Iowans Select Their "Music Man" (and Woman)

Photo of Forrest Tucker as Professor Harold Hill from the play The Music Man. The Lowell State Teachers College submitted this photo when they gave Tucker an award for his interest in young people and in music educators. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every four years, the state of Iowa is inundated with as many presidential candidates as there are acres of corn.  They all resemble Professor Harold Hill from Meredith Willson's musical "The Music Man", trying to convince the locals that there's trouble in River City and they're the ones who are going to solve them by promising more than 76 trombones for the big parade.  Then the good folks of River City and other burgs gather on a cold February night to determine who made the best impression.

This year's beneficiaries of the Iowa caucus system were Texas Senator Ted Cruz for the Republicans and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democrats.  Afterwards, it was announced that Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Martin O'Malley are no longer in the race.

Cruz edged out businessman Donald Trump and Florida Senator Marco Rubio by a few points, but none of them had a majority in the crowded GOP field.  Cruz appealed mainly to evangelicals and other "true conservatives" by being better in the grass roots than any other candidate.  Rubio finished well enough to gain traction with whatever mainstream Republicans are left.

But neither Cruz nor Rubio won this caucus as much as Trump lost it.  The real estate mogul was the front-runner, dominating the polls and news coverage with his version of why America needs to be great again.  Trump's big mistake was in blowing off the final GOP debate before the caucuses in a dispute with Fox News Channel over the use of his least-favorite interviewer Megyn Kelly, though Fox claimed Trump wanted too much money to put in an appearance.  He tried that same bit of extortion for "charity" on other networks who wanted him for their debates, and it's worked because Trump=Ratings.  Not this time.

While Trump was "honoring" wounded veterans in a hastily put-together event in another part of Des Moines, Rubio and Cruz and the other GOP candidates were left to debate in the shadow of the mogul with the bad hair.  But the debate got a better rating than Trump's event, mainly because Fox News viewers are usually too lazy to change the channel.

For the Democrats, Clinton almost got "Berned" by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in eking out a narrow victory.  As this year's designated Don Quixote candidate, Sanders has been making great strides at tilting the windmills of Wall Street, political corruption and Clinton's so-called 'inevitability'.  The fact that he isn't so much a Democrat (registered as an independent) as he's a self-described "democratic socialist" doesn't seem to matter much to his base of college students and progressives who aren't impressed with Clinton.

Again, as in the GOP race, it's not how Sanders nearly pulled an upset as in how front-running Clinton nearly imploded.  Besides not taking Sanders seriously, she had some other self-defeating issues:  Some of her e-mails while serving as Secretary of State, which came from a private server instead of the government's, had to be classified "top secret".  Ties to the Obama administration.  Past scandals involving her and husband Bill.  Nagging questions about what happened at Benghazi.  All or some of these issues may have given voters in Iowa pause before giving Clinton the benefit of the doubt about her "experience".

Still, if there's one thing Clinton desperately needs in this campaign, it's competition.  She hasn't had much of that before Sanders came along, with the Democrats going out of their way to gift-wrap her nomination.  Well, now she has to earn it.  If Clinton does hold off Sanders, she might be better off for it going into the fall.

The big parade has moved on to New Hampshire and points south.  Oh, the political descendants of Professor Harold Hill might be back in Iowa before Election Day for one more crack at convincing folks that they should replace the pool room with a band.  But this time, if they're elected, they might leave some shiny instruments behind.

UPDATE (2/3/16):  Republicans Rand Paul and Rick Santorum have exited the race.