I know, I live in Iowa, so a defense of the caucuses that comes from me is just going to seem like I’m greedy. I should say that before I moved to Iowa for college four years ago, I shared the opinion that the importance of the caucuses is unjustifiable, and that a national primary would be more democratic. Then I experienced the caucuses (in 2004), and I changed my mind.
Over on MyDD, desmoinesdem published the second part of her diary series, “How the Iowa caucuses work.” She echoes concerns that we brought up here about inequalities in the caucus system based on delegate assignment, demonstrating that it takes more caucus-goers to elect a delegate in precincts with higher concentrations of activist Democrats who have free evenings than in precincts with lower concentrations of said activists. (E.g., it took about 70 caucus-goers to elect one delegate in the Poweshiek County, where I caucused in 2004, while in less-Democratic and less-populous Fremont County, it only took 22 caucus-goers to elect one delegate.)
The conclusion of all of this? The caucus system (according to our own Geraldine) “favors the old over the young, the rural over the urban, Western Iowa over Eastern Iowa.”
Why is this wrong? Well, while the caucus system seems to create inequalities on the surface, it can compensate for deeper inequalities. Many have complained, here and elsewhere, that the Iowa Caucuses are unfair to families with young children, workers who have evening shifts, handicapped persons, and, generally, people with busy schedules, because it requires them to take several hours out of a weekday night to argue with their neighbors about politics. Not everyone can do that, and it’s understandable.
That is why precincts are assigned delegates before caucus night: if a disproportionate number of Democrats in X precinct have to work the night shift or have young children (or even if there’s a blizzard), the system currently in place ensures that their precinct will still be important. And precincts are the smallest geographic unit our election officials recognize for general elections, so it is assumed that others in your precinct likely represent similar interests to yours. Think of it as a much more geographically specific version of the electoral college. (Maybe you have your problems with that system, too, but at least this caucus math has a constitutional precedent.)
Aside from that, though, here’s a question nobody has asked: what is the harm in giving Iowa’s downtrodden rural hamlets and agricultural areas a little attention from the rest of the country every four years? It isn’t like John Edwards is going to spend the last week before the caucuses camped out in Keokuk and Grundy Counties just because each caucus-goer is worth more there. At the end of the day, Keokuk and Grundy still represent a tiny fraction of the total delegates needed to win, and putting on events and doing GOTV work is easier and far more efficient in urban areas like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
While disparities in caucus-goer to delegate ratios from county to county may seem a little alarming, the truth is that urban areas are still immensely important, and that a candidate can win the caucuses without putting practically any resources into the less populous half of Iowa’s 99 counties. A campaign will hire more than 10 full-time field organizers for Polk County before they will hire a single full-time organizer for Grundy County. And most importantly, I don’t know a single Iowa Democrat who will argue that Polk County (Des Moines area) Democrats don’t have enough influence on state politics, the state party, or the caucuses.
I hope this will be the start of a series of posts written here as a defense of the Iowa Caucuses. Toward that end, I’m looking for more arguments to respond to. So, dear readers, please participate: What arguments against the Iowa Caucuses do you find most compelling?
Now that John Kerry has decided he isn’t running again for President, it’s worth exploring who stands to gain and what impact it will make on the caucuses. One poll done nationally shows relatively little impact for any candidate. However, among donors, there’s a clear shift from Kerry to Obama. As the New York Times notes, a lot of his big donors are already getting behind Obama and Chris Cilizza sees Obama as a big winner as well.
However, in Iowa, it’s curious to see what happens to the pockets of support that the Senator still had, such as among the Hawkeye Labor Council in Cedar Rapids. It would be curious to see where those people go, especially since if one still supported Senator Kerry now, they were a real hardcore supporter. But it’s also worth remembering what was perhaps the high point of Kerry’s abortive 2008 campaign, his speech here in Grinnell in May which drew nearly 1000 people. It may not have drawn as much media attention as his low point but it’s still worth remembering.
Via Political Wire, American Research Group put out a crazy new poll of likely 2008 Iowa caucus goers.
In the Democratic caucus, Clinton led the poll with 31%, followed by Edwards with 20%, Vilsack with 18%, and Obama with 10%. Interestingly, Vilsack did the best with “no party” respondents who said they were likely to participate in the Democratic caucus, at 38%. Clinton garnered 32% of this group’s support, but no other candidate scored more than 2% of “no party” support. This could be a product of name recognition, but since when are Iowans who consider themselves likely caucus goers unfamiliar with Kerry or Edwards? I never would have though that Clinton could bring a lot of “no party” support to the caucuses.
In the Republican caucus, Guiliani led with 28%, followed by McCain with 26% and Gingrich with 14%. Naturally McCain did well in the “no party” category, although for some reason American Research calls them “independents” in this section…
A new Research 2000 poll in Iowa shows John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama tied among likely Democratic caucus voters with 22% each. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack trails with 12%, followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton at just 10%.
No other candidate broke 10%. Top three Republicans are John McCain (27%), Rudy Giuliani (26%), and Mitt Romney (9%). I think this just reinforces my post from yesterday, “Why the Iowa Caucuses are Still Wide Open.”
There has been a lot of talk over the past few weeks about who is going to win Iowa in 2008. I’ve been resisting the temptation to join, because it’s pretty unlikely that the picture we see now will look anything like the picture we see a year from now.
Think of how much has changed from four months ago: Warner, who has since dropped out and now might be un-dropping out, was attracting a lot of Iowa support. Obama, whose candidacy I have been predicting for a year, was written off as too green and inexperienced to run in 2008. Bayh looked like he had too much money not to play in at least the first four primary states. John Kerry was not a favorite, but he was in as good a position as any of the candidates. And John Edwards was probably getting the most buzz around here. (Incidentally, Hillary’s position as the elephant in the room everyone either loves or loves to hate has remained relatively consistent this whole time.)
Since then, Warner and Bayh dropped out, and a lot of people started talking about what that might mean, often concluding that it was because the caucuses were close to being decided — already. (Kyle’s post here is actually what provoked me to write this.) Here are five reasons why it’s still wide open:
The caucuses are an expectations game above all else. Given two candidates with equal money, talent, charisma, etc., the candidate who is favored more heavily is actually in a weaker position right now than the candidate nobody is talking about. To “win” the caucuses, you have to beat expectations, not just the other candidates, and the job gets harder and harder as expectations get higher and higher.
Nobody knows what to expect from Tom Vilsack. Before he announced, I didn’t know very many people who took his candidacy seriously. But his campaign has assembled an excellent staff, and he keeps on impressing me. He isn’t expected to do all that well nationally (his strategy is clearly to paint himself as the underdog of the race), but nobody really knows how well he’ll end up doing in Iowa. (Drew has some thoughts on how well he has to do to stay in, but even he’ll admit that it’s guesswork at this point.) Again, though, I think it’s clear a fair number of candidates have to play in Iowa (particularly Edwards and probably Obama), and, if Vilsack can even hold his own against them, he isn’t out of the picture.
The majority of the field hasn’t even declared yet. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and John Kerry are all staying above the fray by not making themselves candidates yet. As soon as they do, expect a lot of rhetoric to change. Even if attacking Obama will hurt the attacker more than it will hurt Obama, somebody will start doing it as soon as he declares in hopes of shaking the tree a little bit. Expect a wave of attack dog pundits and surrogates as soon as Obama and Clinton declare. We don’t know how that will turn out.
Nobody is talking about John Edwards right now. Even though Edwards is a fundraising force with name recognition, a strong biography, charisma that rivals Obama’s, and a reputable staff, he has avoided high expectations. Polling in Iowa has consistently put him on top, and it looks like he’s going to declare pretty soon, so it isn’t clear how he will end up.
In the end, staff quality and political strategy make a much bigger difference in the caucuses than buzz and media coverage. John Kerry was not a frontrunner in November of 2003; he was closer to a longshot. But his staff put together a better field program than Dean’s staff, and he ended up winning. (And because Dean was the frontrunner before losing, it pretty much knocked him out.) Field work is huge in Iowa, and we probably won’t know who has the best field program until the caucuses are over.
Of course, keep checking here for more news and analysis as the field of candidates continues to narrow.
