The chaotic and unpredictable American process for electing a chief executive is about to commence.  On February 1st, the 2016 Iowa caucuses take place and the first delegates to a national convention for each party representing the peoples’ choice will be selected.  The total delegate count received for the winner of each party in Iowa is likely to be less than one half of one percent of the total amount needed to receive the party nominations, yet it continues to carry the outsized impact expected of a much larger state.  The reason is simple – as George Herbert Walker Bush stated in 1980, the winner gets the Big Mo – the mantle of being a winner in a crowded field of aspirants.  The traditional start has been Iowa, a caucus, and New Hampshire, a primary.  The caucus process is of course run by political parties, and is therefore a device by which the enthusiasms of individual  blocs supporting political causes can best find their voice.  The primary is run by the state government, and reflects the whims of a voting public that reflects the candidate impressions of the moment.  The candidates like the structure because it allows predictability in geography and media expense, and lends to as ‘equal’ a playing field as is possible for the long shots.  And thus, the continuing drive of the start of the political process further and further back towards the previous election.

It already seems in 2016, that this electoral process has gone on forever.  In the republican field, seventeen candidates filed papers to run, and before the first vote has even occurred, six have been defeated by the process.  Walker, Jindal, Perry, Patakis – the proven executives at the state level, thought to be voters’ desire after the election of the experience light Obama, fell quickly.  The gadfly Senator Lindsey Graham and the Republican Party executive Jim Gilmore.  Others have had their moment in the sun – Fiorina, the outsider computer executive-who used her preparedness to shine in the debates. Carson – the surgeon who started the anyone but a politician frenzy.  Rand Paul – the owner of his father’s libertarian legacy. The two former Iowa caucus winners, Santorum and Huckabee. The six who are truly left standing for the first vote, come in with the scars of a titanic battle already underway.  Bush – the legacy candidate, saddled with the name, establishment money, and a diminished political skill set, forced to strike out against all others to try to survive to a two man race. Kasich and Christie – the Curmudgeons candidates, attempting to hold up the governor as superior manager mantle, damaged with the defeats of Walker, Perry, and Jindal. Cruz and Rubio – the Senators are the Future candidates – potential real electoral talents that legitimately can take on Trump or Clinton, but only after they have fatally destroyed the other, for there can be only one.  And of course, Trump the Demagogue, who stands athwart the entire field, watching joyfully, as the rest pick each other off.

The democrats are under essentially the same schedule, and every bit as unsettled a process.  Classic for this party,  a larger fix is built in to remove surprises for the entrenched powers – almost 25 percent of the delegates are unpledged,  super-delegates designated by the party, allowing considerable manipulation of the outcome to the highest bidder. The presumptive Queen,Hillary Clinton, assumed to proceed in a cake walk in an inordinately weak field of competitors, is being staggered by her profound tendency to be her self. Her inherent unlikability as a retail politician, exposed easily by Obama in 2008, has been  magnified by progressive evidence of her deceitful incompetence in her time in government.  She very likely could be the first nominated candidate to have to face a felony inditement for her willful exposure of state secrets in setting up and using a private unprotected server,and her attempt to destroy evidence. One would assume that to be enough to bury even the most preening candidate, but at the same time, she must fight off a 74 year old Socialist, who appears more energetic and real to the voters than she ever could, forcing her into ever more radical statements that blunt the veneer of her election inevitability.

The artillery is coming fast and furious.  Joe Biden waiting for the Clinton Collapse.  Mayor Bloomberg possibly joining the fray on the idea that America’s Billionaires Know Better, and the real possibility of an election resolved in the House of Representatives.  The National Review Editorial Board declaring the Republican front runner is a liberal democrat. The FBI possibly  forced to detail the obvious; one of our leading Presidential candidates is a felon. Donald Trump determining that whatever he thought yesterday and whatever he said today, doesn’t have to be what he believes tomorrow – and you will learn to love it.

From Iowa and New Hampshire, to South Carolina and Nevada, to the 15 state  Super Tuesday and beyond.  Perhaps by April 1, we will have settled on the two candidates to lead this nation.  Or simply selected out such unpalatable realities that we will see a multiple party  3 or 4 candidate presidential election free for all.  Whatever happens, it will be exciting, unpredictable, uplifting, brash, ludicrous, inclusive, and definitely – American.