By Steve Hunley

National Democrats went to Iowa, spent $50 million and fall down and go boom!  And for those of you who quibble with my use of the word “debacle”, I’ll have you know that was precisely how one commentator on NPR – – – National Progressive Radio – – – termed what occurred following the Iowa caucuses.

I’m not entirely sure just what caucuses really are – – – is it for people too lazy to hold an actual primary?  But the end result was something less than spectacular, at least for partisan Democrats.  It was almost impossible not to laugh at the hopeful faces of the newscasters who, like everybody else, waited for results to come in and never did.  After a while, one could only feel sorry for them.

Richard Stengel, a commentator on MSNBC, was quick to point out when such things befall the Republicans, it is because of collusion with the Russians.  The Democrats were merely utterly incompetent.

I suppose such swamp experts as Rick Stengel have ruled out the Iowa fiasco as not being caused by a band of wandering Peruvian cyber terrorists, or a wayward Uzbekistani circus.  The cheese slid off the cracker because the election app to report the results didn’t work.  Quick-thinking Democrats had thought of the possibility there could be problems with the app and provided precinct leader with a telephone number.  Evidently it must have been a hard line telephone with a millennial at the other end of it who had no idea how the device worked.  As it turned out, the telephone number remained busy for most or the entire night.

I was getting concerned as they went on and it crossed my mind there could be a plot against Democrats since the election of Barack Obama had reconfigured the world and the only thing that could have led to the election of Donald Trump was Russian collusion.  I thought perhaps there really might be cyber-terrorist from the dread country of Inabilitia and a awful plot against unsuspecting Democrats in the Hawkeye State was being hatched in the capital of Ineptitudia.

Otherwise how could a parade of Democratic candidates rush to the stage, bathed in the television lights and claim victory when literally nobody had any idea of who won, much less the magnitude of any supposed victory won.

And all of this came after a poll involving the Des Moines Register remain unreleased because of some kind of error.  Apparently, errors abound in Iowa and the Democratic caucuses.  By 5 pm the next day, the Iowa Democratic Party released results constituting half of the vote, which showed aging socialist Bernie Sanders and former small-town mayor Pete Buttigieg were leading the pack.  In fact “Mayor Pete” was slightly ahead of the millionaire socialist Sanders in delegates, although trailing slightly behind in the popular vote.  The expensive campaign in Iowa has certainly helped Bernie’s personal coffers, as his wife Jane is or was, the senator’s media buyer.  That might explain how Bernie came to own three houses.  The Iowa caucuses also mark the first time Mayor Pete has won more than ten thousand votes, if the votes reported are accurate.

The swirling crap storm surrounding the Iowa caucuses should be a reminder to the rest of America the Hawkeye State might very well not be much of an indicator for the rest of the country.  For the advocates of online voting who are actually sane, this has to be something of a big setback.

Bernie didn’t get much of a boost from whatever the heck happened in Iowa and it doesn’t look like Mayor Pete did either.  With his standing in the polls climbing, I suspect the winner of the Iowa caucuses was none other than Donald Trump.