Don’t worry about the coin toss thing. Bernie Sanders did what he needed to do.
If Bernie Sanders could have won a majority of Iowa delegates outright, that would have been a miracle and a wonder and a glorious thing. But that wasn’t the point of Iowa.
Iowa is only the beginning.
Iowa is where Sanders needed to show that he was a serious candidate, that he wasn’t just Bill Bradley to Hillary Clinton’s Al Gore. That he was playing in the same league. He had to rise above his “ceiling” of 30 to 35 percent support, in order to show voters in other states that a vote for him wasn’t a throwaway. That was Sanders’ victory condition.
Sanders exceeded that victory condition. In Iowa, he showed not only that he’s in Hillary Clinton’s league but that he’s Hillary Clinton’s equal.
Sanders surely knows that. That’s why he had such a big grin on his face Monday night. At that moment, he wasn’t working himself into a lather about coin tosses, or even about the rumors that Clinton’s team had allegedly been playing fast and loose with caucus voter counts in Polk County. None of it mattered. None of it matters now, even.
This is what matters: Sanders battled Clinton—the household-name candidate with the full weight of the D.C. Democratic establishment behind her, the media behind her, Wall Street behind her, her still-popular ex-president husband behind her, the full emotional weight of the history of women’s rights in America behind her, every institutional advantage—to a photo finish.
No, it wasn’t a numerical victory, as Clinton’s supporters are fervidly reminding us (one, in my Facebook feed today, pointed to her delegate lead of “385 to 29”—I'm not kidding), but only the most determined anti-Sanders partisan could deny that it was a success. And, look, you know that if that one odd delegate had gone to Sanders rather than to Clinton, the Clinton camp would be hyping up their candidate’s 28–23 lead. Spinners gonna spin.
So don’t sweat it. The point is, this is a real competition. A candidate who’s neck-and-neck with his rival can’t be ignored.
Iowa’s results mean that more people than ever will be talking about Bernie Sanders. And as we’ve seen, the more people talk about Sanders, the better Sanders does.
Be joyous. Look forward. This week was good, and the best is yet to come.