Welcome, everybody, to a Saturday night special edition of the Muckraig podcast.

I am your host, Jared Yates Sexton.

My co-host, Nick Houselman, could not be with us tonight as I am burning the midnight oil on this,

the Saturday before the Iowa caucuses.

For those unfamiliar with the action on the ground in Iowa,

the Saturday night before is a really anxious time.

And this is, I think for a lot of people, they spend so much time in Iowa on these campaigns

and working for their candidates and organizing and knocking on doors and going to rallies and convincing themselves of the

possibility that their chosen candidate could become president or perhaps their careers are going

to lead them to the White House or, you know, the halls of power.

This is one of the nights where it becomes

increasingly obvious that the day of judgment is nigh. This is a moment for a lot of hand-wringing.

This is a moment for a lot of entertaining of the more exciting,

fulfilling parts of working on a campaign. Right now across Iowa, there are a lot of true

believers who are readying themselves for the possibility that after Monday night, their candidate might be

the frontrunner in an election to become the next president of the United States of America.

And there are a lot of people who their anxieties tonight are getting the better of them.

There is a lot of growing hope. And on the flip side of that,

there's a lot of second guessing being done right now. And those are the messages. And I expected

it to happen. It's like clockwork every four years, the way that this works and repeats itself.

So I expected that to happen.

I was not disappointed.

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