So this is what it looks like for the Blue Team after Iowa: Barack Obama, John Edwards, and (just behind him) Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd called it a campaign, after likely canceling each other out for several months (Bill Richardson, for some reason, didn’t). Edwards, without the substantial cake of Obama and Clinton, needed a win in Iowa. He might not last much longer.
Amped-up Obama fans and dejected Hillary supporters should calm down before getting too high or too low. Let’s take a good long look at the history of Democratic Iowa caucus winners:
John Kerry (2004)
Al Gore (2000)
Bill Clinton (1996)
Tom Harkin (1992)
Dick Gephardt (1988)
Walter Mondale (1984)
Jimmy Carter (1980).
Oh, the dizzying heights. Two of the people on that list failed to win the Democratic nomination. No one on that list became president after winning Iowa, except Clinton in 1996, when he was the unopposed presidential incumbent. Carter didn’t win outright in ’76, and when he was the incumbent in ’80, he wasn’t unopposed — which is pretty damn telling. (He won the subsequent Democratic nomination, only to get rocked in the general election.)
Also, Iowa’s caucus system is wild nutty. They pick all the citizens who have amputees on their maternal side, tell them to go into a dark room to pull out the longest green pipe cleaner from a barrel. Or something like that.
It’s obviously not a good augur for what would happen in a real primary. And we should know by now: it’s always unwise to underestimate Hillary Clinton. She still has a huge campaign war chest and a formidable national organization.
Pretty good victory speech, though.
