What if Trump wins and Clinton loses in Iowa?

Share

The pace of campaigning has accelerated. The airwaves are full of advertisements – there's a discernible uptick in negative spots – and even mailboxes in the early political states now are stuffed with handbills. The Iowa caucuses are less than three weeks away, and though the candidates all are speaking of change, one thing about Campaign 2016 has not changed: Iowa has every potential of sending the American presidential campaign into a new realm of chaos.

The reason can be distilled to two what-ifs: What if Donald J. Trump wins? What if Hillary Rodham Clinton loses?

One victory like that or one loss like that – or the combination of the two, unimaginable as recently as three months ago – and the upheaval that marked American politics throughout 2015 will take on a new character entirely.

First, the Democrats. Last week Ms. Clinton, the former secretary of state, unleashed the weapon she had kept for so long husbanded away in her armoury. But as the year opened the Clintons were like stereo speakers, with former president Bill Clinton campaigning in New Hampshire while Ms. Clinton stumped in Iowa.

There was real urgency in the Clinton manoeuvre. Ms. Clinton remains the prohibitive favourite nationwide to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but there is a very real possibility she could be defeated in Iowa on Feb. 1 and then again in New Hampshire eight days later. In both states, where Democrats lean farther left than they do nationwide, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has mounted a strong campaign and now is unveiling a strong campaign organization.

Ms. Clinton lost Iowa eight years ago to Senator Barack Obama of Illinois but then rallied to win New Hampshire, a comeback that in some ways mirrored that of her husband in the Granite State in 1992. (Mr. Clinton finished second to former senator Paul E. Tsongas of Massachusetts but that was regarded as a triumph because he had been ambushed by charges of marital infidelity just before the balloting. "I love this place," Mr. Clinton said while campaigning in New Hampshire last week.)

But Mr. Sanders, like Mr. Tsongas before him, comes from a state bordering New Hampshire, which has often been an immense advantage in the first-in-the-nation primary. That and his unalloyed liberalism – he speaks of free university tuition and paid parental leave, plus a far more aggressive stance toward Wall Street and far more passionate rhetoric on wealth disparity than his rival, very attractive to party activists who tend to lean leftward – could make it difficult for the Democratic front-runner to pull a third Clinton comeback in New Hampshire.

Now to the Republicans. Many Iowa public-opinion surveys place Mr. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas tied, or within the polling margin of error. Mr. Cruz has soared as a result of his vigorous cultivation of religious conservatives, who have provided the margin of victory in recent Iowa caucuses, giving former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (2012) and former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas (2008) stunning victories.

Neither Mr. Santorum nor Mr. Huckabee was able to convert an Iowa victory into the nomination, but both are competing again in 2016. This time, however, the religious-conservative vote has veered away from its two former suitors to Mr. Cruz, who has also courted the disillusioned and despairing who have been drawn to Mr. Trump's strong rhetoric and message of rebellion.

As Mr. Cruz has gained support, Mr. Trump's has eroded – though not to the point of relinquishing his position as a formidable contender in Iowa. Late last week he began questioning whether Mr. Cruz, a native of Alberta, was eligible for the presidency under the U.S. Constitution, which says the chief executive must be a natural-born citizen of the United States. And he threatened to keep up his offensive against the Clintons, particularly his reminders of President Clinton's sexual encounters with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Despite Mr. Cruz's rise, the centre of gravity of the Republican campaign remains Mr. Trump, a onetime Democrat who is running a reality-show presidential campaign worthy of his last role as a character from The Apprentice, a television title perhaps too apt for comfort for its lead figure. Oftentimes Mr. Trump also is a character from Comedy Central, though former governor Jeb Bush of Florida expressed the indignation of Mr. Trump's rivals when, in last month's debate, he confronted his tormentor: "Donald, you're not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency – that's not going to happen," Mr. Bush said. "Leadership is not about attacking people and disparaging people. Leadership is about creating a serious strategy."

Mr. Trump does not pull punches, nor does he pull away from his most controversial positions. He unveiled his first television advertisement in Iowa last week and it featured his proposed ban on Muslim immigration, along with threats to "cut off the head" of the Islamic State.

Mr. Trump is a master of pushing, or breaking, the political rules – reminiscent in some ways of an earlier populist in American history, Huey Long (1893-1935), who as governor and then as senator from Louisiana had a similar appeal. "When Huey violated an established political rule," his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer T. Harry Williams wrote in 1969, "he did so knowing that the rule had no validity and that he would gain by the violation." Mr. Trump has gained by every violation, and even could capture the Republican presidential nomination in circumstances that trouble mainstream party members and some others.

"Donald Trump could be one of the two major party nominees even though in every state a majority of his own party doesn't want him to be the nominee," says Mickey Edwards, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Oklahoma for 16 years, was national chairman of the American Conservative Union and who has taught at Harvard and Princeton universities. "I don't think most people understand that this system rewards hard-line activists, the most ideological and the most partisan."

And so as the campaign in Iowa enters its final phase, at stake are not only the presidential nominations of both parties but the character of American politics itself. It's a heavy burden for one Midwestern state in any year, but especially when the nominations for both parties are open – and when so many unpredictable elements are in play.