Trump won Iowa’s Democratic caucus chaos, so what’s next?

There was one big winner from the screwed-up Iowa caucuses: Donald Trump.

The losers included Joe Biden, the national Democratic Party and the Iowa caucuses, probably now doomed.

New reporting requirements with three different measurements, demanded by the Democratic National Committee, and technical breakdowns sowed confusion and no clear-cut early winner.

Amid the chaos, the most successful Iowa candidates apparently were Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Final results won’t be released until later today, but it may not matter much.

The process infuriated paranoia-prone Sanders supporters, who charged a conspiracy to deny the Vermont Socialist his election night boost. This exacerbates tensions between this camp, and mainstream Democrats who fear a Sanders candidacy would doom the party in the general election.

Other than Trump, reveling this week in an impeachment acquittal and the Democrats’ incompetence in Iowa, another winner might be Michael Bloomberg. 

The billionaire former Mayor of New York City stayed out of Iowa and the other three early contests to focus on the big delegate rich states in March. Enormously expensive, they may be tailor-made for Bloomberg, who’s apparently willing to spend unlimited sums.

Although the Biden team claimed they dodged a bullet with the Iowa confusion, his disappointing finish is a serious setback for the the 77-year-old former Vice President, elevating concerns that he’s over the hill politically.

That makes a good showing — winning or being very close — essential for Biden in next week’s New Hampshire primary. Another lackluster Biden performance will undercut his prospects in the next February contests: Nevada and South Carolina. At that point, Biden, cash-starved, would find it difficult to be competitive on March 3, when voters in 14 states — including California and Texas, the two biggest prizes overall — go to the polls and elect over a third of the delegates.

New Hampshire also is critical for the other candidates, especially Sanders who won a convincing victory there four years ago. If he repeats and eliminates his only ideological competitor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), he becomes the clear front-runner.

Warren, with a respectable if not great showing in Iowa, needs to beat Bernie next Tuesday or lose any momentum.

Leading Democratic strategists are worried Sanders, a candidate perceived as too far left, can’t win a general election. They worry Sanders atop the ticket would also undercut their prospects to take control of the Senate by knocking off Republican incumbents in states Trump carried and might even imperil their House majority centered in suburban districts where initiatives like the government taking away private health insurance aren’t popular.

The Sanders camp — and Warren’s — counter they can energize and turn out new voters and that they are running ahead of Trump in nationals polls and surveys in key battleground states.

Those arguments are worth examining even with the uncertainty of Iowa.

The notion of an ideologically driven candidate turning out hordes of new voters is familiar. The case was made by right-wing Republican Barry Goldwater years ago and later by left wing Democrat George McGovern. Both were clobbered in the general election.

Sanders is running ahead of the president in national polls and in Michigan and Pennsylvania. But Democrats in states like North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia cringe at the prospect of a ticket headed by the Vermont socialist.

Sanders, unlike Biden, never really has been vetted — other than some sloppy attacks by right wingers in Vermont. In the current contest and in 2016, while he was challenged on policies like a government-run, single-payer health care system, it has never really gotten down and dirty.

It would against Trump operatives.

For starters, they’d make “socialist” a national pejorative — and have no shortage of other material. Sanders has spoken favorably of left-wing dictators from places like Cuba and Venezuela and honeymooned in the old Soviet Union. Last year, he endorsed giving imprisoned felons, including murderers and rapists, the right to vote.

An analogy would be 1988. During the Democratic primaries Gov. Michael Dukakis was challenged on some views but only glancingly — by then Sen. Al Gore — on a controversial prisoner furlough program in his state of Massachusetts.

The Republicans took the gloves off in the fall election putting a face on these furloughs: Willie Horton, a menacing black man, convicted of murder who was furloughed and then broke into a home and brutalized and raped a woman.

The Trump folks are tougher, more vicious and much more drawn to racist appeals than those 1988 Republicans.

There is a sense that Warren — if she somehow should emerge — would be more effective in a match up against Trump. But she too would offer appetizing targets for the Republican hit men: The other day she said a young transgender student would have veto power over her Secretary of Education.

Sanders — even if rejected — might still cause problems, particularly if his supporters persist in their current charges about Iowa, that they were treated unfairly by the party.

One example of this rule-or-ruin mindset: Nina Turner, the Sanders co-chair, a former Ohio state legislator from Cleveland, protested the national committee’s intention to appoint John Podesta to a committee role at the national convention.

Podesta chaired the Hillary Clinton campaign four years ago, was President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, a counselor to President Barack Obama and founded the Center for American Progress, the Democrats’ most vibrant policy think tank. If someone with these credentials doesn’t meet the Sanders litmus test, there’ll be a lot of prominent Democrats shut out of the Milwaukee convention.

If Biden doesn’t recover, it affords an opening for Buttigieg. But with little appeal to voters of color, he may not be well-positioned to counter Sanders.

That focuses all eyes in a few weeks on Bloomberg.

Bloomberg has already risen in the polls, no surprise given the enormous amount of money he has spent — probably a quarter of a billion dollars — in the past few months. Some in close contact with the campaign predict, if necessary, he’d be willing to spend ten times more. He’s estimated to be worth $50 billion, dwarfing Trump’s wealth.

Bloomberg would still have to prove his merit as a candidate — so far, even in relatively friendly environs, he comes across as stiff. More than a few liberal Democrats remain suspicious, but his vehement stance against Trump — he has real contempt for the president — ameliorates that.

There’s a long way to go.

Iowa demonstrates the utter lack of predictability this year — but a Bloomberg versus Trump contest would be full of mind boggling ironies: Two septuagenarian New York billionaires, running in an increasingly populist country; the Democratic candidate a former Republican mayor, while the incumbent Republican president was a Democrat for most of his life.

Albert R. Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for the Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter-century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then the International New York Times and Bloomberg View. Follow him on Twitter @alhuntdc.