NBC's Chuck Todd: Joe Biden 'may have dodged a bullet' in Iowa

Did former Vice President Joe Biden just narrowly avoid disaster in Iowa?

NBC News' Chuck Todd thinks so, speculating on Tuesday morning that last night's catastrophic Iowa caucuses, results from which have still yet to be reported amid technical glitches, may have helped Biden more than anyone else.

"All indications are that Joe Biden was sitting somewhere in the third or fourth range with the first alignment ... it's very possible that once they do the delegate reallocation, he was going to be in fourth," Todd observed, adding "our entrance polls indicate that there was a real possibility of that."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Given that Biden was able to head out of Iowa and onto New Hampshire without embarrassingly coming in fourth place Monday night, Todd observed, "Joe Biden may have dodged a bullet." On the other hand, Todd argued former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg may have been hurt the most by the delays, as it "appears that he may have been the one that could have won on the second realignment."

Other pundits made similar observations about Biden, with Politico also declaring him "the biggest 'winner,'" noting the "questions surrounding the vote-counting served to obscure a potentially poor performance" by him. As the campaigns quickly moved on to New Hampshire, Politico observes Biden, in particular, "couldn't get out of Iowa fast enough." Brendan Morrow