Without a single official result released from the Iowa caucuses as of Tuesday morning, it was becoming obvious that Democrats in the Hawkeye State had blown their quadrennial opportunity to have an impact on presidential politics.
No sooner was it clear Monday night that no results were forthcoming from the 1,677 caucus sites and 99 satellite locations around the world that all of the major Democratic candidates made victory speeches of sorts and left for New Hampshire.
The Granite State's Feb. 11 primary, not the Iowa caucuses, would be the opening round in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who had anticipated a big win in Iowa, were clearly disappointed. Many had earlier voiced anger at the process, which — for the first time — would yield three outcomes instead of one: the raw vote, the revised vote (which included the second choices of caucusgoers), and the breakdown of national convention delegates.
But with a just-completed Emerson poll showing Sanders leading all candidates in New Hampshire by double digits, the Vermont senator is still in strong shape.
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who had been surging at the close of the Iowa campaign, also missed an opportunity to flex political muscle. But like Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, he lives to fight another day in the Granite State.
For Joe Biden, the Iowa kerfuffle was an apparent reprieve. Final polling had shown the former vice president running in third or fourth place, and such a showing might have been fatal to his campaign.
The lengthy delay in getting results was blamed on a coding error in the app used for the first time to count votes. In addition, there reportedly were discrepancies in the number of votes cast for candidates and in the revised total for second-choices.
"I heard that the app used for counting was manufactured by Huawei!" joked one colleague, referring to the Chinese high-tech titan accused of espionage by the Trump administration.
"There was confusion at our caucus in Clive, which stopped things," Biden supporter Steve Martinez told Newsmax. "I suppose it's beneficial to have technology, but you have to know what you're doing with it."
Martinez added that he hopes the outcomes of future caucuses would be determined as they were in the past — by manually counting ballots.
Perhaps the best post-mortem on Iowa's "non-caucus" Monday came from one of the best-known victims of the caucus system, former Pennsylvania Sen. and 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum. With Mitt Romney called a winner over Santorum by eight votes on the eve of the 2012 caucuses, the Pennsylvanian learned two weeks later he had actually won by 34 votes. By then, however, his momentum was gone.
"As our race proved, right is better than fast," Santorum told us. "But this is ridiculous."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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