Let us be completely honest. There is no silver lining to the results of Monday’s Iowa caucuses. What coverage I watched on TV—truth be told, I watched far more of Baker Mayfield than of Steve Kornacki on Monday night—seemed focused on desperate crawling toward a mirage of hope through a democratic republic turned into some godawful hybrid half-Arctic and half-desert. Look at all the Republicans who didn’t vote for El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, they told us, failing to mention that 99.99 percent of those renegade hayshakers will vote for him enthusiastically come November. Trying to draw any conclusions from the collective decision of 100,000 Iowans willing to scuttle through frozen wastelands to high school gymnasiums in a state run exclusively through god-bothering white people is a fool’s game.
