Iowa Is a Big Problem for Trump

[brooklynite]

The Bulwark

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ON 2024 has flipped. Again. At first, Trump was toast. Then Ron DeSantis was a juggernaut. Then the New York indictment supercharged Trump while DeSantis was revealed to hate puppies, small children, and humankind in general.

So now Trump, having turned the party of Lincoln into the party of Rasputin, cannot be defeated by any mortal Republican—only by Joe Biden in the general.

Perhaps. But I spent a few days in Iowa last week checking in with old friends from my decades working in state Republican politics. I had a useful captive audience of Iowa pols and operatives when I gave the annual Culver Lecture at Simpson College in Indianola, and I met other local politicos in Des Moines. In each chat, the take was unanimous: They told me that Donald Trump is going to lose the Iowa caucus. Some of them predicted a third-place finish.

“Of any ten strong Trump people I know from 2016,” one youngish field wizard told me, “at least half are gone.”

[Blue Owl]

1. Suck it, Slobfather

[Arthur_Frain]

2. But Iowa will vote for the republican candidate in the general no matter what.

I mean I’m all for tfg losing anything, but Iowa will never vote blue in my lifetime.

[rsdsharp]

7. And yet, Iowa voted Democratic in 6 of the last 12 presidential elections.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Interesting that Democrats might swing the GQP's Iowa caucus.

[msongs]

4. if repubs wanna cut the budget they can get rid of all the welfare farm subsidies in Iowa nt

[keithbvadu2]

8. Like that's going to happen.

[LonePirate]

5. The Republican presidential nominee will win the state by 10+. He has nothing to worry about here.

[Bettie]

6. There are still plenty of MAGAts here

flags, signs, flapping on the back of their trucks. They are here.

There was a Trump parade of pickups a month or so ago in our little town.

They are here and they are slavering to vote for their orange overlord.

[Xolodno]

9. Iowa is not the predictor or forecast of how the election goes.

The early primaries can go pretty wild now. Remember Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain were once on top in the early primaries. It's why the DNC is starting to change things up, the RNC may follow suit later.

You want a front runner very soon in the primary election as it stops bleeding money needed for the general election.