The joy of defeat in the Iowa Caucuses
“The difference between gold and silver is that it will change your life — or it won't,” she told me from a ski camp in the Italian Alps, where she said she learned to make tortellini while taking a break from the world. Cup circuit.
When Diggins won gold in South Korea, NBC announcer almost hyperventilating on air. “Here comes Diggins! Here comes Diggins!” he shouted as she moved to first place just before the finish, followed by “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! – Gold!”
When Diggins won two more medals four years later, the hype was relatively muted.
Like the Olympics, the Iowa caucuses aren't just about winning and losing. It will also matter how close the candidates end up to Trump. Nike may disagree – “Second place is the first loser,” the shoe company said during the 1996 Summer Games – but in Iowa, second place is often the second winner.
If Haley comes in a relatively close second, expect this to be the best night of her political life. DeSantis would bill himself as a modern-day comeback guy with a second-place finish.
(Prepare to go out: The Times' election night forecast will have a needle in the race for second place tonight.)
When the second is really the first
Diggins has heroic second places.
Thirty hours earlier she won a silver medal at the 2022 Olympics in China, she developed a case of food poisoning, which sapped her energy. She said she was prouder of that finish while competing in suboptimal conditions than she was of the gold four years earlier.
Last November, during a race near the Arctic Circle in Finland, she lost a glove and was bleeding profusely from her face and yet finished second in a 20 kilometer race when it was about zero degrees Fahrenheit – a bit warmer than the expected minus 5 in Des Moines tonight.
“There's a really interesting relationship between first and second place, because it's about the way everyone treats you, and also how you feel about it,” she said. “If you allow other people to judge you, you will never be happy because you will never make everyone happy. And I think that's probably truer in politics than anywhere else.”
Then there's the weather: the first topic of conversation for just about everyone here in Des Moines.
Both DeSantis and Haley turned the Iowa weather into a piece of their stump speech. “It won't be pleasant,” DeSantis said of the caucus conditions.
For her Olympic races, Diggins said she wore “as many layers as I thought I could still move in.” The key to success in brutal conditions, she says, is not to let the cold get to her head, even as every other part of her body freezes — lessons that apply to running a presidential campaign.
“It's really just a pain tolerance,” she said. “How much suffering are you willing to endure and are you willing to go there?”
The coldest caucus
How cold is it? The Diocese of Des Moines gave Catholics dispensation to skip yesterday's Sunday Mass. The National Weather Service described conditions as “arctic.”
Tonight it will be warmer than last weekend, but that doesn't say much. According to the National Weather Service, Des Moines could see temperatures as low as 10 degrees below zero, with wind chills as high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Still, Republican presidential campaigns are asking Iowans to travel to more than 1,600 caucus locations across the state tonight to cast their ballots in the first presidential contest of 2024.
“We're going to be out there in the snow,” Nikki Haley said on Sunday, my colleague Jazmine Ulloa reported.
From experience I can say that it is no fun to be outside when it is 5 below zero, and 15 degrees below zero is even worse. Car tires deflate at those temperatures. Gas stations don't help: the air and gas pumps also freeze. It's a risk to be outside.
What that means for caucus turnout is anyone's guess.
As my colleague Jonathan Swan reported, the Trump and DeSantis campaigns had prepared for a record turnout of more than 200,000 caucusgoers, surpassing the previous high of 187,000 in 2016. But now the question remains.
David Kochel, a veteran Iowa Republican strategist, predicted that about 150,000 Iowans would show up Monday, a figure consistent with historical norms but still only about 25 percent of registered Republicans in the state. He cited Trump's lead and the weather as the biggest factors.
In cities and suburbs where Haley's supporters are more likely to be present, the roads are plowed and less snow falls. Trump's supporters in rural Iowa are said to be more motivated, but snow is still blowing across the network of two-lane highways. The DeSantis campaign says its supporters are the most dedicated caucusgoers of all.
All the Iowans we spoke to told reporters they can handle the harsh weather. We will all find out tonight, given their poor record, whether they can finally hold hassle-free caucuses.
Reporter updates
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Donald Trump makes it very clear where his focus is this morning, arguing in a post on Truth Social that Nikki Haley is out of step with the Republican Party, and that she can't win a general election because she can't put his together. MAGA move behind her.
He added what might be the nicest thing he's said about Ron DeSantis in months: that the Florida governor is “at least MAGA-Lite.” — Michael Gold
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Ron DeSantis continues to insist he will stay in the race regardless of how he performs in tonight's caucuses. “We're going to continue with this,” he said in an interview with NBC News. “We are built for the long term.” For months, DeSantis promised to win Iowa, but he and his team have scaled back those expectations as he trails far behind Donald Trump in the polls. —Nicholas Nehamas
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