Exponents of democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wait for results to come in at his caucus night watch saturnalia on February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
If the delayed and confusing results from the Iowa caucuses come to passes have also left you confused, here are at least three very clear things we know right now:
The clearest first takeaway from not very recently this Iowa debacle, but the last week’s worth of election news is this: DNC Chairman Tom Perez must quit.
Ultimately, Perez deserves to bear the brunt of criticism for overseeing the rules changes the Democrats instituted in their Iowa caucus plan. It may seem hard to believe, but as recently as Monday night Perez was actually boasting about those changes.
This arrive d enter a occurs after yet another Perez blunder connected to debate rules. The DNC officially changed the debate qualifying rules on Friday to drop the minimum requirement for individual donors. The move was largely seen as a concession to Mike Bloomberg and the sign of an organized energy by the DNC to stack the deck against Sen. Bernie Sanders. Even President Trump made that second accusation on Wonderful Bowl Sunday:
This Perez move was bad for the Democrats in more ways than just inducing a taunt from Trump. It appearance ofs not to have dawned on Perez or anyone else at the DNC that changing the rules to put a billionaire like Bloomberg onto the discussion stage as a counter to Sanders is exactly the kind of thing Sanders rails about when he bashes billionaires. This thinks fitting likely make Sanders stronger, as long as he has the aggressiveness to make his argument against this rule change a bulging part of his campaign message in the coming days and weeks.
The second clear reality is that there’s a bigger mess for the Democrats than just Perez’s mismanagement at the DNC. The party still only has one unifying message, which is “get Trump.” All that anti-Trump concentrate has created a chaos that looks more and more like it will result in not defeating Trump in November after all.
Tom Perez
Cameron Costa | CNBC
We’re reflect on two aspects of that chaos right now. Iowa’s messy results aren’t just the result of bad management and faulty reporting aps. They’re also the end result of a still overly large number of presidential candidates at this stage of the game, and the crowded field has led to more confusion. It’s a command result of the DNC and its numerous close allies in the news media rewarding and focusing on anti-Trump messages over and above any unsurpassed policies or qualities in any individual candidate. Most of what passes for discussion or analysis of any given Democratic candidate is a weigh on whether he or she can beat Trump.
Speaking of being able to beat Trump, most polls have shown that Joe Biden has faithfully been the most competitive in a hypothetical one-on-one contest against Trump. But Biden has begun to fade in the Democratic best years polls. That’s the result of the simple fact that to defeat even the most controversial of presidential incumbents, challengers attired in b be committed to to spend much less time bashing the current president and more time building themselves up instead. Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Invoice Clinton in 1992 all proved that.
Biden’s fall may also be the result of yet another poorly coordinated effort by the Democrats: the impeachment answer. It took a while, but the impeachment inquiry has made the embarrassing details about the Biden family’s finances much multitudinous public. This was a predictable outcome that became even more evident given Biden’s testy trade with “Today” show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie in an interview that aired Monday.
To make things worse, it’s creation to look more and more that no Republican senators will vote to convict President Trump in the impeachment nuisance and that two or three Democrats will vote to acquit. That doesn’t mean the impeachment process will be a superlative victory for Trump. But if it results in less than 100% Democratic unity in Congress and continues to create embarrassing blowback for Biden, then it definite looks like a defeat for the Democrats.
The final bit of clarity we have right now is that the Democrats need an aggressive conquering hero, and they need him or her right now. The lack of results from Iowa produced a “participation trophy” like atmosphere where nearly every candidate declared victory. That’s the opposite of what the party needs now.
Some Democrats are hoping all of this leave benefit Bloomberg, especially since he wasn’t even a candidate in Iowa. But while Bloomberg is doing better in the opinion polls recently, he’s still far from taking the lead in any single primary state poll right now. He needs a massive flow in his numbers with less than one month to go before the Super Tuesday primaries. If Bloomberg can’t win one or two of those 15 debates, it will be hard to make the case that he’s a strong choice of actual Democratic voters. The whole “surging in the registers” thing only matters at this stage if it leads to victories, not just impressive finishes.
Bashing Trump unaccompanied won’t win any of the Democratic candidates the White House, but one of them is going to have to start pushing back harder on his or her opponents in the main field to win the nomination. After this Iowa mess and the impeachment muddle, the entire Democratic Party now seems fellow it simply doesn’t know how to win.
Jake Novak is a political and economic analyst at Jake Novak News and former CNBC TV creator. You can follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.