Maybe that's true in March Madness but its not true in politics. Hillary Clinton is that #1 seed Ivy League school with a lot of money and solid gold uniforms and their own television network. Sanders is a small conference school no-one heard of that had to win the pig tail to get into that dance and only has one set of jerseys and a couple of walk-on players that just exposed all the flaws of the big establishment school.
And the performance of Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio shouldn't surprise you. The underdog beating the big ugly giant is a tale that goes back to the Old Testament.
I've been keeping up with coverage of the Iowa caucuses and I think the results are obviously most interesting for two candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Their underwhelming performances should be the headline.
We will start with the Democrats considering this is after all, a liberal publication.
No matter how you look at Iowa, Hillary didn't do well. For those of you that "aren't in the know", the fix by the establishment as been in for Clinton since day one. Clinton has enjoyed every single advantage possible in this race. And in a caucus state were backroom deals and intimidation are the norm (anyone who doesn't believe that need only look at the Texas two-step between Hillary and Obama 8 years ago), those inherent Party establishment advantages are even more important.
Hillary has been here before. Eight years ago she was also the coronated candidate, until she got beat by a candidate who was a relative unknown senator that struck a cord with young people and was organized.
Hillary apparently hasn't learned anything, because the same script played out again. Its one thing to make a mistake, its another thing entirely to not learn from your mistakes. Hillary hasn't learned.
Lets get one thing straight before we go on. Hillary has every advantage. She's the establishment candidate. She has all the Super PAC money. She supported financially by all the people we progressive liberal Democrats hate. By all accounts, a candidate that is the spouse of the most popular Democrat since JFK, who has been a senator and is the sitting Secretary of State, who has campaigned twice for her husband in Iowa and once for herself previously, who has the control of the Democratic Party's national machine, should've won by two touchdowns.
Especially when you're running against older candidate that looks like Doc Brown and very proudly has carried the label "socialist" for years. Bernie wasn't supposed to do well. And yet he has.
He has the most about of individual donors of any candidate...ever.
The average donation to his campaign is $27.
And now based on how well he did in Iowa, you know what is going to happen? Those people are going to go and donate to his campaign again. Bernie is going to raise a ton of money.
The fact that Hillary didn't win this campaign running away spells trouble. No matter how you Hillary zombies look at it, her performance was not good. Especially when she has another advantage in the closing days before the caucus...her much more popular husband Bill. President Clinton on the campaign trail with her means she can essentially be in two places in one time. Hell, next to Jackie Kennedy, has their been a more popular spouse of a candidate?
And she still ended up in a statistical tie with an older Jewish guy who always looks disheveled.
Yet again Hillary's organization was an epic failure!
But Hillary's performance is more significant for the signal it sends about the establishment and voters. I'll get to that at the end.
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The Red Side
Trump, unlike Sanders, looked terrible in his second-place performance. Unfortunately for we Democrats, I'm afraid we are looking at the end of the Trump circus, which is a shame because I was hoping he'd stick around to make the GOP look stupid for a little longer.
The Republican Party's establishment isn't the establishment by accident. They have lost some smaller but significant races around the country over the last few years, but they keep their eyes on the prize and the GOP nominee always ends up being an establishment Republican.
And guess what, that isn't going to change.
Trump was a paper tiger. The establishment has coalesced around Marco Rubio.
And it showed.
Cruz is not darling of establishment Republicans. In fact, the only reason he won is because the establishment was more worried about Trump right now than Cruz. Rubio is going to get a big shot in the arm of money, which is how the establishment maintains law and order, and then they will be free to start aiming their artillery at Cruz.
This is where the also-rans will start to fall by the wayside. Bush and Christie, probably as much so as Trump, really lost a lot last night. Because they were hoping to pick up that establishment support so that they can try to stay on the field into the later innings.
The real question that we will all start asking is going to be about Trump's ego. How long will his ego keep him in the race? He's a business man and at some point he is going to realize that is campaign was a bad real estate investment and he will cut his losses.
Or he will sell that land cheap and go put up a big hotel across the street (run as a third party candidate), which is REALLY going to piss of the Republican establishment.
So both sides of the presidential campaigns have tapped into an anti-establishment message. Both parties have a race between the establishment and anti establishment crowds.
But here is where they differed last night, which brings me back to Hillary. Last night, while Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, Rubio won the support of the establishment and that is key for him. Republican establishment is more disciplined than their liberal counterparts. And the establishment support is what is propelling Rubio forward going into New Hampshire.
On the Democratic side, last night was a revolution against the establishment who pulled out all the stops in a desperate effort to maintain control only to essentially end up in a tie.