Everything you need to know about mainstream media reporting in one NY Times sentence about Iowa

And what to expect now that the caravan has moved on from that state

The New York Times opened its report on the outcome of the Iowa caucuses this way:

Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses in a landslide Monday, a crucial first step in his bid to claim the Republican nomination in a third consecutive election as voters looked past his mounting legal jeopardy and embraced his vision of vengeful disruption.

(Emphasis added)

Not only is this editorializing in a news story, it’s editorializing without proof. Yes, Trump has spoken about retribution. However, as he so often does, he’s talked out of both sides of his mouth about this matter.

Indeed, during the final stages of the Iowa campaign, Trump said that as president there wouldn’t be retribution because he’ll be too busy making America great again. He added, however, that many people think retribution would be justified, given the way he’s been treated.

Thus, there are two reasons to dispute the Times’ claim that Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers embraced Trump’s vision of vengeful disruption. First, these Iowans might not have believed that this is Trump’s vision; they might have believed he’ll forego retribution as president because he’ll be too busy.

Second, they might have thought that Trump will exact revenge and not have liked the idea, but still have voted for Trump because they like the policies of his administration (which, by the way, were not particularly vengeful). This would not amount to an embrace of “vengeful disruption.”

What can’t be disputed is that the caucus-goers favored Trump by a huge margin. In addition, it’s difficult, after Iowa, to dispute that Trump will be the GOP’s nominee.

Certainly, Trump has no doubt about this. In his victory statement, he eschewed his usual attacks on Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. In fact, he congratulated both of them.

Instead of attacking his GOP rivals, Trump devoted his speech to attacking Joe Biden. He’s now convinced that only Biden stands between him and a second term as president.

And with good reason. It’s clear that DeSantis (whom I support and for whom I once held high hopes) is no longer an obstacle. Staking everything on Iowa, he camped out there, built a huge organization, and got the endorsement of the popular Republican governor and the state’s most prominent evangelical leader. Yet he received only 21 percent of the vote.

Where else will conditions be as favorable to DeSantis as they were in Iowa? Nowhere, I say. Not even in his home state where DeSantis trails Trump by around 40 points in the (admittedly sparse) polling.

As for Haley, she’s on life support. Not because she finished in third place, a couple of points behind DeSantis. The race for second place never mattered much. It was hyped by the media to generate interest and by the two candidates to give them an attainable goal.

And not because Haley will lose New Hampshire. With independents eligible to vote there, she might win that primary.

The reason why Haley is on life support is because it’s so difficult to see her winning after New Hampshire. One might think her best shot is in her home state — South Carolina. But there, she trails Trump by around 30 points, according to the polls. Trump exceeds 50 percent support in most polls of that primary, and that’s without the Ramaswamy vote and the share of the DeSantis vote Trump will capture if the Florida governor drops out or becomes obviously irrelevant before that primary.

So Trump is right. The race for president will almost certainly come down to Trump and Biden, absent a health crisis for one or both of these candidates.

Right now, the polls give Trump a slight edge in that race. And it’s worth adding that Trump consistently has out-performed his poll numbers in races against Democrats.

Even so, I don’t put much weight in current polling of a Trump-Biden race. By the time of the general election, there’s a good chance Trump will have been convicted of at least one felony and probably more than one. It’s also possible that the economy will have improved in ways that voters feel.

If Trump is convicted by a D.C. jury, maybe the voters in swing states who’ll likely decide the election will write that trial off (as well they might). If the conviction is by a jury in Florida (which Trump carried twice against Democrats) maybe they still will write it off, even though the case against Trump in that prosecution is strong.

But maybe they won’t write off whatever convictions come down. And maybe they won’t write off the drip-drip-drip of evidence against Trump in multiple trials.

Or maybe there won’t be multiple trials. Maybe Trump will succeed in his quest to prevent any trials from taking place, or at least finishing, before Election Day, other than that silly one in New York state court regarding payments to Stormy Daniels,

We just don’t know about any of this — at least I don’t. It’s all unprecedented and up-in-the-air.

It’s clear, however, that, in overwhelming numbers, Republican voters are willing to take a chance on things breaking in favor of a deeply hated and heavily indicted standard bearer, notwithstanding the enormous damage Republican voters correctly believe a second Biden term would inflict on America.