The Winner of the Iowa Caucuses

There are still a lot of votes to be counted tonight, but we already have a projected winner in the Iowa Caucuses.

Barack Obama.

The Republican Caucus vote is still being counted, and it increasingly looks like whoever the eventual “winner” is, they will be in a virtual (and maybe literal) tie, while President Obama has already won the Iowa Caucuses on the Democratic side. And the while all the sound and fury has focused on the Republican race, it is not Romney, or Paul, or Santorum that has the best organized campaign in Iowa. Rather, Barack Obama does—just take a look at this video from the New York Times. And while Republicans tomorrow will head off to New Hampshire or South Carolina, the Obama campaign will be there through November.

Of course, tonight marks the four year anniversary of Barack Obama’s groundbreaking win in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. Tonight hardly compares to that defining moment in history. Anyone involved in the 2008 campaign surely has a unique memory of that night. But four years later, it is important remembering not just that night, but how it was the beginning of how we began to change America for the better. Just take a look here. We may still have a lot of work to do—change does not come quickly or easily, but it does come.

And while not as historic as four years ago, the President’s win tonight in Iowa, and the fact that he is on his way to winning re-nomination unopposed, is very significant. Since the beginning of the Fifth Party System in American politics (following the realignment after FDR’s landslide election in 1932), there have been fifteen times when an incumbent President has begun the year seeking election to the Presidency. In ten of those years (1936, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2004), the incumbent has faced either no or just nominal opposition in seeking his party’s nomination. In all ten of those elections, the incumbent President has been re-elected (at least 7 of those elections would be defined as landslides). In the other five modern elections (1952, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1992), the incumbent President has faced a serious primary challenger. And in each of those elections, the incumbent lost re-election. 1952 and 1968 saw Truman and Johnson, respectively, bow out before the nominating conventions, with the opposition party winning in the fall, while in the other three elections, the incumbent President, while winning the nomination, lost in the general election.

(Note—if you want to remember the 2008 Iowa Caucus, it is worth remembering his tremendous victory speech from that night four years ago tonight.)