I was right! Sort of.

Iowa did their horrible caucus thing today, how horrible you ask? Well here is a sort of concise description of how a caucus works in Iowa, both parties do it differently and it's hella confusing and weird, and also kind of a charming remnant of true participatory democracy. Here is a bit more of an in depth description of the rules and history

Iowa is not a representative state, being overwhelmingly white for one thing, and in recent elections has not been a great predictor of the presidency, or even the nomination, which is why we didn't have President Santorum or Huckabee in the last two elections, thank whatever powers you believe helped us avoid that, so many are saying it doesn't matter much what happened this year, I suspect they are wrong, enough of this, let's talk results.

Donald Trump ended up pretty soundly beaten by Ted Cruz(roughly three percent of the vote, and one to two delegates), and only narrowly avoided getting knocked into third place by Marco Rubio

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton had a virtual tie(Hillary +0.8%), with a slight edge to Hillary via literally a couple coin tosses and some superdelegates.

Both insurgent candidates lost, but I believe it means entirely different things for each campaign.


TRUMP

You may recall I thought Trump skipping the debate was a mistake, and that without the major exposure of a debate performance and with the stigma of wussing out, he wouldn't have the attention he needs to win. I was correct in this, but also he ran into a common problem with grass roots campaigners that don't organize well, his supporters simply didn't show up, his ground game in Iowa was relatively weak in getting out the vote, and he had relatively few precinct captains to berate attendees into voting for him.

Trump's campaign so far has defied conventional wisdom in that he has been astonishingly stable as a leader in the polls, but many pundits and pollsters have suspected that his base wouldn't be motivated to go out and actually vote for him, and although they got tons of shit over the last eight months of this ordeal, it appears that they were actually pretty correct. However if conventional wisdom is to be believed, losing Iowa shouldn't be a death knell for the campaign, and he can easily make up the ground in future states.

Why conventional wisdom is wrong 

Trump has run a campaign predicated on the idea that he can't lose, and that anything other than first pace counts as a loss, his fans are rabid believers in this idea, and a loss of any kind that can be spun as significant will not sit well with his base, at all. As recently as this morning his campaign manager was saying that they would win, and that a second place finish would basically be a loss, his fans absolutely believe that and my guess is unless he can somehow change the basic narrative of his campaign, he will begin to hemorrhage support in the coming weeks

This is acceptable to me, Ted Cruz is possibly the worst choice imaginable as a presidential candidate, and Marco Rubio has tons of vulnerabilities that can be hit if he begins outperforming the two frontrunners, either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton match up well against them.

I mention Rubio even though he placed third because honestly, no one saw it coming, and a surge like that can change a narrative pretty quickly, it is much more important than a few delegates for his campaign, and they realize it, they are treating this as a major win for them an it probably is.

SANDERS

With Bernie the inverse is true, his campaign was not run with a win at all costs philosophy, and expectations for him from his base, while high, were more realistic in that most people weren't expecting him to dramatically outperform Clinton in Iowa, or at least they shouldn't have, a virtual tie, even if it is a slight loss in delegates, means that he has proven to the country that he is a serious campaigner.
Additionally, Sanders has been shut out of a lot of national coverage during this campaign, his support comes from the grassroots and people learn about him mostly through social media and word of mouth, his name recognition is still comparatively low, while Clinton's approaches one hundred percent, he has room to grow.

Basically Trump had to win to prove his campaign philosophy, Sanders only had to show he could win, and I think he did.

How I was wrong

I overestimated the appeal, or lack thereof, of the establishment candidates, JEB! ended up pathetically low in votes and Kasich was even worse, I mean, both did better than Jim Gilmore, who last I checked had twelve votes out of some hundred fifty thousand or so, but so did "Other" so that isn't saying much.
Rubio did surge, being the only establishment candidate to do so, but he s by far the most photogenic and the best at hiding his horrible opinions, so that wasn't too much of a surprise there, it is clear now that at least in Iowa, voters aren't interested in the old white establishment figures, it will be interesting to see how things go with a more diverse state, I think New Hampshire is up next, so we will have a while to wait on that though.

Predictions for that?
Republicans: Cruz 1st, Rubio close second, Trump longer third, tailed by Carson
Democrats: Sanders solid victory

Democracy is sort of fun.