Osler's Razor

[Pictured here with 2008 Presidential Candidate Grar the Giant Maverick Panda]

I can't avoid politics right now. With Trump's acquittal in the Senate, the stakes have become higher for the next election.

The big loser in the Iowa caucuses was Iowa. Well, Iowa and Joe Biden. But mostly Iowa. It may not be fair, but there will be a strong movement to eliminate Iowa's first-in-the-nation status after the vote-counting debacle on Tuesday. Probably the better reason to change the process is Iowa's failure to reflect the diversity of the actual Democratic electorate, but this mess did not help their case.

After all, though, the Iowa caucuses going first aren't such a grand and ancient tradition-- they achieved that status in the 1970's, and our entire system that gives a primary role to primaries and caucuses in choosing a nominee is itself a fairly recent invention (dating from 1968). We're not throwing out democracy or the Constitution here. Moreover, the outsize influence that Iowa has achieved through this device isn't necessarily a good thing, as it has driven exorbitant supports for huge agribusinesses and questionable subsidies for ethanol, among other policies.

Even as I write this, the full results of the Iowa caucus aren't available. But with over 90% of the results now in the vote totals look like this (if we look at the "State Delegate Equivalents," which are different than the popular vote, which Sanders leads by a nose) :

Buttigieg: 26.5%
Sanders:    25.6%
Warren:     18.3%
Biden:        15.9%
Klobuchar: 12.1%

That's great for Buttigieg. And it is terrible for Biden. Everyone else can argue for their own little victory, and have.

What now?  As usually, the folks at FiveThirtyEight have some thoughts. Here are a few of their conclusions:

-- Biden's chances took a real hit. He is now given only a 21% chance of entering the convention with a majority of delegates, down from 43% before the Iowa caucuses. That's rough, man.

-- Sanders passed Biden going the other way, with his chances of gaining a majority up to 37% from 31%.

-- Meanwhile, Buttigieg's chances of doing the same thing (winning a majority of delegates before the convention) rose, but only to 6% from 4%, and he now has a 9% chance of winning the plurality of delegates.

-- Elizabeth Warren got a bump, as she went from a 5% to 10% chance of winning a majority of delegates before the convention.

-- And the odds of no one having a majority of delegates by the convention went way up, to 27% from 17%.

Now, FiveThirtyEight didn't steer us very straight in 2016's general election. And these guesses leave a lot of openings: for Bloomberg or for general mayhem (or, I suppose, a super-villian named General Mayhem).

I suspect they are under-rating Buttigieg. What came out of Iowa was a sense that he is a good organizer-- that his smarts can translate into making things happen. Certainly, he built a better organization than that old pro, Joe Biden.

And that's probably the worst thing for Biden. The sense that his is competent as a leader is undermined by this result.  His popularity is built in part from being perceived as Obama's wingman, but sometimes it is a mistake to put the sidekick in a position of ultimate responsibility. Like, do you remember that time they left Ron Weasley in charge? Or Robin (when Batman was having that hernia surgery)? Or former VP's Richard Nixon and George HW Bush?

There is more that we don't know than what we do. And the horse-race part of it is now real, but still not the most important thing. Policy and leadership should matter, even as we evaluate who may win.