The big winner last night on the Democrat side of the Iowa caucuses was Karl Marx and the ideology of socialism.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders effectively tied establishment Democrat Hillary Clinton, scoring 695 delegates compared to Clinton’s 700.

While Republicans are breaking down what went right and what went wrong with the campaigns of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, the real focus should be on how frumpy, anti-charismatic Bernie Sanders got as many votes as the establishment Democrat, simply by preaching outright socialism.

The danger goes beyond partisanship. Republicans, independents, moderate Democrats and anyone who cares about the future of our country needs to wake up to the significance of what happened in Iowa.

When Hillary Clinton got trounced by Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries, she could, at least, chalk it up to the fact that Senator Obama represented something young and different. Not so Monday night in Iowa.

The support for Bernie Sanders is based on his socialist ideology, not his sparkling personality or good looks. Cranky, white and old, Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist and tied Hillary Clinton and her well-funded, well-oiled political machine by preaching explicitly socialist policies.

Sander’s success wasn’t a case of “New York values” or West Coast kooks. Sanders scored big in Iowa, the heartland of America.

The only reason that Hillary Clinton didn’t out and out lose is that Iowa skews older, and that she won six coin tosses. As Jessica Taylor wrote:

The Vermont senator just couldn’t match the strength of the youth vote that Obama marshaled in 2008. Just 18 percent of the vote came from 17- to 29-year-olds — down from a 22 percent share eight years ago. Among those, Sanders dominated, winning 84 percent to Clinton’s 14 percent.

The good news for Clinton was that 60 percent of caucus-goers were over the age of 45 — and she carried them easily. Among voters 65 and older, Clinton had a more than 2-to-1 advantage.­­

The New Left has spent the past 50 years entrenching themselves in academia and culture. Their plans for a glorious plenty revolution in the 1960s didn’t work out, but radicals like the Weather Underground‘s Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn moved above ground and into the ivory tower.

America has had two generations of this academic approach to promoting socialism via multiculturalism and political correctness. This is why the Black Lives Matter inspired student revolts that happened this past autumn at college campuses around the country were spurned on by tenured professors and administrators.

The universities have also had two generations of teaching the media makers, including journalism school graduates with a soft spot in their heart for socialism.

All of this set the table for Bernie Sanders. All Bernie had to do was explicitly call for the all-powerful state that college professors, the mainstream media and Che Guevara T-Shirt wearing hipsters have been praying for.

Meanwhile, Republicans have formed a circular firing squad that focused on sideshow issues like Canadian dual citizenship or fake outrage at supposedly sexism, ignoring the real threat:

A full-on socialist United States in the next four years is looming.

Not just the heavily central-planning based mixed economy that’s been stumbling its way to the left for decades, but a proudly wealth-hating, capitalism-destroying people’s state with a suicidal foreign policy to go along with it.

There’s apparently no public relations downside to calling yourself a socialist.

Have no doubt: Bernie Sanders’s success is not going unnoticed by the younger generation of hipper, much more charismatic socialists like Van Jones. Jones has had to downplay his socialist background for years trying to play the establishment insider role but looking at the numbers that Bernie is racking up is probably going to make him think twice.

It’s time for every Republican candidate to start focusing on the real issue, and start explaining to Americans why the tyranny of socialism and sharia are bad. That’s what it’s come down to: this needs to be explained to counteract the propaganda.

Here’s my appearance this morning on Breitbart News Daily:

Follow Breitbart News lead investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.