Pete Buttigieg couldn't wait to share the good news on the Iowa caucus night so many Democrats had eagerly awaited. "Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality," the former South Bend mayor told the crowd triumphantly. "Iowa, you have shocked the nation, because by all indications we are going on to New Hampshire victorious!" Buttigieg's opening lines sounded like vintage Barack Obama, who, after winning Iowa in 2008, had declared, "This was the moment when the improbable beat what Washington always said was inevitable."
Only Buttigieg hadn't won anything yet as he seemingly pressed forward with a victory speech that had been written with high hopes for a big night. In actuality, no official results had been reported yet. The state's Democratic Party would soon inform a disappointed field of candidates and their caucusers that the totals wouldn't be finalized until "later" on Tuesday.
Not to be robbed of a headline, the campaign for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had spoken earlier, released its own internal numbers showing Sanders to be the winner in "nearly 40% of the precincts in Iowa."
Good god, has everyone been infected by Donald Trump's post-fact virus? Two top-tier Democratic candidates decided waiting on reality simply didn't fit their narrative, so they plowed ahead and left everyone else to pick up the pieces.
By the time Buttigieg and Bernie had elevated their subjective victories, former Vice President Joe Biden had already spoken following what appeared to be a disappointing showing. As of late Monday, it appeared that Biden hadn't reached viability in a larger swath of precincts than he had hoped after his campaign had explicitly said that he would likely be viable in more precincts than most other candidates. Biden's speech wasn't particularly remarkable, except that shortly after it was over, his campaign's general counsel issued a statement trashing the Iowa reporting process and discouraging the state party from releasing the official results before the campaigns had "an opportunity to respond." In other words, let's delay the release of these results for as long as humanly possible.
Frankly, the only two campaigns that visibly navigated the mayhem with any grace were those of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Neither one of them declared a premature victory. Klobuchar capitalized on what appeared to be a better-than-expected night by starting her speech before any other candidate—right when news anchors at every desk were desperate for content to fill the pregnant pause in reporting. Klobuchar’s campaign manager later tweeted that their internal numbers suggested that they were running "even or ahead of Vice President Biden." And with that, the Klobuchar campaign was wheels up to New Hampshire.
Warren's speech initially got crowded out on cable news by those of other candidates. "Tonight, as a party, we are one step closer to defeating the most corrupt president in American history," she began, "and I have a message for every American: Our union is stronger than Donald Trump." Rather than make unsupported claims, her campaign manager simply told reporters that they were "confident," adding, "It’s close between Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg. I believe the Vice President is a distant fourth."
Later, Warren's chief strategist, Joe Rospars, tweeted out a strictly-the-facts thread of what was actually known at that moment, reiterating that it was a very close race among the top three and adding, "Any campaign saying they won or putting out incomplete numbers is contributing to the chaos and misinformation."
The biggest loser of the Iowa caucuses was undoubtedly the Iowa caucuses. But at a time when Americans' confidence in our electoral system has been badly shaken, the last thing voters needed was a round of dodgy claims and threats from the candidates themselves. Of the four Democratic frontrunners competing in Iowa, only one of them put the country first and concluded that gaming the system wasn’t what America needed at this moment. That candidate was Elizabeth Warren.
Since Warren’s speech initially got crowded out of the coverage, you can watch part of it here.