Today is Sunday, January 15, 2024.     The Iowa caucus is almost over in terms of voting, and as expected, the frontrunner is a potential felon with 91 federal counts against him.    The Orange Turd is leading Nikki Haley right now, but it’s too early to call.    I’ve heard that there is a healthy turnout, despite the bitter weather.  Who would have thunked?

To understand Dump’s lead over Nikki Haley, we have to go to an online CNN article written by Ariel Edwards-Levy entitled “About half of Iowa GOP caucusgoers identify with MAGA movement, early entrance poll shows.”    That’s all you need to know then.

According to the initial results of CNN’s entrance poll for the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses, about half of repugnican caucusgoers in the state identify with the far-right MAGA movement.    The results provide a glimpse of the type of voters turning out to participate in the first contest of the 2024 campaign.    

And even more surprising, about two-thirds say they do not believe that Biden’s victory over Dump four years ago was legitimate.  

Few GOP caucusgoers express concerns about the criminal charges Dump currently faces.  Roughly 6 in 10 say that they’d consider Dump fit for the presidency if he were convicted of a crime, with only about one-third saying they wouldn’t see him as fit in that circumstance. 

A majority of repugnican caucusgoers in Iowa describe themselves as conservatives, with more than half – roughly 54 percent – calling themselves “very conservative.” That would be an increase from 2016, when 40 percent called themselves conservative.

Highlighting how damn conservative these Iowans are, most GOP caucusgoers – about 6 in 10 – say a federal law should be implemented to ban most or all abortions nationwide in the wake of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.  Out of a list of four issues, far more cite immigration (about 37 percent) or the economy (roughly 36 percent) as their two principal concerns.

The entrance poll for Iowa’s Republican presidential caucus was conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool.   It includes 551 interviews with Republican caucus participants across 45 different caucus locations.  

In my opinion, I think the cold has affected Iowans’ minds as they blithely vote for the worst person in the world as president.    So Trump has 52.6 percent [not final count] of the vote in Iowa, sadly, and Nikki Haley and Ron DeSatan are grappling to vie for second place right now.   

It was Iowa’s coldest caucuses ever, and voters in some parts of the state faced temperatures in the minus 10s with wind chills as low as minus 40.  

And here we mourn Dump’s win in Iowa on the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Day which celebrates the life of the prominent civil rights leader.   I wonder if he were alive today, what would he think of someone like Donald J. Dump.  I got my wish when I spied an online article in The Hill by Rachel Scully who includes the words of a former King speechwriter and how the civil rights leader would define Dump today if he were alive.    The issue here is that this is all conjecture since King died in 1968.    But the speechwriter, Clarence Jones, did state what he thought how the Reverend Martin Luther King would feel about Dump today.   The article is “Former MLK speechwriter: Slain civil rights leader would describe Trump as ‘moral fraud.’

This is how Jones said Martin Luther King would describe former president Donald Chump: a “moral fraud.”

Talking to MSNBC’s host Jonathan Capehart on “The Sunday Show,” Jones said, “I think he [MLK] would go back to basics and say that he didn’t believe that any sinner was beyond redemption.   And that would include Donald Trump.”

Jones goes far to say that he didn’t want to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, “but the word he would probably use that would be most comfortable with him would be ‘fraud.'”   He adds, “I think he would use the words, ‘He is a moral fraud.'”  

Jones, who served as King’s speechwriter and counsel, added that King would describe Trump’s policies as “Opportunist.   Without anchor.”

“His politics are ‘what’s in it for me first?'” Jones said.

The late civil rights leader’s speechwriter and confidante also said King would likely warn President Biden when going into the coming election.

Here Jones offers salient advice by which King would inform Biden that Trump is a very treacherous snake.   And that he would have to be on guard 24/7.   ”And this snake has the ability regrettably of being able to hide his true characteristics and appeal to some people,” he said. 

Let us all hope that Biden and his policy gurus know all this about the former insurrectionist and are prepared to take on this “snake” very forcefully from now on all the way to Election Day. 

A counterpoint article to the depressing win of Dump in Iowa is offered in a piece in USA Today by Ingrid Jacques entitled “Trump’s Iowa win in depressing, but conservatives still have time to change.”

The writer states that “Iowans braved the arctic blast hitting the state to come out in droves for their candidate.”  The widest margin of victory in the Iowa caucuses took place in 1988 when Bob Dole beat Pat Robertson by 13 points.  As of now, “Trump blew that record out of the water.”

She thinks all hope is not lost.  She claims that Iowa is “just one fairly small, rural state.”   She says it does not speak for all Republicans.

Thus the New Hampshire primary is next week, and former South Carolina Governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley is quickly closing in on Dump’s lead there.

In terms of Biden’s campaign, Jacques points out that Biden lost the first three Democratic primary contests, including Iowa, before finally winning South Carolina.  Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was close in the polls and giving Biden a run for the money.

So Jacques feels Iowa isn’t a great predictor of who will win the parties’ nominations.   She writes, “Trump may be basking in Iowa glory now, but he wasn’t in 2016 when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pulled off the win at that time (albeit by 3 points).”

She also indicates that Trump is trying to pull off something that just one other president in U.S. history has managed to do.   And that was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, who has served two nonconsecutive terms, which happened more than 100 years ago. 

In the wake of what has just happened, let us all not feel everything’s lost.  It’s only the beginning of a long drawn-out process, so let’s chant, “It’s only Iowa, not the whole nation!” 

Stay warm during this decidedly cold week.

Stay safe and be well.