Mid-winter in the mid-West. What a way to start the world’s most crucial election! But the overwhelming victory achieved by Donald Trump in the Republican caucus in the state of Iowa really does matter.
It’s not so much his win, but the margin of his success which matters. Trump is now almost certain to be the Republican party’s candidate in November’s presidential election. And the prospect of his return to the White House is no longer a fanciful notion, but a 50:50 possibility – indeed many neutral observers believe he’s the favourite.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
But let’s just stay in the snowbound mid-West for a moment. Iowa is about as untypical a state as you can come across in the United States. It’s large, rural, overwhelmingly white and distinctly conservative. Pigs outnumber people there by seven-to-one.
Iowa is unusual among American states in having not simply a primary election to help determine who stands in November but a caucus. Only Republican supporters can take part. And they have to turn-up at a local get-together, held at a school or library, and listen to arguments put forward by supporters of the various candidates before casting a vote.
If you turn up late, or don’t stay until the end, your choice might not count.
Iowa accounts for not quite 1% of America’s population; and only one-in-thirty Iowans took part in the Republican caucus. So not quite 100,000 Iowans are making the weather in a contest to decide who governs a nation of more than 330 million.
The people of Iowa are used to harsh winters, but the white-out which descended on the state in the last few days was something different – pushing temperatures down to ten degrees below zero (much lower when wind chill is taken into account). No wonder that turn-out was lower than usual.
Snow piles taller than people in Ankeny, Iowa on caucus day pic.twitter.com/bkfEchH5cl
— Jill Colvin (@colvinj) January 15, 2024
But then, American politics is entering a new Ice Age. It’s frozen in the past. Donald Trump seems set to be the Republican candidate for a third successive presidential election; Joe Biden, who says he is determined to stand again in spite of his age (he’s 81), will be part of the Democratic ticket, as presidential or vice-presidential contender, for the fourth time in five elections.
America’s democracy seems to have lost the ability to renew itself.
Trump was tipped to win handsomely in Iowa, but taking more than half the total vote in the caucus is an emphatic triumph. His two main challengers – Ron DeSantis took second place, narrowly ahead of Nikki Haley (born Nimrata Randhawa to Punjabi parents who emigrated to the US in the 1960s) – are not only a long way behind, but destined to continue sniping at each other to secure the mantle of principal challenger.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur whose parents were migrants to the US from Kerala, came a poor fourth in the caucus and has dropped out of the race. He has endorsed his fellow conservative, Donald Trump.
The electoral battleground now shifts to the much more liberal state of New Hampshire, where there’s a Republican primary election next week. Trump won’t do as well here – but he now has the all-important momentum which will very probably allow him to shake off all his challengers within a matter of weeks.
Also read: As the US Enters Election Year, Will There Be a Peaceful Transfer of Power?
The courts could, of course, still disrupt Trump’s plans to run. He faces a slew of legal cases, several arising out of his refusal to accept the outcome of the last presidential election and the storming of the Congress building by his supporters.
But the evidence from Iowa is that the more legal cases against Trump, the more Republicans support him, apparently convinced that the action is politically motivated.
The Democrats, Joe Biden’s party, don’t officially start their primary elections until the contest in South Carolina on February 3. But the process is a formality. No candidate of substance is standing against the incumbent president.
That’s not simply a pity, but close to a tragedy. Biden is an unpopular president, because he’s seen – perhaps unfairly – not to have been a good steward of the economy. And his advanced age is evident in his stiffness when walking and in moments of apparent confusion. Most Americans, opinion polls suggest, think Biden is too old to serve as president for another four years.
President Biden seems to have convinced himself that only he can frustrate Donald Trump’s ambition to return to the White House. Democrats believe that a second Trump presidency could imperil America’s democracy. But it could be Biden’s determination to stand again that eases Trump’s path back to power.
Even the most experienced leaders are bad at making that brave decision to leave the political field of combat.
Andrew Whitehead is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK and a former BBC India correspondent.
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