>> thank you jake ward. >> that is the show for today. i'm ali velshi, thank you for joining us. the news continues on al jazeera america >> the iowa caucuses are a bit like a kindergarten soccer tournament, everybody is a winner. each party's process resulted in surprises and a relaunch heading to the new hampshire primary. but last night's big winners are undoubtedly ted cruz, and bernie sanders two guys talking to and about very different americas. bernie, ted, and the road ahead. it's the "inside story."

welcome to "inside story." i'm ray suarez. donald trump had a theory about a different way to win iowa. a campaign not obsessed with hitting all of the counties. and not concerned with a long presence on tv and radio. trump relied heavily on free media, and didn't start to spend much until close to caucus night. he even skipped the last debate in the race. ted cruz used something closer to a play book drawn from recent history. mike huckabee and rick santorum who worked hard, became fixtures on christian talk radio, and

spent a lot of time in iowa. in a deeply fractured field, 28% was good enough to win, and maybe good enough to slow down a trump train the polls said could be unstoppable. >> and while americans will continue to suffer, under a president who has set an agenda that is causing millions to hurt across this country, i want to remind you of the promise of scripture. weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. [ cheers and applause ] >> reporter: marco rubio was also testing a different model for running in the entire primary season. he conservatived his cash, didn't spend as much time in iowa, then made a heavy commitment in the closing weeks. he came in third, but in the perverse math of iowa, third place for rubio is a win, especially since he finished way

ahead of jeb bush, john kasich, and chris christie. >> they told me we have no chance, because my hair wasn't [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> they told me i needed to wait my turn. [ cheers ] >> i thank you, because tonight we have taken the first step, but an important step towards winning this election. >> and donald trump the guy who spent much of 2015 making fun of the poll showings of rivals like rand paul and jeb bush ran into his first actual balloting last night. his followers were more likely to have a high school diploma or less, and more likely to have not even voted in previous elections. but they are passionately committed to their candidate,

and less likely to actually show up. trump underperformed, yet he too embraced iowa math. he did not use one of his go-to adjectives, loser. >> we will go on to get the republican nomination, and we will go on to easily beat hilary or bernie, or whoever the hell they throw up there. >> the road ahead this time on the program we'll begin with the victim of ted cruz and later on take a closer look at the democratic result. joining me now rick pearlsteen, caramel martin, bruce haines, a founding partner of purple strategies, and doug thornel. bruce haines did we see the first outlines of a shakeout field?

>> i think we did. you have already seen mike huckabee last night dropping out of the race, and i think now we have set the agenda going into new hampshire. trump has his lane. he has the populous wing buttoned up. ted cruz has the evangelical wing, and now we have a race where marco rubio has assumed the lead in the establishment wing of the republican party. and now we'll watch and see if the others can train their guns to move past him. right now it looks like rubio is the third person. >> do you buy, doug this idea of defining victory however it suits you coming out of the early primaries? [ laughter ] >> and this is not anything new for 2016. >> yep. people forget that bill clinton didn't win the new hampshire

primary in '92, he came in second, but he exceeded expectations so he ladies and gentlemened himself the come-back kid. and if you listened to marco rubio you would have thought he won. you give kids participation trophies, but for politics it is all about winning. if it's not new hampshire, then they have nevada and south carolina, and those are two places that -- i think nevada is a place where i'm going to be looking for marco rubio to win. south carolina maybe a little bit tougher territory. but every politician tries to leave these contests with momentum, and they try to make sure that they establish expectations that they can exceed, and that's why i think donald trump is in a little bit of trouble heading into new hampshire, and maybe even bernie sanders, because bernie is up by '20, 25 points, he is not going to win by that much. and trump is touting polls, and

i don't think he will win by that much either. underperformed. >> rick is it still a party in search for a definition? >> oh, very much so. i mean the fact that you have a figure like ted cruz who is despised by all of his colleagues on capitol hill, and a figure like donald trump who is despised by all of the leaders of the conservative movement, and then you have this guy on the outside wing, rubio, whose barely out of short pants, it's very hard to see how they come together with anything like the kind of unity that we saw even in the case of a figure like mitt romney who was, you know, supposedly despised by conservatives, but once he won the nomination, they got together and put their shoulders

to the wheel, and had a fairly unified convention. this has been an extraordinary presidential election, ever since the beginning, and i have been saying since the beginning, that all of the old cliches that we have been using to understand presidential elections have to be revised. >> caramel martin we'll hear from you right after the break. we'll continue our look at the cruz victory in iowa, and the theories that are being worked on as we head to nevada, south carolina, new hampshire, super-tuesday, the road ahead. stay with us. it's "inside story."

you are watching "inside story." i'm ray suarez. the road ahead, we're dissexting the victories and losses in real numbers, and the translations into cam panees. later in the program we're turn

our focus to the tight finish in the democratic race. doug, caramel, bruce, and rick are still with me. and caramel, if the republican field does not -- does not narrow quickly, does that present a challenge to democrats who start -- have to game who they are running against? >> well, i think it could be an opportunity. i think it's a bad thing for the republican field that -- that they don't have someone that their side can rally behind. so i think there are pluses and minuses for democrats. i hear what you are saying that having a primary opponent to focus on is an upside for democrats, but it's a bad thing for republicans that they are spinning all of this time attacking each other, and no one is gaining momentum. one other thing that i would say to respectfully disagree, i do think that rubio came out as a winner.

i think that's the surprise of the night, right? the fact that he is third and so close to trump, and trump, i think did come out as a loser, because going into last night, there was this expectation that trump could win and win by a wide margin. i think cruz winning by a significant margin was a really good thing for him, but the person coming out of iowa with momentum is rubio. whereas on the republican side there was less news there. we knew it was going to be an extremely close race. i think secretary clinton comes out with some momentum from winning. the other thing is iowa we need to keep in mind is iowa is not really representative of the country, so what last night tells us about the race moving forward, i think is limited, because i think as you get to more diverse states you could see very different results.

>> while it is undoubtedly true that iowa is not representtive of the rest of the country, if you add up the votes of cruz, rubio, and carson, two cuban americans and a black guy won a majority of republican votes in iowa tonight. bruce you are nodding. are we missing a story here? >> no, i think it's a terrific story. it's not always just positions on issues, but it's a lot like barack obama, what aspiration do i see for myself in the campaign of another. look at marco rubio he is a great campaigner. he has the best set of candidate skills in the republican field. having those kinds of candidates in our field i think is a real strength as we move forward, particularly against these older

whiter candidates like bernie sanders, and hillary clinton. >> rick, i'm sorry, i cut you off. >> yeah, ron brownsteen has been doing very impressive empirical working looking at what the coalition is. iowa does look like the republican party. the republican electorate is older. it is whiter. occupationally it resembles the occupations of the '80s. they are like americas 25 years ago. and when you have a candidate like donald trump beginning his candidacy, literally proposing one of the most massive ethnic cleansing in the history of man kind this really is an appeal to an america that no longer is, and yeah, you can have a young guy from cuba, and you can have a handsome speaker who is a cuban american, but people came from cuba to america because

there were exiled, and that's another thing donald trump has done. he has said we should welcome exiles and then did a 180-degrees flip and joined the rest of the field in basically talking about the retchet of the family. >> the first results are in. we'll turn to the democrats in a moment. state with us. it's "inside story." ♪ >> at 9:30 - "america tonight" - top investigative reporting, uncovering new perspectives. >> everything that's happening here is illegal. >> then at 10:00 - it's "reports from around the world". >> let's take a closer look. >> antonio mora gives you a global view. >> this is a human rights crisis. >> and at 11:00 - "news wrap-up". clear... concise... complete.

as efforts are made to salvage syrian i can't talks in geneva, killings continue in aleppo-- syria talks. the world news from al jazeera. also ahead, war of words, japan warns north korea over a planned space rocket launch. yemen's historic treasures go up in blames. why some in zambia worry