"This is a godsend for Trump": Democrat insiders admit Iowa chaos plays into President's hands
Democrats could not have feared an outcome worse than a presidential primary caucus frozen by a technical glitch and in-fighting among their candidates, allowing Donald Trump to pounce.
From impeachment to the first 2020 votes to be cast, Democrats' hopes that they would have knocked the president down a peg have taken several blows. Rather than taking momentum into New Hampshire with perhaps two or three candidates looking more able to take him on, top Democrats are seizing on moral victories while the party's presidential campaigns are trading allegations about whether the process in Iowa was legitimate.
As Democratic Party officials scrambled to accurately count the votes from Monday night's caucuses, Mr Trump and top White House officials were raising questions about whether the opposition party is hell bent on blocking self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders from securing early primary wins - and possibly the Democratic nomination by this summer.
"If you win Iowa or really over-perform, finish higher than most people expected, you really get 24 hours - at least - of unfettered media coverage. That's huge," said one White House official who has worked on presidential campaigns.
"Now, with Bernie, he won't have that. And now they've robbed it from him twice," the official said, referring to Mr Sanders narrow loss - two-hundreths of a percentage point - to eventual nominee Hillary Clinton - in the state's disputed 2016 caucuses.
That "robbed" line of thinking is one that goes to the top levels of the Trump campaign and White House.
"Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation with the sloppiest train wreck in history. It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process," Mr Trump's re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement.
He then uttered the Trump team's line that the Iowa debacle shows Democrats are unfit to run the federal government.
"And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system?" Parscale added.
At the White House, Mr Trump mocked and criticised Democrats from the residence as he prepared for his third State of the Union address and fourth address to a joint session of Congress.
"The Democrat Party in Iowa really messed up, but the Republican Party did not," he wrote. "I had the largest re-election vote in the history of that great state, by far. ... Thank you, Iowa!"
In another tweet, the president mocked the opposition party by wondering if Democrats would "start blaming RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, instead of their own incompetence for the voting disaster that just happened in the Great State of Iowa." (He was referring to the conclusion of all 16 US intelligence agencies, Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election; Mr Trump has been reluctant to consistently agree, suggesting China or independent actors meddled, too.)
One Democratic source responded to a message about the situation there and Mr Trump's Tuesday morning response with seven vomit emojis. One reason: Former Vice President Joe Biden's deputy campaign manager is openly questioning the entire process for gathering and counting votes in Iowa.
Kate Bedingfield told CNN the Biden campaign has "real concerns about the integrity of the process," adding: "I think there were significant failures in the process last night that should give voters concern." The campaign posted an image of the former VP on Instagram with the words "Thank you, IA" beside his smiling face. With pollsters and political analysts suggesting the results there will show Mr Biden had a poor showing there, it's unclear what he would be thankful for, however.
Another, Democratic strategist Brad Bannon, said the "chaos in Iowa is a godsend to Donald Trump."
"The problems and delays in reporting the results undermine the integrity of the Democratic nomination process," he said. "Because Trump lost the popular vote and benefited from Russian interference, Democrats had a legitimate argument about the legitimacy of his election in 2016. After Iowa, it's more difficult to make that case."
Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former Clinton aide, acknowledged the delayed Iowa vote results "looks bad."
"I think they'll figure it out, but the president is going to exploit it," Manley said. "He is going to use every tool in his tool shed, including calling every Democrat under the sun a socialist - which seems to explain his interest in Sanders. ... The bottom line is this is not good because President Trump doesn't play the rules, and never will. This just helps him with that."
White House officials were taking a noticeably long-term view, saying they see a long fight ahead.
"If Democrats would like to talk about the economy, we'd love to have that debate," Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, said Tuesday.
So would Democratic candidates, who argue Mr Trump's economic stewardship has benefited the wealthiest Americans and large corporations - but has not really helped many of his core supporters or average Americans. But Democrats were not talking about that on Tuesday as they reeled from the mess in the Hawkeye State.
"It's a mess. We'll see if they get it together," the White House official said before flashing some team Trump confidence: "They better."
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