Regardless of what the official results might say, Bernie Sanders won the night in Iowa. The margin reported by most media outlets shows Hillary Clinton at 49.8% and Sanders at 49.6%, but there have been enough reports of shenanigans, voter fraud, and missing results from various precincts to call into question the value of the caucus process in showing the people’s choice for the Democratic nominee. What is abundantly clear, however, is that Bernie Sanders is no fringe candidate. The showing by the Sanders campaign in Iowa could be exactly what Bernie Sanders needs to shake and bake right past Hillary Clinton in the race to be the Democratic Party’s nominee.
So without further ado, here are the top three reasons why Bernie Sanders was the real winner in the Iowa Caucus.
Bernie Sanders Has All the Momentum
Clinton gained nothing of value, and Sanders won the surprise of pundits and coverage from the mainstream media machine. Bernie Sanders was expected to lose, but his campaign is energized and Clinton’s campaign is scared. She may have won by 0.02% according to most mainstream reports, but Hillary Clinton won a Pyrrhic victory, and it’s one she will not easily recover from.
Sanders and Clinton virtually tied, and Iowa’s delegates are not awarded on a winner-take-all basis, so the tie goes to the candidate who exceeded expectations, clearly Sanders. At the Democratic National Convention, Sanders and Clinton will receive the same number of delegates from the state of Iowa, so Sanders has lost nothing. Clinton, on the other hand, has lost the air of invincibility that carried her months ago.
Bernie Sanders will now move into New Hampshire as an even stronger favorite. Sanders is out of the gate garnering nearly 50% of the vote in Iowa when just months ago Sanders was in single digits in the polls. A tie in Iowa and a win in New Hampshire just may give Sanders the momentum he needs to gain the backing of more establishment Democrats.
Bernie Sanders Showed the Nation that Hillary Clinton Can Lose
Ruth Marcus asked the perfect question when trying to decide who won the tie: “Which campaign was celebrating Monday night, and which was trying to figure out what went wrong?” Hillary Clinton has long been the presumptive nominee, and the mainstream media has viewed Bernie Sanders as nothing more than a modern-day Ross Perot. Far from being an outlier to shake up the political conversation, Bernie Sanders demonstrated his mass appeal and ability to contend.
At best, the media made it seem like Bernie Sanders was simply pulling Hillary Clinton further left, but he had no chance to actually win the nomination. In Iowa last night, Bernie Sanders showed the world that Hillary Clinton can be beaten. Considering many have shied away from Bernie Sanders because they view him as unelectable, the clear fallibility Clinton exhibited in her “win” will do nothing but give reluctant Sanders supporters the push they need to really feel the Bern.
Bernie Sanders Established Himself as the Voice of the Future
In a bit of an ironic turn, the old white man gained the most votes from the younger and more progressive generation. Among the Democratic voter age groups, Sanders pulled the following overwhelming numbers:
- Under 25: Sanders won 86% of the vote.
- 25-39: Sanders won 81% of the vote.
- 31-39: Sanders won 65% of the vote.
Just as the younger voters carried Barack Obama in crushing Hillary Clinton’s presidential dreams, there is no reason younger voters won’t do the same for Bernie Sanders. John Cassidy summed it up perfectly in The New Yorker: “When you are so heavily reliant on support from older voters, it is tricky to project yourself as the voice of the future.”
The thing is, Sanders wants voters to have the power—as they should. As such, he’s demonstrated integrity no one in our younger generation has ever seen from a politician, refusing to take money from PACs and big businesses. His reward has manifested itself in broken fundraising records that show no sign of slowing. His fundraising has come from individual donors, which means far more voters are personally invested in Bernie Sanders than in any other candidate. Win or lose, it shows that there is hope yet for our system of democracy.
Matt Shuham wrote in The Indypendent, “In a post-Citizens United era…the Sanders camp is placing a bet that rarely pays off in American politics: that absent mega-donors, PACs or the support of a party establishment, the machinery of public opinion can run on conviction alone.” Even with a technical loss in Iowa, Sanders won the Iowa caucus. In a democratic-republic in which the voting public shows up en masse and ensures the system runs on conviction alone and not on the whims of mega-donors and media moguls, everyone wins.
