Iowa caucuses may not have mattered much and now they matter less: Opinion

This morning, as the country awoke to the news that the results of the Iowa caucuses are still not in, I started thinking of that old adage, if a tree falls in a forest...

Well, if a caucus is held and no results are reported in timely way, did the caucus really happen?

The bounce effect of the Iowa caucuses and any momentum to gain from a win or surprising finish was already going to be limited for a variety of reasons. First, today, the day after the caucus, the president is set to give his State of the Union address, which many in the media and around the country will quickly turn their attention to. Second, the Senate is voting on President Trump’s impeachment on Wednesday. And third, the ABC News debate in New Hampshire is being held this Friday, so many would turn to that event and how it might affect the primary in that state on Tuesday.

Now add to that no results being reported on the night of the caucuses (and not yet the morning after either) as well as a very large, divided field with no dominant player. The result is the perfect storm of how little value Iowa now signals in the race ahead. Instead, that job will now be left to New Hampshire.

I would say, though, what the entrance polls in Iowa, and polling done in states yet to vote telling us is that there is no candidate who has captured the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party. Each candidate has liabilities and assets, but no one candidate as of yet has managed to put together any sort of majority coalition or been inspirational enough in a way to bring the party together. There is still plenty of time left for this to happen, but it looks like many Democratic voters are still in search of that candidate.

What also seems clear in the aftermath of Iowa is that the likelihood that no one Democratic candidate will have the requisite number of votes to win a first ballot victory at the convention in Milwaukee in July is extremely high. At this point, with no momentum in Iowa, a divided field and no consensus candidate, a first ballot victory may be impossible.

However, if there were winners last night in the short term, they were Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg. In the midst of chaos, a chaos candidate is best positioned, and with the caucus chaos among the Democrats, this can only be at least a temporary benefit to President Trump. And for Bloomberg, who was betting on skipping the first few contests, having no bounce or momentum for any other candidate is good for him.

Finally, for the Democrats, Iowa has often been a pretty good predictor of what is ahead and who is the likely nominee. And since there is no winner as of yet, I’m left wondering if Iowa is a harbinger of things to come, not in the chaos that ensued, but in the possibility that we won’t know who the nominee is all the way up through the convention.

It's going to be a fascinating year ahead.

Matthew Dowd is the chief political analyst for ABC News. Opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of ABC News.