Trump will probably bounce back from Iowa but – win or lose - ‘Barmy’ Bernie has given Queen Hillary a hiding. Now she has a real fight on her hands

There were many surprises in last night’s Iowa Caucus results.

Front-runner Donald Trump lost, which for a natural-born winner like him - on record as saying ‘nobody remembers the name of who came in second’ – is a big, though not terminal, blow to his presidential hopes.

Tea Party darling Ted Cruz won, proving he’s got a much better game-plan on the ground than many gave him credit, and has clearly sewn up the crucial evangelical base.

Marco Rubio came third but may as well have won given the massive significance of him blowing away all his ‘moderate’ Republican rivals like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie. (Expect a ton of GOP cash flooding to the young Hispanic senator now as the old establishment guard rush to back the only apparently viable alternative to the two untamed right-wing renegades, Trump or Cruz.)

Humbled: Donald Trump may have come second to Ted Cruz in Monday night's Iowa caucuses but Ted Cruz's upset wasn't the biggest of the night

But the real shock came in the Democrat contest.

Let’s remember where we were just a few months ago.

This was supposed to be a simple, virtually unopposed coronation of ‘Queen’ Hillary.

Once Vice-President Joe Biden ruled himself out, her ascension to the Democrat throne appeared to be a formality.

Oh, there was this barmy old guy called Bernie barking in the background, but nobody took him seriously. Least of all the Clintons, who must have viewed him as the perfect internal opponent.

If you’d told Hillary, or her husband Bill, this time last year that she’d struggle to beat a 74-year-old ‘independent socialist’ in the Iowa Caucus, they’d have laughed their heads off.

Well, any laughter’s long since stopped, and they’re taking that old guy called Bernie bloody seriously now.

As should everyone else.

Premature victory speech: Hillary Clinton declared herself the victor of the caucuses, but no official winner has been announced yet, with her and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie 

A worthy opponent: Bernie Sanders smiles and throws his fist up in celebration as he speaks to supporters in Iowa Monday night

Because make no mistake, Bernie Sanders has shaken up U.S. politics in a way that may prove far more enduring than anything even Trump has done with his bombastic, albeit supremely effective, rhetoric.

This is a candidate whose average campaign contribution is $27.

Yet he ends up in a dead heat with one of the most famous, richest and experienced politicians in the history of America?

It should have been impossible.

But Bernie’s pulled it off.

How? Well, first by making the downtrodden and disenfranchised members of American society his sole priority.

He’s demanded a public, free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare system, similar to the National Health Service in the UK.

He wants the minimum wage to be massively hiked.

He wants to transform the prison system, currently so skewed against African-Americans and Latinos.

And he says tuition fees should be scrapped at public colleges and universities.

How would he pay for all this?

By, as he said last night, ‘imposing a tax on Wall Street speculation.’

These bold, radical plans – once deemed political poison in America - are now catching fire, especially with the young.

Of all the remarkable statistics that came out of Iowa, the fact that Sanders drew 84% of the 17-29 age group vote is surely the most astounding.

The guy’s older than my dad for goodness sake!

Clinton’s support, by contrast, came largely from the over-fifties.

Sanders’ second masterstroke is that he’s not Hillary Clinton, one of the most divisive figures in America.

America’s younger generation love Sanders’ style as much as they are repelled by Hillary’s.

Huge crowds of them have turned out across the country to hear him rage against the super-rich and bankers.

‘We do not represent the interests of the billionaire class, or Wall Street, or corporate America,’ he cries ‘We don’t want their money. The American people are saying no to a rigged economy.’

He’s the anti-establishment guy.

‘Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state,’ Sanders said last night. ‘We had no political organisation, we had no money, we had no name recognition, and we were taking on the most powerful political organisation in the United States of America. And tonight, it looks like we’re in a virtual tie. This is a political revolution!’

The crowd roared as loudly as the Clintons’ hearts must have pounded watching it.

‘I’m breathing a sigh of relief,’ said Hillary as she stood on the podium making her own non-victory, victory speech.

I suspect that’s the understatement of the Millennium.

She must be panicking like hell at this unexpected threat from the complete opposite end of the spectrum to the one she faced from Barack Obama in 2009.

Bernie Sanders is the Rocky Balboa of this presidential race.

Nobody gave this political bum a prayer when he took on a legend of the game.

Yet in their first big fight, he matched punch with punch and very nearly won. And by going so close he captivated the nation.

If Sanders can continue his momentum through the next few weeks, and it remains a big ‘if’, then we might well have to consider the unthinkable scenario that we witnessed in the Rocky II sequel: the no-hoper ‘bum’ wins.

Hillary’s big problem is that she’s seen by many Americans as damaged goods, with more baggage than the entire Kardashian clan embarking on a year-long holiday.

The email scandal that’s dogged her campaign is still drip-drip-dripping away like a ticking time-bomb of sulphuric acid waiting to evaporate her White House bid.

The stench of Benghazi, too, haunts her every waking moment.

Even Bill, once considered the greatest electoral asset for any candidate, let alone his own wife, to have on their side, now looks older, more frail and less relevant or dynamic than he did.

Perhaps her biggest problem, though, in comparison to Sanders is money.

He neither has much, nor craves much.

Hillary has a lot, craves a lot more and doesn’t seem to mind where it comes from.

Hence all the furore around the lucrative fees she and Bill charge for speeches, and the persistent allegations of lack of financial transparency and conflict of interest involving the Clinton Foundation.

It all adds up, fairly or otherwise, to one word in many voters’ eyes: ‘dodgy’.

Young people in particular seem just utterly bored and turned off by the Clintons.

Sanders, conversely, even perversely given both his age and the length of his 30-year tenure in Congress, is seen as a breath of fresh air.

His campaign has rewritten every rule of Washington politics.

He’s shown that a perennial outsider can steal the show, galvanise the people, and win votes.

And he’s done it with panache, passion, guts and determination.

He’s also shown frequent flashes of genuine humility and dignity which have marked him out as a bastion of decency in a pit of very personally abusive and toxic partisan Washington acrimony.

In the end, it boils down to trust.

Americans like Bernie Sanders because they see him as honest, real and untainted by the greed and corruption of corporate America.

They dislike Hillary Clinton because they think she’s fake, corrupt and up to her neck in lies and cover-ups with her billionaire Wall Street mates.

She may still win the Democrat nomination.

But one thing’s for sure now: Bernie Sanders is going to give her one helluva fight, with millions of Americans cheering on this rank outsider just as they cheered Rocky Balboa.

I defy anyone to watch his electrifying speech last night, ripping the U.S. establishment to pieces and standing up to be counted for the poor and repressed of America, and not want to start chanting: ‘Go Bernie GO!’