So, what, really, is the message out of Iowa?
Yawn.
Excuse me, that was me, not the message.
It’s late, after all. Actually, very early now.
So let’s see, message, message . . .
Millions of words have been and will be wasted on that topic, but for my money, it boils down to this:
Not much that matters here, New Hampshire, so decide for yourselves — as you were no doubt going to do anyway.
Think of it. As an alternative to Republican front-runner Donald Trump, a man savvy Republicans see as a general election Titanic, those cagey conservative caucus-goers boosted to victory Ted Cruz, a right-wing gasbag who would be a veritable Hindenburg.
In victory, Cruz seemed intent on reprising his famously phony and feckless 2013 filibuster, maundering on at such teeth-aching length that even Fox News finally cut away. Offering up his usual assortment of tinny tropes, breathy melodrama, and framing artifice, Cruz portrayed himself as the tribune of true and courageous conservatives arrayed against the Washington establishment and Washington cartel and the media and the political insiders and . . .
Yawn.
For his part, Trump actually seemed a little deflated by his second-place finish. How deflated? Why, the poor man could only muster a sentence or two by way of boasting about his poll numbers.
Yawn.
Marco Rubio finished third — and acted as though he’d carried the day. The mysterious “they” who so often act as disdainful naysayers to young idealists everywhere had told him such a showing in Iowa was impossible because he offered too much hope, Rubio said — before racing for the rhetorical refuge of his hysterically overwrought stump speech portraying the 2016 election as a make-or-break moment between national greatness and national decline.
Good news! In Rubio’s mind, the country evidently survives, for the Florida senator proceeded to proffer an upbeat assessment of what historians will say about the progress America will make in the years ahead, apparently under his leadership.
Yawn.
As for the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders contest, by near-dawn Tuesday, Clinton appeared to have eked out a “victory” so tiny it was tabulated as fourth-tenths of a percent of the delegate total — with the prospect it could grow closer when a last laggardly Des Moines precinct reported.
Earlier in the late night, Sanders spun the results as a moral victory, and there’s something to that. Later in the early morning, Clinton declared victory.
But really, so what? Sanders is already ahead in New Hampshire. All that has changed is Clinton’s possible post-New Hampshire talking points.
If the Granite State goes with Sanders, she’ll no doubt claim that she won the first contest, and he the second, which was really mostly a case of New Hampshire voting for the Democratic socialist next door, and now it’s on to Nevada and South Carolina and . . .
Yawn.
So what really, as in definitively, happened in Iowa?
Well, Democrat Martin O’Malley and Republican Mike Huckabee, two candidates who were going nowhere fast, arrived at that dreary destination and stepped off the campaign train.
We owe them our thanks. Not for what they brought to the campaign, mind you, but for giving us some concrete, indisputable, unarguable news out of Iowa.
The campaign is in your court, New Hampshire.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.