As I write this (it’s 2:25AM Eastern Time, early Tuesday morning), the front page of the New York Times is telling us, with 99% of the Iowa Democratic Caucus votes tallied, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “leads” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders by a scant three-tenths of one percent, 49.9% to 49.6%. Ignoring the fact that at least two of the (local) tied caucuses were decided by a coin flip on Tuesday night, with camp Clinton winning both of them, and with the actual votes taking a backseat to the end results in this first-in-the-nation race to determine whom that state’s 44 delegates (this number does not include Iowa’s eight superdelegates; last I checked, five of them were already committed to Hillary; with three uncommitted) will represent at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia this Summer; it does, indeed, appear that the election ended in tie. In fact, The NY Times (and CNN, and many others) concurred with Sanders’ own words; it really did end in a “virtual tie.”
Being a student of the media (and having worked in and around it) for the better part of my life, I find high-quality, “inside baseball,” election post mortems by the fourth estate to be almost as fascinating as the results, themselves; especially when it’s a truly historical event like last night's Iowa caucus.
It just so happens that the NYT’s Patrick Healy did an especially adept job on just that, as I hope readers will concur once they’ve had a chance to review it. So, I’ll leave it up to him…and you...
By PATRICK HEALY
NEW YORK TIMES (PG. 1)
FEB. 2, 2016
DES MOINES — Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont were locked in an intensely tight race in the Iowa caucuses on Monday as Mrs. Clinton’s strong support among women and older voters was matched by the passionate liberal foot soldiers whom Mr. Sanders has been calling to political revolution.
The close results were deeply unnerving to Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as well as her advisers… …
...The close vote means that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders are likely to split Iowa’s share of delegates to the Democratic convention, and Mr. Sanders will be able to argue that the Iowa result was a virtual tie… ...
Hillary Clinton on Iowa Results
The virtual tie between the two candidates instantly raised the stakes for their next face-off, the primary next Tuesday in New Hampshire. Mr. Sanders holds a solid lead in polls there and has the advantage of being from Vermont; candidates from neighboring states have won the state’s primary in recent decades, and Mr. Sanders is admired in the state.
Clinton advisers said late Monday night that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were discussing bringing on additional staff members to strengthen her campaign operation now that a pitched battle may lie ahead against Mr. Sanders. The advisers said they did not know if a significant staff shakeup was at hand, but they said that the Clintons were disappointed with Monday night’s result and wanted to ensure that her organization, political messaging and communications strategy were in better shape for the contests to come…
But, not to worry! We in the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party must never forget—despite its momentary dance with the truth on Tuesday’s front page–that the New York Times is still THE bastion of the status quo. So, very early this morning, it quickly recovered from its momentary brush with Bernie’s shock to the system reality as it rolled-out its junior varsity to shill for the inevitable one…
Why ‘Virtual Tie’ in Iowa Is
Better for Clinton Than Sanders
Nate Cohen New York Times’ Upshot Blog February 2, 2016
Bernie Sanders is right: The Iowa Democratic caucuses were a “virtual tie,” especially after you consider that the results aren’t even actual vote tallies, but state delegate equivalents subject to all kinds of messy rounding rules and potential geographic biases.
The official tally, for now, is Hillary Clinton at 49.9 percent, and Mr. Sanders at 49.6 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting early Tuesday morning.
But in the end, a virtual tie in Iowa is an acceptable, if not ideal, result for Mrs. Clinton and an ominous one for Mr. Sanders. He failed to win a state tailor made to his strengths. (Note to DKos readers: Checkout Nate Cohen’s picture. He looks like he’s a high school intern. Note to intern: Consider taking some tutorial sessions with Patrick Healy.)
Paraphrasing Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a perfectly good emergency election disaster go to waste.” Yes, in the quaint old world of the Wall Street/New Democrat Wing of the Democratic Party — depending upon who you are and how much money you have, even when every damn pundit inside the Beltway and throughout the MSM was certain Hillary would bring the best ground game the Democratic Party's ever seen to bear in Iowa last night–losing is winning and winning is losing, even when, at the end of the day, it’s really a tie!
And, when all else fails, then feebly use a high school intern to attempt to inject the status quo narrative into the propaganda to contort it into a story about Sanders white-ness, and his rapport with low-income white people.
After all’s said and done, that tactic has been working out so well for Hillary up ‘til now!
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Just as I was getting ready to publish this, I noticed the daily Hillary diary was going up, which, frankly, contains a gross attempt to distort the contents of Healy’s piece (the NYT lede featured at the top of this post, today; and on the front page of the NYT), and to emphasize the Cohen piece, which is a blog hit piece on Sanders. If that diary is what this community (apparently) considers to be fact-based, well-reasoned, non-confrontational commentary on Hillary’s campaign and the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses, I’ve got a bridge to sell you! I was also admonished by the site’s automated processes for noting that in Lysis’ diary. Shame on me!
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