The stunning, last-minute cancellation of the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll and its accompanying, hour-long CNN special deprived the political class of the 11th hour marker it was relying on to frame the final days of a campaign that is running unusually close.
“Absolutely shocking,” said Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats.
And it wasn’t just the vanished poll he was talking about. The entire run-up to the caucuses has been almost dumbfoundingly strange.
There was the campaign’s comically large field, the surprising durability of Joe Biden and Sanders and the dizzying fall of several stars (Beto O’Rourke was still on Twitter on Saturday, talking about guns: “Wake the fuck up America!”).
