncertainty was a major factor in the rise of German fascism. And, of course, blaming Jews for “poisoning” the system and exploiting struggling Germans simply followed suit.

Millions of Americans are feeling an economic squeeze of high prices and unaffordable housing.  It certainly is good reason to desire a change that would improve their lives.  Yet, there is no evidence that there is any such alternative at hand. About the only three points on the Republican economic agenda is cutting back Obamacare and expelling the immigrant work force while cutting taxes on the wealthy.  Worse, we are not only in a depression, we even avoided the recession that was universally predicted for 2023.  Unemployment is 3 percent not 30 percent.  Inflation in also down to 3 percent way down from the pandemic peak.  I sympathize and fully understand those who feel economic insecurity.  But that is not a valid excuse to vote for something much worse.

Elements of xenophobia, blatant racism, unfathomable political ignorance and a solid three years of the Big Lie promoted by right wing media have greatly contributed to the building of this authoritarian movement.

And yet.. and yet..,. the brainless media, and I do mean brainless, treated this caucus, and continues to frame the entire election, as if it is just one more like every four years.  String together five or six threadbare cliches about “tickets out of Iowa,” about the polls, about voter turn out and other horse race vocabulary and you could easily pass as a network political pundit,.  Even before the final count was in in Iowa, some of the TV coverage already shifted to the usual diners and bowling alleys in New Hampshire where we were treated to the rambling speculations of low information voters – many of whom don’t know their ass from a coal mine. In short, the MSM totally normalized this sordid affair never letting the public have a clue that democracy itself is now at stake.

The only real political issue before us is not whether Nikki Haley can win in the NH suburbs. Or who Chris Christie will eventually endorse. The only real political issue that confronts us is how to slam the brakes on the road to fascism, a road on which our national car just sped up and entered the left lane and just what is the Democratic Party and the people of the United States going to do to thwart the mortal threat posed by Trump. I don’t have an answer for that as I don’t see one… not yet. Please inform me if I am wrong. In any case, its Code Red time for Democrats and all anti-Trump voters.  The wait is over,. The general election s now underway and we better get off the stick. Ignore it at your own peril. If Biden and the Democrats also treat this election as just one more like 47 elections before it. they are doomed.

I have no idea how Trump is playing among Democrats. But I am no longer convinced that Trump cannot win an outright popular majority as I am no longer convinced that Democrats really have any deep understanding of the moment before us. And it seems rather obvious that even without that majority Trump can still easily win the electoral college.  In the current political atmosphere, just how easy or hard do you think it will be for Democrats to repeat their 2020 victories in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan?  I think it’s going to be god-damned difficult. And that is without factoring  in the flock of third party Black Swans who could easily throw the whole election to Trump.

Analyzing this election using the patterns of the past is a lost cause as it has nothing in common with any previous American election.  Never before in my lifetime have so many Americans lost faith in all our major institutions including our political parties. Party loyalty has been replaced by culture war tribalism and it is an erratic, bumpy and often irrational process and you cannot easily guess how things will sort out.

I heard one young numbskull interviewed tonite in a New Hampshire bowling alley who was very excited about Nikki Haley.  Though she described herself as “very left,” a ‘very liberal Democrat” she said she would vote for Haley over Biden ”because of Gaza.”  When asked if Haley had any position different on the war than Biden, all she could do was mumble a bit and then finally say, “well I think Nikki Haley is a better listener than Biden.”  So that’s the reason to seat a proto-fascist Republican regime?

We are in a world of trouble, my friends.  And what are we going to do about it?  (And, no, Biden will not be replaced by another candidate). It’s way too late in the game and the party apparatus is not going to change horses at this point, not to mention no desire by the party establishment to toss out Kamala Harris along with Joe Biden. So please abandon that fantasy and come back down to earth where we need you to be effective in this fight to stop the accelerated slide into illiberalism. And that is where we are headed. ++

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