2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has a promising lead in Iowa ahead of the state’s caucuses on Monday, according to a final poll by Emerson College and local broadcast channel 7 News Iowa released on Sunday.
Caucuses…Sanders
Nominee…Biden
Iowa only matters if bernie fails there, just like SC only matters if Biden fails there.
Is 852 average sample size for these Iowa polls?
Remember that time that ol’ Mike Hucksterbee (father of Princess Hamhocks) won the 2008 Iowa caucus?
He turned out to be a really excellent candidate that year…won all the states after that and went on to a landslide.
Polls suck. When they call, people outright lie. Why? Because it’s an invasion of a person’s time to phone them, usually when you’re having family dinner. So, don’t believe polls. Be patient.
New CBS Iowa tracking poll, Sanders and Biden tied at 25% even. Sanders support concentrated in urban centers. Biden support pretty even across the state. Both of them have a pathway to victory.
I dont want to accuse TPM of purposely slanting the article to ignore the CBS tracking poll, although it’s pretty strange it wasn’t mentioned, since it was included in the baseline article that this derivative TPM article comes from.
Way too much importance is given to one place that isn’t at all representative of the nation as a whole. I don’t have the history in front of me, I admit, so I’d like to know in the history of the Iowa caucus how many of the winners went on to become the party candidate and the ultimate victor in the race to the Presidency.
It’s one contest. Contrasted with Super Tuesday that is more likely more representative.
I am going to be honest:
(1) I never in 1,000,000 years expected Sanders to run again
(2) I expected precisely what did happen after he began his campaign
(3) The similarity with Trump is jarring in the sense that Sanders believes himself to be (a) the only person who can articulate his message (b) greater than the message
W/r/t (3):
A decent Undergraduate education gets Sanders’ message out. Then comes the coalition-building necessary for victory on the Democratic side
Iowa caucuses work in a manner where second choices means a lot. David Faris explains how Bernie could both win and lose Iowa. An excerpt:
That means that, like in a Ranked Choice Voting system, second preferences could be decisive. And that’s where Sanders is really in trouble. A recent Iowa State/Civiqs poll broke down second preferences by candidate. Just 6 percent of Buttigieg boosters would go to Sanders. He also gets only 9 percent out of the large group of “others” that includes Klobuchar, Yang, Steyer, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii). Unsurprisingly, a third of Warren’s voters would go directly to Sanders (and vice versa).
Klobuchar could therefore be the pivotal figure in this race. Last week’s Monmouth poll (which showed Biden leading Sanders narrowly), had 40 percent of Klobuchar voters moving to Biden, 25 percent to Buttigieg, and 20 percent to Warren.
Whole article here:
I will give Amy credit…she has persisted, where Booker and Harris would have been thought to have outlasted her.
If she can crack the nut of the Industrial Midwest of WI. MI, OH, etc., that would be extremely valuable
unless Trump’s Cheat makes any Dem candidate irrelevant
unless people think of her as a meanie for real 
Caucuses are a HIGHLY un-democratic anachronism that favors those with the free time to “show up”.
They are dominated by two groups: College Students, and Retirees.
People who have Jobs (especially night-shift workers), Children, etc. cannot go to Caucuses because they have work and child-care commitments and cannot attend night-time caucuses
In PRIMARIES on the other hand, people can vote ANY TIME DURING THE DAY and can make their voices heard.
Caucuses are an anachronistic holdover of the distant American past when 80% of voters lived on farms in rural communities and could not get to polling places in the cities.
Now, less than 18% of voters live in Rural areas, and with modern transportation, vote-by-mail, absentee ballots, etc. it is much easier to vote than 150 years ago.
All Caucuses should be retired, replaced with actual PRIMARIES, where EVERYBODY gets a chance to vote and make their voices heard.
Gonna have to bring the big guns out soon to stop Bernie. Can’t let the crazy Democratic voters decide for themselves. Hillary isn’t helping. Time to send Obama after him.
Personally, I’m hoping Warren has a miracle Iowa and we get to avoid this bloodbath. But there is no way the Democratic leadership is going to let Bernie win the nomination without eviscerating him for the general first. He’s a bigger threat to them than Trump, or at least that’s what their donors keep telling them.
Wont need to, just like last time, the Dem voters will stop bernie.
Warren would be smart to work on Klobuchar and the Yang Gang.
As a reminder, sanders got 49 percent of the vote in Iowa in 2016.
TPM likes the food fights that will be contained in this comment thread.
At least we’re not at the point yet where we’re actually fighting for food.
Remember: Vote blue no matter who, regardless of what happens tonight.
