As of Monday, Iowans wrapped up the first stage of the presidential election — the first bit of the process that isn’t merely grandstanding. These are hard numbers, numbers that matter: numbers representing real human beings who will appoint each party’s candidate.
The Iowa caucuses carried a lot of surprises for such an important event, an interesting fact considering these results actually carry weight. For one, Trump didn’t win. The first tangible setback in his campaign prompted a sigh of relief from the many decent Americans whose political preferences don’t fall under “authoritarian windbag.” It was Ted Cruz who snagged victory out of the hands of Il Douche. But Cruz is, in many ways, far more terrifying than Trump. Forget about his bloodthirsty, reactionary politics: Everyone who knows him on a personal level finds him absolutely insufferable. Everyone thinks he’s a huge jerk: his college roommate, or anyone who worked on George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, and — going off body language — his own immediate family members.
The biggest surprise of the caucuses came from the democrats. A race that, a year ago, was effectively uncontested in favor of Hillary Clinton isn’t just competitive anymore. Hillary lost nearly half the democrats in Iowa to a decidedly un-sexy socialist Jew from a state we all associate with trees and Phish-themed ice cream. The votes were so close that, in a few districts, the decision was literally made with a coin toss. Bernie Sanders’ success in Iowa was a fantastic feat: This time last year, he was polling at 7 percent in Iowa. Going from there to a few coin tosses shy of exactly half is impressive and speaks to the massive faults that lie in the Democratic Party.
Even before Iowa, Sanders’ popularity had the democratic establishment worried. Now they’re in a full-on panic, which brings me unbridled joy. Democratic National Committee elites and the center-left establishment are scrambling, looking for a way to undermine Sanders before his campaign does any more danger to their anointed candidate. In their desperation, they’ve turned to that favored tactic of whiskey-soaked chauvinists: red-baiting. True, this is an obvious move given Sanders doesn’t cower from the label “socialist.” But it’s reaching surreal levels: A pro-Clinton PAC tried tying their political rival with communists, dredging up a Cold War ploy that should’ve been buried along with Brezhnev. One of my colleagues compared Sanders to the Khmer Rouge. When I read that column, my eye roll was almost as dramatic as that McCarthyist jab. Yes, let’s compare Bernie “welfare expansion and campaign finance reform” Sanders to a gang of psychopaths who murdered anyone who owned a pair of glasses and smashed little kids’ faces against trees for picking berries. That doesn’t sound desperate in the least.
Of course, chances are Bernie probably won’t be sitting in the Oval Office next year, even though his popularity soars nationwide. As I’ve said before, he’ll probably get assassinated long before he becomes President Sanders, and that likelihood grows daily. If people reacted with such slanderous vitriol against a black center-left moderate in 2008-2016, imagine what’d happen if an ACTUAL socialist ever came within grasp of the presidency.
I still support Sanders, not just as a presidential candidate, but as a symbol of a movement. Through him, America’s disenchanted and disenfranchised are sending a message to Republicans and Democrats and the oligarchs who’ve legally controlled both parties since 2010. Sanders gives a much-needed restoration of hope — hope that evaporated with the dreams of Obama’s first campaign and was stamped out in anyone who held his or her nose long enough to vote Charlie Crist only to end up with Rick Scott. The democrats can’t hold us hostage with the threat of GOP victory anymore — Hillary has to earn my vote now, rather than collect it.
Alec Carver is a UF history junior. His column appears on Fridays.
