Our View: Iowa results offer little cause for celebration

Congratulations to the winners and almost-winners in Iowa. Sorry we’re not a little more enthusiastic.

Other than officially kicking off the slog to the presidency, the Iowa caucuses proved little and provided very little political insight. The preferences of partisans in such a small state are only important because they went first. It will matter less as the weeks drag on.

Tempering our enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton’s victory – she came as close to not winning as possible – is the matter of her email server. No, the FBI hasn’t charged her with anything and probably won’t. But she still hasn’t explained why she needed a separate server in the first place. We have no clue why she felt a computer sitting in her basement at home was better than the computers set up and constantly monitored by State Department staff.

The person Clinton hired to set up and maintain her server has no clearances or cybersecurity expertise, according to sources. Meanwhile, the Clintons are notorious technophobes; Bill Clinton used to brag that he sent only two emails during his entire presidency. That’s no excuse.

Does it occur to Hillary Clinton that part of the reason her 20-point lead over Bernie Sanders evaporated was that she hasn’t satisfied the American people’s anxiety about those emails? Until she does, any congratulations must remain lukewarm.

That brings us to Ted Cruz, who deflated the largest ego in the nation by beating Donald Trump by 3.3 percentage points. For that long-overdue achievement, congratulations truly are in order. It was huuuuge.

But Cruz is such a transparently self-absorbed candidate – taking loans from New York bankers while decrying New York morals; flopping after flipping on so many positions – he’ll have to make do with the sound of one hand clapping.

Most accolades are adhering to Marco Rubio, the Republican who came in third but managed a slightly higher percentage of votes than pollsters predicted. That sent the GOP establishment into wild celebrations. Finally, the party has a candidate who might drift somewhere toward the middle by November, when all the voters get a say.

It’s strange that Sanders, who outperformed expectations by a far larger margin than Rubio, gets almost no love from the Democrats. Instead, the party obsesses on Clinton’s apparent likability deficit.

Now, the circus moves to New Hampshire – whose record is a bit better at picking eventual candidates. Sanders is far ahead of Clinton, and Trump is said to be lapping the Republican field, where Cruz’s brand of God-and-guns politics doesn’t play as well. We’ll see.

On Feb. 20, voters in Nevada and South Carolina get to choose, followed by Super Tuesday on March 1, when voters in 14 states pick their favorites.

This show rolls into California on June 7, a primary day we share with five other states. It likely will be over by then. But there’s a small chance Golden State voters from at least one of the parties just might get to have a say in whom they’ll vote for in November. The field just won’t be as large.

This story was originally published February 2, 2016 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Our View: Iowa results offer little cause for celebration."