About Iowa

The Iowa caucuses are over, sort of, and as of this writing, results are finally being announced, incrementally.

This delay is causing great amounts of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. ‘Oh, no!’, the pundits proclaim. “This shows that the Democrats are in disarray, and it’s like handing a gift to President Donald Trump, a mere nine months prior to the next presidential election.”

This writer will once again ask that these panic-stricken ‘experts’ to please just get a grip. The sky is not falling, Chicken Little. It is February; the election is in November, and regardless of what you, the self-proclaimed experts on US elections, and all things political, for that matter, predict, there is no reason for such alarm. You have falsely inflated the importance of the Iowa caucuses. Now, just stop it!

Why is this writer not buying into the fear that, Iowa’s primary votes’ confusion notwithstanding, the world is about to end? Let us look at the differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and see what conclusions can be drawn.

The Republican Party consists of arch-conservatives. Generally speaking, they don’t like Muslims, Mexicans or anyone who isn’t white and English speaking. They also don’t like gays, and think a woman’s place is in the home. They want to assure that women cannot control their own bodies. They fear the government they profess to love, and so they insist on carrying all kinds of guns just about everywhere: home, work, school, etc.

The Democratic Party, although hardly the ‘big tent’ it purports to be, has conservative (although not as far to the right as the mainstream Republican Party), moderate and progressive members. Generally, they are ok with any religion or no religion; they profess, at least on paper, to believe that women should be paid the same as men for the same work. The Party includes Muslims, Mexicans and gays. They believe in the separation of Church and State, walking the fine but important line that one should not infringe on the other.

As a direct result of these stark differences, the Republicans are united in their support for Donald Trump. His misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and Islamaphobia all resonate with them. He has vowed to “Make America Great (read: White) Again”, and Republicans across the land are standing with him in achieving that horrid goal.

Democratic voters, on the other hand, have a wide array of opinions and presidential candidates that they can support. They can select former vice-president Joe Biden if they want a slightly-to-the-right, rich, elderly, white, Zionist president. Among those in the center, there is Pete Buttigieg, the gay mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Moving leftward, there is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has moved considerably to the left as her campaign has proceeded, and, of course, the self-proclaimed Socialist, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Excerpted from: ‘The Democrats and Iowa’.

Counterpunch.org