Will there be trouble in Iowa?
The Iowa caucuses are tonight, and it will be interesting to see how they play out given the events of the past couple weeks. Will the Democratic Party try to once again rob Bernie Sanders of the Democratic nomination and give it to one of their preferred candidates like Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren? They, along with the corporate media, have already helped Elizabeth Warren stage a baseless and calculated attack against Bernie at the last CNN debate portraying him a lying misogynist, trotted out Hillary Clinton to attack him, and treated anyone who rose to Bernie's defense as a misogynist and as undermining Democratic unity right as Bernie began leading the polls as the caucus got closer. An attempt to hurt his level of support that seems to have largely failed, as the most recent poll has him leading by 7 points.
The 2016 Democratic caucus in Iowa was as close as it could possibly be, with Hillary getting 23 delegates and Bernie getting 21, but Hillary's lead over Bernie was fairly consistent throughout all the polling prior to the caucus. Now that Bernie has been consistently leading in the polling for weeks, especially in the aforementioned poll that was only released yesterday, it would be highly suspicious if he didn't win. It wouldn't be surprising, however, given how the Democratic National Committee worked with the Clinton campaign to ensure that Hillary got the Democratic nomination over Bernie Sanders in 2016.
It also wouldn't be the first time in recent history that a candidate who posed a threat to the establishment was robbed of their win in Iowa. In 2012, it was announced, originally, that Mitt Romney was the winner of the Republican Iowa caucus, only to later be corrected to Rick Santorum. In reality, however, Ron Paul won the most delegates out of Iowa, and was thus the winner of the caucus. This was held up until June, however, so Paul was never able to gain any further electoral benefit or momentum from his win in Iowa. Had the RNC and the Romney campaign not done everything they could to suppress Paul's Iowa victory, it's possible he would have gone on to do better in other early states like New Hampshire where he came in a distant second to Romney.
The Democratic establishment obviously sees Bernie as a threat to their power, just as the Republicans viewed Ron Paul as a threat, but will they once again blatantly cheat him out of the nomination? The smear campaign has been in full effect, but we'll have to wait and see what happens in Iowa tonight.