Hillary Clinton Wins/Loses in Dead Heat Against Bernie Sanders in Iowa
Hillary feeling the bern.
While Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) was projected as the winner of the Iowa Republican caucus fairly early in the night—he gave his victory speech at 10pm CT compared to 11pm CT for Rick Santorum, 2012's winner—running up to the midnight hour in the Eastern time zone, the Democratic race is a dead heat, with Hillary Clinton at 49.8 percent and Bernie Sanders at 49.6 percent with 94 percent of precincts reporting. It's highly unlikely no matter how the last six percent turns out that either Clinton or Sanders will leave Iowa with more delegates than the other.
More importantly, Hillary Clinton gave the first Democratic speech of the evening. The first speech, of course, is usually reserved for the loser. On the Republican side, Donald Trump spoke first (of the televised speeches). Ted Cruz was still speaking when Hillary Clinton took the stage and he was still talking when Bernie Sanders took the stage. Clinton said she was "excited" to continue to debate with Sanders, which definitely doesn't help her build an image as an honest person. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has her being crushed in New Hampshire by Sanders, who is from the neighboring state of Vermont. He's been in the lead since early December.
For his part, Sanders stuck to the script, full of socialist-lite bromides, some of which was, at least, civil libertarian. His primary argument for most of his positions is that it's 2016, as if that ought to explain everything. At one point addressing his detractors directly, saying that the "free stuff" (his scare quotes and mine) he was promising would be paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation. I've seen no economic analysis that's shown that kind of tax bringing in anything close to what Sanders needs to deliver on what he has promised, not even from the Sanders campaign.
"We don't want their money," said Sanders of the "billionaires" he so often demagogues on the campaign trail while boasting that he didn't have the support of any Super PACs (Some help that was to Jeb Bush, who finished sixth in Iowa). Of course that's not technically true. Bernie Sanders does want billionaires' money. He needs it to even start paying for all the programs he's promised. Bernie Sanders may believe what he says, and that's certainly more than most people expect of Clinton. But he's not being honest (with himself at the very least, with everyone at the worst) about how much his proposals are going to cost all taxpayers, not just "the 1 percent" that kind of screwed him out of a victory today.