The Joy of Defeat in the Iowa Caucuses

One thing is certain in tonight’s Iowa caucuses: The loser will make a triumphant victory speech.

That’s how it works in early-state presidential politics. It’s the rare contest where coming in second is … a win? The runner-up, whether it’s Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, will claim the Republican mantle of the chief alternative to Donald Trump heading into New Hampshire’s primary.

The dynamic has created some hilarious and slightly mind-bending moments in the annals of presidential politics. Eight years ago, a triumphant Marco Rubio declared: “This is the moment they said would never happen.” He was in third place.

There’s a long history of candidates turning second place into a rhetorical victory. In 1992, Bill Clinton placed second in New Hampshire and declared himself “the comeback kid.” Trump is the exception here. In 2016 when he placed second in Iowa, he claimed fraud and asked for the results to be thrown out.

To learn about the joys of being a runner-up, I called Jessie Diggins, a cross-country skier from Minnesota who knows all about the gap between first and second. She won the first U.S. cross-country skiing gold medal in U.S. history at the 2018 Olympics and then took a silver and a bronze in 2022 — and did it in brutal weather similar to the subzero temperatures that have descended upon Iowa.

“The difference between a gold and silver is it will change your life — or it won’t,” she told me from a ski camp in the Italian Alps, where she said she had learned to make tortellini while taking a break from the World Cup circuit.