One Nightmare Down, Three To Go

So why did Donald Trump lose in Iowa? It might be dirty tricks by Ted Cruz, as he asserts. It might be a vote-stuffing conspiracy as some of his supporters say. Though most people will be assuming that his supporters - who are, for good or bad, not your usual primary voters - just don't translate their stated support into votes. If that's the case, then his campaign is in trouble.

But here's another possibility, based on an interesting fact that came out recently: Trump likes to brag that his campaign has spent less than most other candidates. Unlike many things he brags about, that's absolutely true. He's actually spent much less than some candidates who are far behind him *cough*Jeb*cough*.

It's not hard to understand why: he gets so much free publicity from saying controversial things, he doesn't need to pay to get media exposure. But campaign spending is more than just buying publicity: it's also to get data to find the most likely supporters, and do the work to get those folks to vote, the so-called "ground game." Now here's the interesting fact, which I swear I'm not making up: the Trump campaign has spent more money on those "Make America Great Again" hats than it has on research and data.

On the Democratic side, Hillary and Bernie were separated by only a tiny amount. No one seems to have picked up in this, but Clinton's margin of victory was less than Martin O'Malley's share of the vote, so he can at least claim he had some effect on the campaign.

As Bernie Sanders rose in the polls, people asked if there was anything that could stop his momentum. My answer was, Donald Trump. No, I didn't mean in the election, I meant that the longer Trump (or Cruz) stayed at the top of the Republican polls, the more Democrats would remember that they aren't choosing a president, they're choosing a candidate that has to beat an opponent very opposed to their own beliefs. The more the Republicans get enamored with extremism, the more it would seem that the coming election will be an existential fight for America's soul, one they must win at all costs. Thus they'd decide to go back to the candidate with the better chance of winning, even if her ideology doesn't sit as well with them.

But once again, I overestimated the pragmatism of the far left. Instead of seeing Trump's rise as a sign that this election is a must-win, they've figured that the election is a guaranteed win for the Democrats. Thus, there's no need to go with a safe moderate candidate, they might as well choose the candidate they want to win.

For pragmatic lefties like myself, this has led to the nightmare scenario that the election will pit each party's idealized candidate, each equally unpalatable to mainstream America. Then the election would just be a contest to see which party can better ridicule their opponent. Yes, I know there have been polls showing Sanders would beat Trump, but I don't believe people would still prefer him after the Republicans have unloaded a billion dollars of attack ads at him. In an election between the intellectually laughable and the nerdy, I'll always bet on the former.

But now there's another nightmare scenario for the Dems. If, as I suspect, Clinton hangs on to win the nomination, it's not clear how the Sanders supporters will react. So much has been invested emotionally in his campaign. And although it's been relatively civil between the candidates, on the ground (and the Internet) it's often been quite angry. So will the Sanders supporters vote for Hillary, or stay home in disappointment and disgust? Essentially, this is the mirror-image of the Republicans' trouble with Trump: even if he doesn't win, his supporters may be angry and sit out the election, or back a third-party candidate.

As if that's not enough, here's a third Democratic nightmare scenario: Marco Rubio's strong third place in Iowa has made him the choice of non-extreme Republicans, and I suspect that will win him the nomination, now that all the establishment money will come his way. And that's the problem: as I said earlier, many Dems are supporting Sanders because if the Republicans are going to nominate a crazy candidate, then any Democrat can win, even a self-described socialist. But if the Republicans switch at the last minute and back a relative moderate, then the Democrats will end up looking like the extremists.