Has Trump’s triumph in Iowa killed the myth of the Iowa caucuses?

Well, The Donald has done it. As everyone said he would. Amid the blizzards of Iowa, with a windchill factor taking the temperature down to -40 degrees (the point where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet), the quintessential American has scored more than 50% of the vote in the Iowa caucus, the very wobbly first contest in the presidential campaign. Trump’s pure majority — he took just over 50% — not only dwarfs that of the other contenders, with Ron DeSantis just above 20%, narrowly pipping out Nikki Haley just under it, but it also blows the whole contest itself out of the water. It demonstrates the degree to which American society is changing beneath its political institutions, and the way in which that is changing politics substantially. 

Trump won his stonking victory without ever visiting Iowa, save for a couple of rallies at the end. This is not merely unprecedented, it is the very antithesis of what the caucuses are meant to be about. Indeed, at their core, caucus-based primaries — they have largely disappeared now — aren’t meant to be about personalities at all. Back in the day, decades ago, they didn’t even select candidates; they were simply a guide to regional conventions as to which delegates they preferred to send to the state party convention to choose a party presidential candidate. But in 1972, the caucuses moved to the start of the electoral calendar, and in 1976, Jimmy Carter and his team used them as an ambush of the New Hampshire primary a couple of weeks after. Team Carter reasoned that a midwest farm state would have more sympathy for a Southern peanut farmer than “North Massachusetts”, and that the small scale would advantage the post-60s, post-Watergate personal politics of authenticity he was developing. When he aced a win that year, it was the first many Iowans — the state is pronounced without consonant sounds, basically Owwww — had heard of the thing. 

Carter’s victory set off a half-century of bizarre politicking, in which a man or woman who might, in a year’s time, have access to a species-annihilating arsenal and the legal authority to use it, would do rounds of high school gyms, diners, church halls and living rooms to try and convince Duane and Jeannette that action on a bypass for Route 80 outside of Davenport was essential, and Iran would be nuked if necessary. Oh, and rapeseed subsidies, for ethanol production. The Iowa caucus has had such a distorting effect on US agricultural policy that I presume someone must have done a study of it. Billions must have been spent on the wrong crops, overproduction of crops, stymying of modernisation, and the like, all to keep the amber grain waving. 

Trump showed that that’s all over — or at least unnecessary for a candidate like him. The Republican Party of Iowa is one of the most right-wing in the nation — freedom-loving in everything but ethanol subsidies, for which they’re Communists. At the conservative CPAC conference, I once saw a banner of the Iowa party affirming “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (right to property)”, just helping Thomas Jefferson along with the final wording. 

But their folksy pretence that this supercharged military financial behemoth of a nation is really a bunch of homesteaders usually has them hold back endorsement until candidates have done the living room rounds, consuming dozens of the flavourless casseroles known simply as “hot dish”. A favourite schtick, which DeSantis took on this time, is to visit all 99 counties in this small square state. Since the counties are all smaller, evenly spaced squares themselves, some of them consist of nothing more than a roadhouse, or a chain store downhome restaurant: Cracker Barrel, Country Kitchen, Beelzebub’s Corn-Poppin’ Spogies, etc. Glad-hand three good ol’ boys, tickle a dog’s neck, affirm the need for ethanol subsidies and get back on the road, you can do four in a day.  It “worked” for DeSantis. Widely seen as on the way out, and openly implored by many to withdraw so that anti-Trump forces can consolidate behind Nikki Haley, his 2% margin over her might have been gained in those empty surveyances of land. Keeping him in the race, to be a hapless fall guy against Trump for a few more contests.

That Trump has now stormed Iowa suggests both that a whole tranche of Republicans who cared about this process have now departed — and one’s cynicism is dispelled by attending such; like New England town hall meetings, it is, or was, a survival of a more genuine democratic spirit than Australia was gifted with — and that the wider culture and society is simply moving on from the centrality of community and face-to-face meetings altogether. 

It would be unwise to overstate that the Iowa victory generalises to the wider population. The Republican Party is now a cult. Any structural symmetry between itself and the Democratic Party — a sprawling organisation encompassing what would be six parties anywhere else — has gone. But that shift itself hides an asymmetry, as many of the ranks of the group polling calls “independents” are really Republicans no longer registered as such (in that bizarre US process, where you register your party affiliation with the government). Those, and genuine swinging voter independents are really two groups. Many Republican independents will be persuaded to get their ass to the polls and vote for The Donald, come November. 

Worryingly for the Democrats, so too may many genuine independents. Those who voted for Trump in 2016, and not in 2020, may choose him again, like a sick patient repeatedly turning a pillow to get the cool side. Team Biden has got a lot of the politics of the last four years wrong, and the stuff they’ve got right has been arch cynicism. They’ve failed to sell the stimulus-creating programmes they passed through (something Team Albo is failing at too), thinking these largely hidden processes would sell themselves. They should have been at every shovel-ready event, development lots plastered with vast hoardings of Joe Biden etc. They should have talked a lot less about renewables, which the progressives love, but which make the non-college educated feel alienated and superseded. They should have been less “tough for Israel” and a lot tougher, from the left, on illegal immigration. The numbers coming across the Mexican-US border — really the border of the global North and South — are now vast. Trump lost votes in ’20 because he never really built that wall, merely talked about it. He may win them back in ’24 because he at least talks about it. 

Well, it’s on to New Hampshire next week, where Trump’s lead is slightly less commanding than in Iowa, but still solid. Various Republican machine mainstreamers are talking up Haley’s chance of running him to a draw and then overcoming him in the next primary in her home state of South Carolina. She would have to do that and then carry it through for months. It seems impossible, but never say never in American politics. Like all the candidates hanging in, they are really working on Plan B: that Trump will die in the next six months, his constitution undermined by a lifelong diet of fast food and Diet Coke. Would that indicate that providence is still at work in the doings of the Republic? Whatever, it would be, as the next chapter in this amazing story, quintessentially American. Owwwwww. 

Will The Donald face any true opposition in securing the Republican presidential candidacy? Or will it be Trump all the way in 2024? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.