The Iowa Democratic Caucus: So It Goes

The “first in the nation” Iowa Democratic Caucus is dead. Much will be written about it. Or probably won’t. Most Iowa Democrats seem to be signing a sense of relief. The kind of relief that comes when cities are glad they don’t have to host the Olympic Games. I find it bizarre and counter to my beliefs, but I am one person and I have no real skin in the game. I should have seen it coming, of course. But even if I was too enamored of the process, I knew things were in trouble on Caucus Night. The face of the local NBC affiliate newscast, Dan Winters looked annoyed, even angry. It was clear that things weren’t going to be tidy and everyone was going to be in bad before 10:00. I am not sure why Winters looked so physically agitated, but surely him or the producers or whoever could have guessed that they might be there all night. Even if everything went smoothly. (Winters, as good as a local talking head as any I have ever seen, retired in 2022, after 18 years in the business) I could not believe that local news wasn’t prepared for the situation in which there might not be results. Am I naive to believe that people would watch for something other than results? Maybe, but I also know on Caucus Night, there are no shortage of human interest stories to cover My favorite part of Caucus Night is hearing those stories - either via friend’s texts or social media. It was as if the Caucus gave news media lemons and they promptly decided the best course of action was to throw them quickly in the trash. Any politico who was following polls could have made an argument that there were four candidates with a realistic chance of winning. If you didn’t think there would be counts and recounts was clueless. But maybe the Caucus is a relic now. Like a VCR, it surely does the job, but it is no longer relevant and certainly not sexy. The Des Moines Register, a shell of what it was even say 6 years ago, hardly ran arguments for it. Occasionally, stuck on the editorial page you might find something written by Sen Charles Grassley and Republican State Chairman Jeff Kauffman- GOP leaders who got it But they did run a three week front page Sunday feature lamenting the death. (One thing, the current Register does particularly well is big write ups about when a Restaurant closes- seemingly failure is a better subject than encouragement) I understand some Iowans sense of relief, but I still have some sense of shock and disappointment. It was one of the more unique things about the state. I wonder how Augustans feel about their tournament and how many would love to see the Masters taken to a different course so they wouldn’t have to hear about Golf all the time. Caucus History is inescapable. It pops up all the time. A local newspaper feature on the legendary Hoyt Sherman Place mentions the 1988 Democratic debate alongside Louis Armstrong’s 1940 concert and Jazz Pianist Ramsey Lewis’s (first) retirement as highlights. (Trump and Obama are two politicians who visited the venue). A tv news spot about the Hamburg Inn 2 in Iowa City focused not only in its Covid-induced sales struggles but it’s history which is very much linked to the Caucus (most significantly, it was featured in an episode of the West Wing, Reagan, Clinton and Obama were among its many visitors) Non-Iowans rightly question why Iowa should go first. Iowans should be able to easily answer “the Caucus forces politicians to converse with the voter”. Mitt Romney’s “Corporations are people” quite came from having to answer a question quick on his feet. Did it get blown out of proportion? Like Howard Dean’s ‘scream’, yes, I think so. But it shows that the politicians have to be able to answer any question thrown at them. Conversely, that means Iowans could ask any questions. Politicians who didn’t want to talk about climate change or LGBTQ+ rights or whatever, were forced to state their opinion or I suppose, non-answer at the risk of looking wishing washy. Of course, this is mostly a Democratic problem. The Iowa Republicans seem to still have their plans. The Democrats in Iowa hardly fought for it. Yes, the state has gone Red but this seems to be surrender in an area that was quite purplish for most of this young century. Big name Republicans will be coming through and funds will be raised while Democrats will be lucky to get a tenth of the star power. Also, despite the perception of failure, I think the Iowa Democratic Cacuses have been maybe the best guideposts of the Party’s of the last 20 years. Iowa seems to be an easy credit for Obama. For anyone looking close enough, it should have been a prime indicator of Hillary’s weaknesses. I still tend to think the country is somewhere in the middle and is going to elect the more purple-ish and charismatic of options that Iowa tends to support and not either extreme Iowa gave us Pete Buttigieg who at this point seems to be the leading future Democratic nominee not named Biden or Obama by the attention he attracts. The general premise of the Democratic Caucus was for a group to come to consensus on a candidate that may not be everyone’s favorite but would be most agreeable to the group. Which is what 2020 felt like. Democratic candidates ended their campaign to back Biden- seen as the candidate most likely to bring in the largest group. So that’s likely it as Iowa Democrats still hope to patch up some semblance of having a state primary that will matter. Meanwhile Iowa Republicans go full steam ahead