[Note: I began writing this post Monday night while the Iowa caucuses were still going on, and long before the debacle of the delayed count came into full flower. The “dumb” and “dumber” sections below do not refer to the disorganization of the caucus administrators; rather they refer to things more basic. First, demographics, and secondly, timing. Both argue against kicking off a primary season to nominate a Democratic candidate for President in the Iowa cacophonies.]
Dumb: the irrelevance of the Iowa caucuses
The long delay in announcing the Democratic results of the Iowa caucuses Monday night gave pundits on MSNBC and CNN a lengthy opportunity to discuss the inanity of having the Iowa caucuses be the first and highly celebrated step in the Presidential primary process.
The result was music to my ears. On MSNBC, Claire McCaskill, Michael Steele, and Chris Matthews all sang variations on three themes: (1) the caucuses are not really an exercise in democracy but an exercise in local politics, although writ large by the national media; (2) participation in the caucuses represents only 15% of all Iowa voters; (3) the racial breakdown of Iowa: 85.3% white, non-Hispanic and non-Latino; 6.2% Hispanic or Latino; 4.0% African American; 2.4% Asian; 2.1% other minority groups.
This racial demographic is particularly galling when Democrats like to claim that their ranks “look like America.”
Iowa does not look like America, at least not the 2020 version.
The previous two paragraphs describe why the Iowa caucuses are dumb, as a way of vetting a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. They are fun for many Iowans, and for those newspersons who get juiced by having fluid access to crowds of voters. However, it is a joke for telling us who is best qualified to lead a nation that is 13% African-American, 16% of Hispanic or Latino descent, 5% Asian-American, and 61% white non-Latino and non-Hispanic (the remaining 5% is split among several groups).
I tuned in briefly to CNN to hear Terry McAuliffe and Van Jones voice more or less the same reservations as Chris Matthews & Co. It is a tribute to Van Jones that he spoke of the matter with a tone of dignified neutrality. I have to speculate that if I were African-American, I would be seething inwardly every four years when the Iowa caucuses roll around and the national media treat the event as a parade of democracy in action.
Dumber still: Iowa “momentum” and the “slingshot” effect
George McGovern parleyed his second place in the 1972 Iowa caucuses into a successful run for the Democratic Presidential nomination . . . and a catastrophic loss for the Presidency in an electoral landslide. You’d think that might have suggested to Democrats that the momentum from Iowa and a “slingshot” into the New Hampshire primary were not the best indicators for a general election triumph. But ever since McGovern, good results in Iowa have been considered essential to the nomination.
Compounding the joke of the Iowa slingshot is the irony of selecting the slingshot’s target, New Hampshire, as the next test for general election success. New Hampshire is even whiter than Iowa! Non-Hispanic, non-Latino whites compose 93% of New Hampshire’s population.
What’s the matter with this picture? Let me suggest an analogy from the world of sport. Only four times in its 110-year history has the Tour de France been won by someone who led from beginning to end—i.e., took “the yellow jersey” on the first day and held it all the way through 21 stages in three weeks. That’s largely because of the structure of the race: early stages and the last few stages emphasize speed, but the overall outcome is most often decided in the mountains—the Alps and Pyrenees—where the stages fall in the second and third weeks, and the pace is slow and agonizing. The mountains that start halfway into the race are where early leaders run into trouble, and often such big trouble they fall out of contention altogether. (A bit of an oversimplification, but close enough for my analogy.) This is good for cycling fans, but . . . .
To launch the Presidential primary series in states that are not representative of the nation as a whole, and give primacy to an early lead, is asking for trouble among Democrats. Analogously, if you’re betting on the overall win in the Tour de France, be very cautious about putting your money on the leader at Stage 2. Iowa and New Hampshire might be good tests for Republicans, but not for Democrats, 25% of whose primary voters are African-American (this figure is not exact and varies from election to election, but is considered a good approximation by Chris Matthews).
Thank you, Iowa caucuses, for bungling the vote count
Going forward, we should probably be grateful to the Iowa caucus organizers for their demonstration of ineptitude—it may clinch the case for demoting Iowa in the nomination process. HOW that can be done I haven’t a clue, but for sure some competent Democrats have been thinking about this ever since the McGovern electoral disaster.
Closing note: some poll just found Trump’s approval rating at 49%!?! This illustrates that most Americans are more interested in the Superbowl than in the rule of law. Time to start formulating the Blue Secession strategy.