Voters’ message: Pick risky over safe

It turns out Iowa Democrats have their own ideas about electability.

Their message was overshadowed by the bizarre delay in releasing results, but the Iowa caucuses nonetheless provide the first hard judgment by voters rather than pundits. The candidates leading in partial returns were Pete Buttigieg, 38 years old, openly gay and with no higher governmental experience than serving two terms as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 78 years old and a self-described Democratic Socialist.

Trailing well behind in a disappointing fourth place was former Vice President Joe Bi

den, erstwhile front-runner and the favored candidate of much of the Democratic establishment – and one who has built his campaign on the argument that he would have a better chance than his rivals of defeating President Donald Trump. He was finishing behind U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Defeating Trump is unquestionably top of mind for Democrats, in Iowa and nationwide. As they arrived at caucus sites Monday, voters by 61% to 37% told the ABC entrance poll that electability mattered more to them than ideology. But a debate has raged over the best way to achieve the goal: Win back moderate swing voters, as the familiar Biden contends? Or energize new voters, many of them younger and liberal and diverse, as the disruptive Sanders claims?

With 62% of the precincts counted, representing all 99 counties, Buttigieg was at 26.9% of the state delegates, Sanders at 25.1%, Warren at 18.3% and Biden at 15.6%. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar was fifth at 12.6%.

Sanders was ahead of Buttigieg in the popular vote, 28,220 to 27,030.

In Iowa, voters went for outsiders over the established, the risky over the safe.

In doing that, history is on their side. In modern times, Democrats have more often won the White House when they nominated fresh faces, sometimes groundbreaking ones: Barack Obama in 2008, Bill Clinton in 1992, John Kennedy in 1960. They often have lost the White House when they nominated the establishment’s preference over a challenger: Hillary Clinton in 2016, John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000.

While Iowa kept counting, the candidates and the campaign moved on Tuesday to New Hampshire, where Sanders currently leads. The first-in-the-nation primary, just a week away, often splits with Iowa’s returns, and sometimes doesn’t decide until last moment. Iowa’s boost almost certainly has been diminished by the failure to release results Monday night, making the state Democratic Party look inept and fueling a flurry of conspiracy theories.

In a way, that enabled Trump to win both the GOP and the Democratic caucuses. He was virtually unchallenged on the GOP side, carrying 97% of the Republican vote. He ridiculed the mess in the other party as a sign that Democrats can’t run an election, much less a government. “Nothing works, just like they ran the Country,” he tweeted derisively.

Sanders and Buttigieg were left to deliver awkward victory-night speeches without the imprimatur of certified victories. They didn’t get the banner headlines that Iowa winners dream about to use as a sail into New Hampshire.

“So we don’t have all the results,” Buttigieg told cheering supporters in Des Moines as midnight approached. “But we know by the time it’s all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation. Because, by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.” The partial results showed Buttigieg winning 31 Iowa counties that had flipped from Obama to Trump, an important bragging point.

Biden, on the other hand, got a temporary reprieve from having to explain a dismal finish. “I don’t know what happened in Iowa this morning,” he told reporters Tuesday after an event in Nashua, New Hampshire, throwing up his hands and declining to take questions. His campaign hopes to recover with a victory in the South Carolina primary Feb. 29, where he’s counting on his strength among African American voters.

One other winner from Iowa: a candidate who wasn’t in the mix. Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is skipping the first four contests – Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina – and focusing on Super Tuesday. His theory is he could be a centrist alternative if Biden stumbles and Sanders is on a roll. His campaign confirmed he approved hiring more staff and buying more TV ads in the wake of Iowa.

All that said, the Iowa results still speak to the first judgment of voters that we have. What we heard from them: Go new.