The Last We'll Have To Hear Of Iowa For A While

One more political post and we can move on (for a while anyway)...This one comes from an old friend of my brothers (long before his untimely death), and someone I got to know a while back as well. Mike is very insightful and one of the smartest people I know -  and I usually visit his site for insights on what is happening around the world, especially U.S. politics.  His biting commentary is priceless. I'll try to delete some of the language where I find it, but I may miss a few, if so, my apologies in advance. Sometimes I just can't resist his commentary and today is one of those days:

The last we’ll have to hear of Iowa for a while

You guys know by now just how much faith I have in elections being able to change anything, in a country run not by elections or those elevated to office by them, but by a shadowy Fourth Branch of appointed-for-life bureaucrats who are forever out of reach of or sanction by those they rule. So with that in mind, the big Iowa story for me would probably be this one:

Kim Kardashian West is bringing out voters in droves to decide the name of Kanye West’s next album. 

More people voted in Kardashian West’s poll than voted in the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

Though the Iowa presidential contest had high turnout on Monday night, it wasn’t enough to surpass the reality TV star’s poll, which had almost half a million votes before it closed.

And why not? For Kardashian and West fans, it’s a more meaningful poll to them, and will have more impact in terms of maybe improving their life a little. In this poll, their vote has a chance of actually counting for something.

Bitter cynicism aside, though, the Iowa story that might just really matter to some degree has nothing to do with Republicans, who are mostly irrelevant now anyway. Back to Steyn on that:

On the Democrat side, I was rooting for Bernie, and have been for seven months:

He would be the oldest man ever elected president and 83 years old at the end of two terms – which we won’t have to worry about because the entire country will have slid off the cliff long before then. But he’s enthusing the base, and any base wants to be enthused.

Hillary, by contrast, is in trouble not because she’s a sleazy, corrupt, cronyist, money-laundering, Saud-kissing liar. Democrats have a strong stomach and boundless tolerance for all of that and wouldn’t care were it not for the fact that she’s a dud and a bore. A “Hillary rally” is a contradiction in terms: the thin, vetted crowd leave more demoralized and depressed than when they went in. To vote for Bernie is to be part of a romance, as it was with Obama. To vote for Hillary is to validate the Clintons’ indestructible sense of their own indispensability – and nothing else. Hillary is a wooden charmless stiff who supposedly has enough money to be carefully managed across the finish line. But that requires Democratic electors to agree to be managed, too, and the Sanders surge is a strong sign that, while they’re relaxed about voting for an unprincipled arrogant phony marinated in ever more malodorous and toxic corruption, they draw the line at such a tedious and charisma-free specimen thereof.

All of that was fully in evidence at last night’s rally. The only personable Clinton stood behind Hillary looking like an emaciated wraith of the Slick Willie of yore. Decades of interns appear to have literally sucked all the life out of him, leaving only (one presumes from friend Epstein’s Lolita Express flight records) his distinguishing characteristics with any flicker of vitality. Judging from her brief but disastrous intervention in New Hampshire the other week, young Chelsea appears to have inherited her mother’s warmth and personal touch. That left Hillary barking across the midnight hour like a malign Speak-Your-Weight Machine with a jammed quarter.

It wasn’t just the interns that exsanguinated The Creep; I’d be willing to bet the Hillary-mandated vegan diet (coming soon to a once-great nation near you!) has a lot to do with it too.

But that’s not important right now. What is important is that in Amerika v2.0, a full-bore, no-shame socialist is running for president…and doing quite well, thanks.

That ought to scare the living hell out of any red-blooded, freedom-loving, Constitution-respecting real American, as well as sickening them to their very marrow. This is not your grandfather’s USA, folks. Not by a long yard. Hell, it ain’t even your father’s, if you’re of a certain age.

The ideology responsible for (at the very least) a hundred million deaths, the overwhelming majority of which were the very poor working stiffs it claims to be in existence to help, is now ascendant in the more moronic sectors of the populace, which is most of them. A century-old adolescent daydream that has failed dismally each and every time it has been tried is the “new idea” that’s going to revitalize us and lead us into a brighter future. An economic program that has never once done anything but impoverish entire countries and put its serfs on blocks-long lines to wait for ever-more-scarce necessities of life is going to jumpstart our economy–ie, more government intervention is going to reanimate a once-vibrant economy zombified by…government intervention. An ideology that can only ever achieve whatever piddling accomplishments it does by use of mass slave labor is going to set us all “free.” And if you don’t think so, they’ll prove how wrong you are by hurling you into a gulag–a worthy demonstration of their superior tolerance, compassion, and the invincible strength of their shiny New Ideas.

And a crazy, stupid, dishonest, self-refuting, malingering old fart–a Dread White Guy, no less–without a single genuine accomplishment his entire miserable life other than swindling his way into a government sinecure is going to be the agent of the Change We Need: from Obama 2.0 to Obama 3.0–This Time We’re Serious! edition.

it is to weep. But anybody who thinks Sanders and his horde of clueless droolcases can’t pull off a win in a country as benighted and ***-backwards as this one probably needs to think again. You want a Big Lesson from Iowa? It’s this: arm up, hunker down, and get ready, because the socialist ***** **** is aimed directly at your personal fundament, with malicious intent clearly and unambiguously declared.

Update! Another post-mort, from Harsanyi:

So which Left-wing publication is going to pull together a bunch of liberal intellectuals for an “Against Sanders” issue?

There’s been a ton of concern trolling from Democrats about the chaos and extremism ripping the Republican Party in half. It’s bad for the country, you know? We need two strong and functioning political parties. John Kasich is the only plausible choice to save the GOP and so on. Well, what happens if the GOP ends up nominating some run-of-the-mill Romney-esque Republican or an ambitious conservative from Texas, and the Democrats end up with a socialist? Surely liberals would be deeply troubled by their own party’s hard left turn?

Not at all; it’s what they were all along, they just couldn’t come out and say it. What ought to be troubling is the nation’s hard Left turn, so that Americans are now willing even to countenance any Democrat Socialist in anyposition of power, anywhere–especially in light of their smashing successes in fundamentally transforming Detroit, Chicago, New York, etc into the thriving garden spots of Gracious Living they now are. This bit says it all:

It’s amusing to watch people maintain that Sanders isn’t a genuine socialist because he hasn’t laid out a Five Year Plan or called for the means of production to be transferred to the state. (Last night, for example, CNN’s Van Jones continually referred to Sanders as a “progressive” — which tells us something about socialism and progressivism.) Socialists are always “democratic” when they have no choice. The fun part comes later.

Yes, it does. The truly fun part being exclusively the bit where the useful idiots are put against a wall and shot. After that, it’s straight back to pure grim totalitarian reality for most of us: standing in lines for shoes and toilet paper; watching what we say lest we fall afoul of some minor, petty apparatchik; envying the vlasti their many luxuries; and doing as we’re told generally.

All are one update! “One is the philosopher of revolutionary communism, the other is a Democratic candidate for president. Can you tell the difference?” It is, of course, a trick question: there are no differences worth bothering about, as the quiz itself shows. Via WRSA, who also includes the perfect Sanders bumper sticker as a bonus.

In sum update! More analysis from Diplomad:

What can we say about Bernie Sanders? He is a life-long lay-about and Communist with an older British brother, Larry–also a politically active leftist crank–who has emerged on the political scene to challenge the Clinton Machine. He has attracted a legion of low-information, economically illiterate followers who “Feel The Bern” given by a 74-year-old mountebank. He is a loon with followers who rely on their no-content education to guide them to his tent. Is he the big winner in Iowa? I don’t know. He did deny Hillary Clinton the IC prize, so I guess that’s a victory of some sort. It seems, however, that Iowa Dem politics is tailor-made for Sanders and his goofy Marxist mumbo-jumbo: lots of young liberal foolish white students with not much else to do but play at Revolution.

Throw in their equally foolish ex-hippie parents (or grandparents) nostalgic for their 60s glory days; yuppie-puppie urbanites and barren BoHo hipster ********** all Deeply Concerned about Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) and “inequality” but not in the least so about liberty or the Constitution (except insofar as they get to screw who-or-whatever without opprobrium or inconvenience of any sort, with ready access to abortion in case something UNEXPECTED! happens); the dishonest Left-propaganda machine that is Praetorian Media; a pop culture and entertainment establishment that is fully onboard with advancing the cause; a political establishment and Almighty State apparatus that ditto; and a SJW Schutzstaffel fully ready and willing to tear into little pieces anyone who dares to stray from the Party line, and you got not just Iowa, but a good chunk of the entire country–most of it, in truth.

Hey, I didn’t say that Big Lesson was gonna be pretty, now did I?

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