Living as I do in a vote-by-mail state where ballots are filled out in the comfort of one's home, then put in a mailbox with postage paid by Oregon's enlightened government, it baffles me why a state would vote in any other way.
Like, by traveling to a site where you may have to stand in line for a long time before being able to vote. But that makes more sense than choosing a candidate in the Republican primary for president by having people attend caucuses in bitterly cold weather in mid-January where a couple of hours of discussion precedes the voting.
Which is what Iowa does.
The insanity of this does appeal to my sense of the absurd. And I find Iowa's first in the nation voting for presidential elections interesting, since it marks the end of prognosticating about who's up and who's down, replacing conjecture with hard facts -- as shown below in a New York Times graphic.
Donald Trump kicked butt. He's on track to surpass 50% of the caucus vote, a criterion that pundits said would demonstrate than even with numerous candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump is far and away the likely winner.
This wasn't a surprise. The uncertainty was who would end up in second place. Nikki Haley had a lot of momentum going into the Iowa caucus. But the New York Times is predicting that she'll come in third behind Ron DeSantis.
To me, the whole Republican primary thing is an exercise in a foregone conclusion: Trump will be the nominee. Absent Trump dying, it's extremely difficult to imagine any other happening that would prevent him from running against Joe Biden in the November election.
After all, the more legal troubles Trump is in, the more Republican voters like him. Ditto for Trump's insulting, inflammatory, outrageous pronouncements at his campaign rallies, such as a bizarre claim that the Civil War could have been averted by a negotiation.
Given that Trump pretty clearly favors ending aid to Ukraine and letting Russia take over that country, it seems that Trump's idea of a successful negotiation between the slave and free states would have kept slavery in place given his love of authoritarianism and distaste for democracy.
Since that's absolutely fine with most Republicans, which shows how far the Grand Old Party has fallen down a Trumpian rabbit hole, it doesn't matter much who ends up being the last man or woman standing in the way of Trump's nomination to run for president again.
I do find Nikki Haley easier to listen to than Ron DeSantis, who is one of the most annoying politicians I've ever come across. Haley even makes sense when she talks about foreign policy. Otherwise, though, her policy positions are deeply conservative. Meaning, they're founded in right-wing ideology, not what's best for the majority of Americans.
Given that Haley polls better than Trump or DeSantis in a head-to-head matchup against Biden, I'm glad that Haley did so poorly in Iowa tonight. This will slow her momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary, where she has a decent chance of narrowly losing to Trump or even beating him.
Now that the first votes have been cast in the 2024 presidential race, I find myself feeling more positively about Biden, who I'm not wild about. While I'd rather have someone like Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer be the Democratic nominee for president, all of the Republican candidates are so unappealing, Biden looks marvelous by comparison.
Hopefully American voters will feel the same way come November. Our country simply can't thrive with Trump, Haley, or DeSantis in the White House. And if that occupant is Trump, I'm worried that the United States couldn't survive another four years of him being president.
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