DES MOINES — The diagnosis can appear unanimous.
Bipartisanship? “Broken,” former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has said.
The criminal justice system? “Broken,” Senator Bernie Sanders ruled last year.
The grand American bargain? “I know what’s broken,” Senator Elizabeth Warren has promised, “and I know how to fix it.”
But what if it’s all broken? And no one knows how to do anything?
In a political era that can zag instantly from madcap to grave, somber introspection to sure-why-not nihilism, the Iowa caucus fiasco appears to have landed with uncommon force, at once deflating volunteers and voters whose earnest participation in democracy had by Tuesday hurtled quickly into tragicomedy and reviving for some anxious Democrats a persistent pang that this moment can feel beyond repair.
This week, President Trump is expected to win a Senate acquittal on charges that at least one Republican lawmaker has essentially conceded were proved. His approval ratings have never been higher.
On Tuesday, he was scheduled to deliver a State of the Union address that, if history is instructive, will include a series of exaggerations and outright falsehoods for which he will pay virtually no political price.
“It’s hard to look at Washington or look at Iowa and think that our national politics is working,” said Amanda Litman, the executive director of Run for Something, a group that encourages Democrats to seek local office. “If all they absorb is chaos, that further disillusions people.”
At its best, Iowa has always required a certain suspension of cynicism — a belief that, against much anecdotal evidence to the contrary, the republic might just be sustained by a series of semi-chaotic mini-elections in high school gymnasiums. That the system’s potential demise came, at least in part, at the hands of technological confusion registered on Tuesday as a particularly cruel turn for a state that has long prized a kind of analog, person-to-person campaigning.
The result, before any actual results, was a muddle of campaign claims and counterclaims about momentum that may or may not exist, with candidates swaggering about their performance before any full data set existed to disprove it and their supporters trading conspiracy theories about the cause of the reporting delay.
“One candidate is calling the results into question because he apparently didn’t do well,” said Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor and current low-polling presidential hopeful. “Another is declaring victory without any votes being confirmed. The way to beat Donald Trump isn’t to act like Donald Trump. Our party and our country deserve better.”
The logistical anarchy of Monday evening has already accelerated calls to strip Iowa of its privileged status as the first stop for prospective presidents. The state’s top Republicans, including Gov. Kim Reynolds, issued a statement on Tuesday defending the state’s nominating perch, and Mr. Trump said he would protect the tradition as long as he is president.
But as the state’s caucus-counters and national Democratic leaders slogged through a bleary, clarity-free Tuesday morning, the most pervasive emotion may have been defeatism. The angst multiplied for progressives with news that Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, plans to escalate an already ubiquitous advertising campaign for his presidential bid.
Some moderates immediately argued that the messiness of Iowa has only validated Mr. Bloomberg’s bet on bypassing the early states to focus on contests in March and beyond. And Republicans suggested that the mishap should disqualify the rival party from executive governance altogether.
“Dems right now can’t even stand in a gymnasium and count how many people move under each sign,” Senator Ted Cruz, the 2016 winner of the state’s Republican caucuses, tweeted on Tuesday. “These are the people who want to be put in charge of our health care & everything else in our lives?”
Straining for analogies, political minds on Tuesday invoked an episode from Mr. Cruz’s days as a young lawyer on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign: the Florida recount and its attendant mayhem.
Was the “coding issue” bedeviling Iowa Democrats the new “hanging chad”? Could the Supreme Court be summoned to sort out the holdup?
Some veterans of the Florida affair wondered if the comparison might be unfair. To Florida.
“What’s happening out there makes the recount look quite orderly and structured,” said Mac Stipanovich, a longtime strategist and lobbyist who played a pivotal role in 2000 advising Katherine Harris, Florida’s Republican secretary of state at the time.
Mr. Stipanovich said he was reminded of a scene from the movie “Patton” in which a soldier on the floor who said he was “trying” to get some sleep was complimented for at least knowing what he was trying to do.
“There ain’t even a soldier asleep on the floor in Iowa,” Mr. Stipanovich said.
Others have been more charitable. Projecting that he would leave Iowa “victorious” as the results remained unresolved, Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., applauded residents for their apparent foresight.
“Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality,” he declared.
Because Iowans, Mr. Buttigieg said, a bit hopefully, had turned back “the broken politics that got us here.”