Opinion: Mike Bloomberg won the Iowa caucuses

The Democratic candidate who gained the most from the unmitigated debacle in Iowa is not Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, though both have claimed victory there. The biggest winner was Mike Bloomberg.

The billionaire former New York mayor entered the race with a novel strategy of skipping the first four states, hoping the results were a discouraging muddle, and using television ads and paid campaign staff to put himself in contention on Super Tuesday. This approach was, and remains, a real long shot. But the morning after the Iowa fiasco, Bloomberg announced he would double his spending on television ads, which had already approached saturation levels. He does not have a reputation for knowingly throwing good money after bad. The impossible now looks merely improbable.