Caucus Launches 2024 Political Year...aka Season in Hell
For the political scientist in me, it's like the start of the NFL season. Election Day is the Super Bowl, and Iowa was the preseason game.
To virtually no one's surprise, Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses that officially launched the 2024 presidential election race.
It also launched a season in hell.
(Quick aside about Iowa: It rarely is a true bellwether for the race. New Hampshire will be more telling.)
Listen, I minored in political science and have always been fascinated by politics and history. But this is the first time I've felt real dread ahead of an election.
But 60 years ago, before I was born, perhaps I would have as well.
In 1964, we were a nation still stunned by the assassination of a president in Dallas, a cold war with the Soviets that threatened to turn into World War III at any second, and the violent convulsions from the simmering civil rights movement. Using that lens, we as a nation were in a similar place six decades ago.
The choice for president that year was incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson and his Republican opponent, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who was easily the most conservative GOP candidate up to that point in U.S. history.
LBJ was a wily veteran campaigner, and he made sure to paint Goldwater as untrustworthy in foreign policy. More specifically, he implied that the senator couldn't be trusted with the atomic bomb.
Famously, shortly before the election, the LBJ campaign unleashed a campaign ad that starkly made that allusion. A little girl was picking petals from a flower; when she got to the last one - BOOM! We see a mushroom cloud.
LBJ won in a landslide.
A lot has changed in the ensuing decades. It takes a lot more to shock the system. Consequently, we see more numbness and less outrage when confronted with things that should stop us in our tracks.
Thus, we enter this season in hell. There are certain folks who will not support the results if it doesn't fall their way. Gone are the days of agreeing to disagree. It's more like my way or the highway.
I hope I'm wrong. Otherwise, the political version of the Super Bowl this year will not be worth watching, because it won't be a game.
It'll be a horror show.
