My very reasonable assessment of the Iowa caucus

*  Of course, the optics of a party not being able to tally its own results quickly due to technical problems is not ideal.

*  Of course, for Trump supporters or excusers to claim that this shows the Democrats "can't run the county if they can't a caucus" is ludicrously ignoring the extreme and obvious dysfunction that has been the rapid and continuous turnover of Trump staff in the White House and the leaking of examples of incompetence of Trump from insiders that has happened from the start.  It is clearly the most shambolic White House we have ever seen in the modern era;

* That Republicans would immediately start with conspiracy theory about what happened is typical - it is all part of the alternative, post-truth reality which they have built for themselves.  (Of course, it doesn't help if some Democrats mutter darkly about dirty tricks, as well.  But the Republicans truly own the title of post-truth party.)

*  I have no problem with Biden looking like the clear loser in the results - he is looking old with no fresh ideas and his popularity with centrist type Democrats is very puzzling to me.   I have, though, no idea whether it is possible that Americans get past a massive "Socialist!  Communist!" scare campaign against Sanders, should he win.   I mean, the polling showing he does reasonably well with the general electorate seems a bit surprising to me too, given his history, age and use of the "S" word.   (Let's be honest, it's a word politicians of the Left avoid in Australia, too.)

* That said, I don't know that a combined Sanders/Warren ticket would be a bad thing.   I tend to think they will be better at attacking and ridiculing Trump than Hillary was.  (She had decades of conspiracy theories to overcome.   The Republicans don't really have the same imaginary dirt on Sanders/Warren to play with.)

* I don't know that anyone knows what to make of Buttigieg doing well, if not winning.   (Full results are  not out as I write this.)   As I have said before, it seems that many of the American political tweeters who I like find him very annoying, but I don't spend time watching Democrat debates so I am not sure why.   On the other hand, I think it would be interesting watching how Trump and his deplorables would deal with the homosexuality issue - surely they could not resist offensive jokes, signs and takes on that.  But given where American culture is at the moment*, I think that would carry a very real risk of backfiring.   It amuses me to think of Trump advisers realising that and trying to continually convince him that he really, really shouldn't try to make a joke about his sexuality.

Update:  I should have mentioned, I am somewhat convinced by the reasoning in Paul Krugman's recent op-ed:

Does It Matter Who the Democrats Choose? In terms of actual policy, probably not very much.
 

*  support for gay marriage polls is at least as 63% - has been as high as 67%.