The Iowa Caucus Has Driven the Political Press to Madness

The Iowa caucus that opens Republican presidential primary season is less than two months off, and, as he has been for some time, Donald Trump is the heavy favorite to win both the caucus and the whole shebang. (He leads Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley by roughly 30 points each.)

Besides Haley and DeSantis very slowly switching between second and third places, there is little action in this race, although it does feature all the usual amount of activity. (DeSantis is almost done visiting each of Iowa’s 99 counties, after which he will presumably be expected to hand in a report to his social studies teacher.) And yet political news sections, or “verticals,” as they’re called on the World Wide Web, still need to be filled with stuff; the Iowa caucus and the elections that follow it are also still important, because they help decide who is going to be president of the country.

This is how we have arrived at the current crop of Iowa check-ins from national publications, which seek to make up, in dramatic metaphors and linguistic contortions, for what the largely static race lacks in drama.

In its piece about the “Countdown to Iowa,” for instance, the New York Times writes that “Donald J. Trump’s top rivals are running out of time to catch him as DeSantis and Haley thrash each other in the final sprint to the starting line.” It’s the final sprint, the runners are thrashing each other, and there’s a clock counting down—it sounds a little like a sequence in a movie from the 1970s meant to convey the experience of using drugs, especially when you consider the absolutely mind-blowing concept of a race that ends at a starting line. Trump, the piece says, is “aiming” for a win that could constitute a “knockout punch.” And according to a Republican operative who is quoted, all the candidates—including Trump, Haley, and DeSantis but also Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie—are “pushing the chips into the middle of the table.”

At CNN, meanwhile, the caucus race is “careening” (vehicle metaphor) toward its “final act” (theater metaphor). The non-Trump contestants are “running each other off the road” (cars again) while Trump remains comfortable on his “perch” above them (birds) despite Haley’s argument that the ex-president is “past his sell-by date” (Food and Drug Administration). The Washington Post says that Haley has “hurdles ahead” despite her success in the pack of candidates “jockeying” for position beneath Trump (somehow, our first actual horse-race reference). It also says the winning candidate will be picked in a “beauty contest,” although to be fair that’s in an article about how the White House chooses a Christmas tree.

As for how the candidates beneath Bird Trump are faring in the moment, DeSantis earned an endorsement last week from evangelical “Iowa caucus kingmaker” Bob Vander Plaats, while the confusingly named and Koch-funded super PAC Americans for Prosperity Action (what’s prosperity action?) announced that it will be backing Haley. (In this context, “backing” means sending out mailers, buying TV ads, and deploying “door-knocker” personnel to speak with voters in person.) The group, which announced its intention to support someone besides Trump in February, issued a memo outlining why it thinks Haley has the best chance of beating Trump; it basically boils down to “she is more likable than Ron DeSantis, who is a gremlin.” (That’s Slate’s paraphrase, not AFP Action’s own wording.)

Of course, as every piece about Haley must acknowledge, her “path” to the presidency is a narrow one, because she is currently losing to Trump by 27 points in her best state. And if there’s one thing we can say for sure about being a runner who is also a car that is playing poker, it’s that a narrow path is a hard one to ride your horse down.