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You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Election Year Open Thread: Cancel Iowa

Election Year Open Thread: Cancel Iowa

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I’m sorry, Iowans, you’re lovely people and I’m sure you mean well, but this is not an optimal way to select the leadership for a country as large and diverse as ours. Because the rest of us are tired of finding euphemisms — unpredictable! — for the fact that too many of you are actually insulated from the effects of your choices:

And, no, you’re not responsible for the DNC’s weirder efforts to please all its warring factions, but if we weren’t all fixated on your antiquated caucus system (yes, and NH’s cranky insistence on being FRIST IN THE NATION, forty-nine other states be damned), the DNC would have a much more practical path…

… “I think that people need to idle their engines a little bit,” says Penny Rosfjord, an Iowa Democratic Party district chair. “A caucus was never meant to be smooth; it’s kind of a messy process. It’s not a straightforward, check a box and move on.”…

Of course, it’s never easy to give up a perceived entitlement...

… but once you’ve laid down this burden, we’ll all be happier voters!

Reader Interactions

204Comments

  2. 2.

    joel hanes

    The interview with the incoherent nut from Algona is egregious nut-picking, showing the worst footage found on a cletus safari.   It’s entertainment, not information, typical of TV political and sports coverage.

    She’s an atypical Iowan in almost every way.

  3. 3.

    Felanius Kootea

    I hope that in the future, California and South Carolina’s primaries are moved up to the same day as Iowa’s. That would give a much more realistic picture of the Dem primary electorate.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    FTA

    Q: What results will Iowa Democrats release out of the caucus?

    A: There will be three sets of results: tallies of the “first alignment” of caucus-goers, their “final alignment” and the total number of State Delegate Equivalents each candidate receives.
    This is the first time the party has made public the first and final alignment results.

  6. 6.

    Kent

    @joel hanes: That’s true.  I get most of my first-hand Iowa political news off Facebook from one of my oldest friends from my Peace Corps days who is a 50-something gay AP social studies teacher in Des Moines who is out with his teacher union friends diligently attending every event they can find.  They are smart and active, but also pretty universally white and middle class.  The teachers seem to be leaning Warren and Buttigieg by his reports with some Sanders folks mixed in.  But they are all actual Democrats, none of that fickle “I’ll vote for Trump if I don’t get my way” idiocy.

  7. 7.

    germy

    Hard to overstate how unpredictable talking to voters can be: Melissa from Algona, Iowa, caucused for Bernie in 2016, then voted for a Trump; she supports Medicare for All but supports Buttigieg, but will likely vote for Trump again if Buttigieg doesn’t win the Dem nomination. pic.twitter.com/ZgvQQ7NoW2— Matt Pearce ? (@mattdpearce) January 16, 2020

    This doesn’t surprise me. It’s politics as lifehack. She’s looking for One Weird Trick that will solve all of America’s problems. Revolution! MAGA! A gay millennial! The only surprise is that she’s not supporting Yang, the ultimate lifehack candidate. https://t.co/fGwOK1wFlv— Steve M. (@nomoremister) January 17, 202

    Jack and Jill LoInfoVoter will decide the outcome.

  8. 8.

    Felanius Kootea

    @germy: Yang isn’t white (responding to the second tweet in your reply). She isn’t a low info voter. The information on what she doing is quite clear (see Jamil Smith).

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    Hard to overstate how unpredictable talking to voters can be: Melissa from Algona, Iowa, caucused for Bernie in 2016, then voted for a Trump; she supports Medicare for All but supports Buttigieg, but will likely vote for Trump again if Buttigieg doesn’t win the Dem nomination.

    OK, I am mildly curious.  How the fuck do you go from Bernie to Trump to Mayor Pete back to Trump?

  10. 10.

    cynthia ackerman

    Since the Nixon days, has Derschowitz done much advocacy for patching the hole in the Constitution he says makes a lawless Pres OK?

     

    He’s making bank on this round, and may have thought the prospect of a perfunctory acquittal would be icing on the cake.

  12. 12.

    Steeplejack

    Matt Pearce: “Iowa’s value as an electoral tastemaker.” ? (Not him, the on-point-ness of what he says.)

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    That last tweet, the line below Castro’s picture, “To maintain our prized position…..”

    No one should have a prized position. No state, no first town. The primary votes should all be on one date. Like the election that it is. With all the time zones we have no national election can take place at the same time but the same day would end the IA and NH BS. There is no reason for it other than the media frenzy and some out dated concept that it helps elect – what. Now I do think that early voting but not early display of the vote is proper for both primary and election. All states should have early voting, absentee voting by mail and same day primaries with vote starting times the same for every time zone.

  15. 15.

    Steeplejack

    @Kent:

    But isn’t Des Moines the stereotypical blue island in a red state? Trump carried Iowa by the largest margin of any Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980. So there’s a lot of leeway for political nuttiness.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T, and it’s maybe been addressed in another thread, but I hope NotMax and our other Hawaiian jackals are safe.

  19. 19.

    Kent

    @Steeplejack: Yes, I guess. Although it’s a mostly-white blue island in a red state, much like Portland Oregon is a mostly-white blue island in a sea of red.  Oregon is just a much more urban state with a larger principal city than Iowa which makes the difference in statewide elections.

    I’m just agreeing with the point that these nutcases that the media dredges up are not representative of anything but a good “story” to drop in the media.  Iowa isn’t problematic or unrepresentative because of these nutcases which are everywhere and probably found in much higher percentages in places like Boulder, Berkeley, Eugene and Burlington.  It is unrepresentative because it is so old, white, and rural.

  21. 21.

    Kent

    The word for this sort of stupidity is “white privilege”

    Show me a non-clinically insane Black or Hispanic voter who has gone from Sanders to Trump to Buttigieg and then back to Trump if she can’t have her hero Mayor Pete?

  23. 23.

    joel hanes

    @Steeplejack:

    Des Moines the stereotypical blue island in a red state

    Bluer in population centers is fractally true — true at every scale

    Even in the reddest rural counties in the reddest states, the hamlets vote bluer than the voters dwelling on farms

    Villages vote bluer than hamlets,  towns bluer than villages, cities bluer than towns

    The more exposure you have to people other than your own family in your day to day life, the more likely you are to vote for the Democratic Party

    Three of Iowa’s House districts are currently held by Democrats; those districts comprise the older and larger river towns, first settled as white people came up the rivers from the Mississippi.  The fourth, held by Steve King, includes the most-sparsely populated northwest corner of the state.

  25. 25.

    MomSense

    Maine is finally a primary state this year.  I’m so glad to see the last of that undemocratic caucus bullshit.

  27. 27.

    joel hanes

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    [Iowa] is unrepresentative because it is so old, white, and rural.

    No argument from me about this, either, and I’m an expatriate who spends a week or two in Iowa at least three times a year.

    The Iowa Democratic Party should abandon caucuses — they won’t, because of The Iron Law of Institutions.

    Iowa should relinquish its first-in-the-nation role — it will not, because of The Iron Law of Institutions.

  29. 29.

    Kent

    I swear to God, if the Packers win this afternoon then I will become convinced that State Farm has bought out the NFL.

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    @joel hanes:

    And? I agree with what you’re saying, but it has a sort of “water is wet” quality.

    I wonder what is the “bluest” (most Democratic) rural state. Tried a quick Google query and couldn’t find anything. Too lazy to go farther.

    ETA: Posted this before I saw your appended last paragraph.

  34. 34.

    kindness

    I think there should be between 5 – 10 regional primaries and they rotate the order so that every region get’s to be first voters once in a while.

  35. 35.

    Kent

    @Steeplejack: I think I remember reading (or maybe my PA relatives told me) that Pennsylvania is the most rural state in the country in terms of percentage of the population living in rural designated census tracts or something.

    So rural doesn’t always mean what people think it means.   But yes, my guess would be Vermont.  Although I’m not sure how technically rural it is.  The correct answer might be something weird like Hawaii.

  36. 36.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack: Well, when I posted, I had just heard “breaking news” that there was an active shooter situation, with two cops killed.

    Subsequently heard it was in response to a domestic threat. Since then, crickets (although I’ve heard new stuff from Prince Harry and a bunch of tonguespittle from Alan Dershowitz).

    Does NotMax live near Diamond Head? Apparently that’s where the shorting was happening.

  39. 39.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    I thought about that—and New Hampshire—but they’re both so small that “ex-pats” from the tax hell of Massachusetts (and New York?) might skew the mix. Dunno. I admit I was thinking of the big western states.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @debbie:

    He was in the garden thread this morning.

    The situation I’m talking about was just in the past couple of hours, I think. I was away from Internet for a while and not sure what time the shooter story broke.

  46. 46.

    Kent

    @Steeplejack: The big western states are highly urbanized because the bulk of land is arid desert and public lands where no one lives.  This is in contrast to states like PA and Iowa where there are rural people scratching out a living on farms and small towns in very little corner of the state

    Of all the western states, Texas is probably the only exception due to the unique way that it entered the Union by not passing through a Federal Territory phase first. So there are basically zero Federal lands in Texas.  And tiny little bumfuck rural towns scattered everywhere.

  47. 47.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud: First reply got eated. Something to the effect that I am shamefully, woefully, and shockingly ignorant of the geography of the Islands. Thanks for the info.

  49. 49.

    joel hanes

    @germy:

    Jack and Jill LoInfoVoter will decide the outcome.

    The advocates for caucuses will tell you that one of their advantages is that low information voters usually don’t caucus.   The objectives of the system are to reward small-scale retail politics, and to increase the influence of the politically-engaged.

    Caucus-goers are thus more similar to the Balloon Juice commentariat than are primary voters.

  50. 50.

    JanieM

    @Kent: From a 2012 Bangor Daily News article:

    Maine was the most rural state in the nation in 2010, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The nationwide trend was toward a growth in urban populations.
    According to the new data, 61.3 percent of Maine’s population lived in rural areas. “Rural areas” are all those that aren’t classified as “urban.” The Census Bureau views areas with populations of at least 2,500 as urban — though it differentiates between urban clusters (at least 2,500 people and less than 50,000) and urbanized areas (50,000 or more people). This is different than population density, which is measured by how many people live in a square mile.

  56. 56.

    Fleeting Expletive

    I wonder if it would clarify some Senators’ thinking if John Bolton were to announce the publication date for his book, say in 3 weeks or so.

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Yep.  We had a choice, it’s a limit of SearchWP.  Sort by date or by best match.  No way to do both.

    Date is awesome, if you want something recent. Otherwise you want to find the posts sorted by the most matches to “buffalo” if you want to find the awesome post where we all talked about buffalo.

    Otherwise, you could find 100 posts where the word buffalo was in there twice and you’d have to wade through through them all.

    I asked if we could add a date filter, so we could enter a date range, sorting for buffalo but only from 2017 to 2019, but they would have to build something custom which would take some $$$.

    edit: cue the rolling stones.

  59. 59.

    UncleEbeneezer

    But every one of the leading Democratic candidates is flawed in some way or another: Joe Biden can be dismissed as too old-fashioned, Bernie Sanders as too shrill

    Now that is some not-so-subtle shade….

  61. 61.

    dmsilev

    @joel hanes:

    Caucus-goers are thus more similar to the Balloon Juice commentariat than are primary voters.

    This is the strongest argument against caucuses anyone has ever put forward.

  64. 64.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    Can you describe what happened to your comment? It’s not like the old days; they shouldn’t get eaten for no reason.

    Not really, sorry. I posted it in the usual way, wandered off (as is my wont) for a couple or few minutes, came back to read new comments, and there it wasn’t. I refreshed the page, but that didn’t do the trick.

    FWIW, iPhone 8, Safari.

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    Apple Alert!

    So I bought a bag of honeycrisps yesterday and just bit into one.  Am I doing this right, or do I also need to be mopping?

  68. 68.

    oatler.

    What Iowa?? Every cornfield outside Cook County IL is a red rural state, Every acre outside Portland OR is a red rural state.

  69. 69.

    tobie

    I don’t like caucuses one bit and agree that Iowa and NH are not representative of America as a whole and don’t deserve their first in the nation status…but I’ll be darned if this year isn’t tough to decide given the gravity of the election.

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne: Okay.  FYI when you don’t see your comment and have to refresh, the comment is there, but you’re not seeing it because you have the old page that was cached by your browser.

    But I thought we had that one fixed, anyway. But comments shouldn’t get eaten for no reason, so if it happens again, make note of the subject of your comment, and the thread, and I’ll try to see what’s up.  thanks

  91. 91.

    dimmsdale

    @joel hanes: She may be an atypical Iowan (I’m not from there & couldn’t say) but if TWO such examples constitutes a “trend” a diehard Catholic of my acquaintance has threatened us lefties that, although she doesn’t particularly like Trumpie,  if we don’t ban abortion and all this “gay rights” stuff she’ll be forced–FORCED BY US!–to vote for Donnie. It must be some sort of virus going around. (I gave her a short and polite explanation of the concept of “agency” and “owning your choices” and in particular owning the consequences of same…but I doubt if it stuck.)

  93. 93.

    The Dangerman

    @Kent:

    …if the Packers win this afternoon then I will become convinced that State Farm has bought out the NFL.

    Niners fans were fun right around the time of their first Super Bowl (Cincinnati?); they became insufferable by their second one (a pattern that would repeat with the Giants and Warriors).

    I kinda like the Packers tonight. 7-0 right now, Niners up, I think.

  101. 101.

    Jeffro

    OT but folks in Virginia are getting pretty wound up about the gun nuts coming to Richmond.  Rightly so, but…other than letting the state police and feds lock down the area, anything else is letting the (domestic) terrorists win.  Stay strong Virginians!

  102. 102.

    smintheus

    @dimmsdale:  A better answer might have been: “You like Trump well enough, you just have the tiniest shred of decency that makes you ashamed to admit you’re voting for the monster.”

  105. 105.

    James E Powell

    @Brachiator:

    OK, I am mildly curious.  How the fuck do you go from Bernie to Trump to Mayor Pete back to Trump?

    When you will vote for a woman, but just not this woman or that woman or that other woman.

  107. 107.

    Patricia Kayden

    .@tribelaw: “The argument that only criminal offenses are impeachable has died a thousand deaths in the writings of all the experts …. [T]here is no evidence … “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was understood in the 1780s to mean indictable crimes.”https://t.co/ok87SAoqab— George Conway (@gtconway3d) January 20, 2020

  111. 111.

    JPL

    Early today I mentioned a Sullenberger oped in the NYTimes about Lara Trump mocking Joe’s stutter.  Anyway apparently Sully is a Joe supporter and also stuttered so took offense.   It was pretty moving because he said children needed to ignore the hate …   Finally I saw it covered on the news.  My local CBS news.. and they read this section..    Apparently we are at a place where national media just ignores the hate.    If you want to read the entire piece it’s at the NYTImes.com

    So, to every child who feels today, what I felt, after hearing those cruel remarks by an adult who should know better, here is what I want you to know:
    You are fine, just as you are. You can do any job you dream of when you grow up. You can be a pilot who lands your plane on a river and helps save lives, or a president who treats people with respect, rather than making fun of them. You can become a teacher to kids who stutter. A speech disorder is a lot easier to treat than a character defect. You become a true leader, not because of how you speak, but because of what you have to say — and the challenges you have overcome to help others. Ignore kids (and adults) who are mean, or don’t know what it feels like to stutter. Respond by showing them how to be kind, polite, respectful and generous, to be brave enough to try big things, even though you are not perfect.

  113. 113.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @JPL: Apparently we are at a place where national media just ignores the hate.

     

    IOKIYAR

  114. 114.

    sab

    @JPL: I am sort of okay with them ignoring peripheral Trumps hateful behavior. We know they do this stuff. She’s not president, just an in-law. And covering this stuff just amplifies the hateful behavior.

    Newspaper writing about it is different from broadcasting.w

  115. 115.

    Brachiator

    @JPL:

    Early today I mentioned a Sullenberger oped in the NYTimes about Lara Trump mocking Joe’s stutter.

    And she’s not even a natural born Trump. These vile people are the nasty villains of fairy tales. The love being mean and wicked.

  116. 116.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    IIRC, New Mexico is the most rural blue state, if that’s what you’re asking.

     

    ETA: Should have kept reading — it looks like JanieM figured out that it’s Maine.

  118. 118.

    Kent

    @The Dangerman:Niners fans were fun right around the time of their first Super Bowl (Cincinnati?); they became insufferable by their second one (a pattern that would repeat with the Giants and Warriors).

    And the Patriots.  Or were they always insufferable and I never just noticed before in the pre-Brady days?

  119. 119.

    JPL

    @sab: The MSM spent months looking for a whitey tape but ignore the in law on the campaign trail yucking it up about speech impediments.   Yeah they could cover this.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne

    @dimmsdale:

    It can be fun to torment Catholics with kids in cages if you’re in that kind of mood. Remember to work in the phrase “seamless garment of life” for maximum effect.

  124. 124.

    Kent

    Back to the very top of this thread and Melissa from Algona Iowa.

    Here in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington is absolutely chock-full of these sorts of crazies.  The Portlandia TV show was absolutely dead-on in that respect.  Thinking about it a second and third time, I absolutely shudder to think about what sort of crazies the national media could find in Seattle, Portland, Olympia, and Eugene if they went hunting during a First in the Nation Pacific Northwest primary.   It would be a complete cluster-fuck of Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein precious white privilege vote your feelings and pander to me fest.  Makes me shudder to think.

    They wouldn’t be representative of typical Northwest voters.  But it would be who the media searches out and finds with glee.  The Portlandia version of the Cletus safari.

    What I would really love is to see the national media and primary candidates be forced to really search out and tromp through the forgotten parts of this country door-to-door.

    A New Mexico first in the nation primary with all the candidates going door to door on the Navajo reservation and in Mexican-American border towns eating green chile and tamales instead of deep-fried butter at the Iowa State Fair.

    A Louisiana First in the Nation primary with Bernie Sanders out Alligator hunting with toothless Cajuns, explaining to them about the 1%.

    A Puerto Rican first in the nation primary

    And so forth.

  125. 125.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    I’m going with a wild ass guess.

    Brain tumor, mad cow disease, a very, very strange upbringing, alcohol or a political road map from hell.

  126. 126.

    mrmoshpotato

    @James E Powell: When you will vote for a woman, but just not this woman or that woman or that other woman.

    Or that other other woman or that other other other woman or anyone who identifies as a woman.

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    Nah. It’s just racism. She likes the most white supremacist candidate on the Democratic side, and will vote Trump if none of the Democrats are sufficiently willing to throw everyone else under the bus. Note that Mayor Pete does seem to have a bit of an issue with the Black community in South Bend that has been pretty widely reported.

    She likes universal healthcare and better jobs, but she loves white supremacy more.

  130. 130.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @joel hanes: I don’t understand how caucuses can be considered democratic at all. If you have to work you can’t go caucus because it takes all day. If you are disabled you may lack transportation or may not be able to leave your home. If you can’t get child care you can’t caucus. If you don’t have a car and the precinct place is not on public transportation you can not caucus. So you do not get to vote for your party’s candidate.  If you have to be out of town you can’t caucus.  How is that remotely fair if so many people are disenfranchised?

  131. 131.

    cmorenc

    @Brachiator: consider the possibility the lady who says she is a bernie-to-trump to Buttigieg but if-not then trump voter is – just fucking with her interviewer in order to piss off and confuse liberals – and shes really MAGA from the get-go.

  133. 133.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SiubhanDuinne: Better yet would be “All the Trumps except for Barron and maybe Tiffany are walking garbage dumps, and we will be forever trying to atone for how we beat the hell out of Hillary Clinton in the press.”

  134. 134.

    opiejeanne

    @Kent: All of your proposals for first in the nation primaries are good, but I’d like an all-day, same day for every state primary, and NO MORE CAUCUSES.  I caucused in WA four years ago and it was an eye-opener. Bernie Bros who weren’t delegates shouting down the speakers for other candidates and just general nastiness. The actual delegates for Bernie were decent, but someone let those other guys in and they caused havoc.

    And then there were the absolute nut-jobs who wasted our time wanting to add commentary on everything from fluoridated water to UFOs.

    I am so relieved that WA has gone to primaries.

  135. 135.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Kent: yeah, but I’m tired of deep fried butter at the Iowa fair.  I want to see Bernie eating penis donuts at Voodoo and wearing spiked red hair at a Thorns match. (though he wouldn’t attend a women’s match because he doesn’t think they can become president)

  143. 143.

    Kent

    @opiejeanne: Problem with a national primary is that we end up with whoever has the most name recognition and most billions of dollars at the start of the campaign.  I do like the idea of regional primaries where the candidates have to actually get out and work for votes rather than just dropping a million on national TV and online ads.

    Rotating regional primaries would make the most sense.  And even splitting CA into two primaries, a Northern CA primary one week followed by a Southern CA primary the next week, reversing the order each year.

    They could break the country into regions and devote 1 month to each region, changing the order each election cycle.  So one year start with the Southwest in January and end with New England in May.  So you have TX, AZ, NM, NV, UT, CO going first during assorted dates during the month of Feb.  Then the next cycle it is CA, OR, WA, AK, ID, MT, etc.  Then the next cycle it is upper-midwest, and so forth.

  144. 144.

    Ruckus

    @Kent:

    Dyed blond, middle to late middle age, too much cheap jewelry (overpaid for of course!) lot’s of work done (overpaid for of course!) clothes that cost too much and look like it, an allowance and a maid.

    Did I get it all in?

  147. 147.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: That “seamless garment” descriptor took me back to Sunday school. Jesus’s garment was described as having no seams. For a church play my mom and several other women brain-stormed the making of a seamless garment and finally admitted defeat. Unless it’s knitted, and maybe not even then, it needs seams.

  148. 148.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    Nah. It’s just racism. She likes the most white supremacist candidate on the Democratic side, and will vote Trump if none of the Democrats are sufficiently willing to throw everyone else under the bus. Note that Mayor Pete does seem to have a bit of an issue with the Black community in South Bend that has been pretty widely reported.

    This woman may well be a racist, but Sanders and Mayor Pete are far from being white supremacists. And Mayor Pete’s issues with the black community in South Bend probably rightfully dooms him, but are more complex than people let on.

  149. 149.

    Kent

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes.  I know I’m wildly stereotyping.  Which is wrong.  But she doesn’t look like some sort of stealth MAGA Trumper trying to sneak into the Dem caucus.  She is willing to stand in front of TV cameras and spout profoundly stupid shit so is opening herself up to ridicule.  Most of the hard-core MAGA women I’ve met have a certain glassy-eyed look to them and a certain hair and clothing style that is is more white Evangelical preacher’s wife than this.

  150. 150.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Ben Fawkes ESPN Staff Writer 

    Caesars Sports book opens the Super Bowl LIV betting line before halftime of Packers-49ers.

    Game opens Chiefs -1.5 vs. 49ers with the over/under at 51.

    Damn. Vegas didn’t even wait til half time to call the game over and start taking bets on the Super Bowl.

  151. 151.

    joel hanes

    @Kent:

    Just once, I’d like to see a safari to Waterloo, Iowa, which has a substantial black community, and votes Democratic.

  152. 152.

    Kent

    @Ruckus:

    @Kent:

    Dyed blond, middle to late middle age, too much cheap jewelry (overpaid for of course!) lot’s of work done (overpaid for of course!) clothes that cost too much and look like it, an allowance and a maid.

    Did I get it all in?

    Southern white Evangelical Preacher’s wife is the archetype.  It’s not just the style you have to perfect.  You also have to perfect the glassy-eyed worshipful upwards gaze to the male authority figure.

  154. 154.

    Hob

    I just today started doing some canvassing (for Warren) and although it was generally a pleasant experience, at least in terms of making me feel like I’m doing something other than opinionating on the Internet, I was irritated by how often people said the equivalent of “Well, I like Candidate A and I think Candidate B is pretty good too— but I’m going to wait and see how Iowa and New Hampshire go.” I’m in California, we’re voting on March 3 along with nearly everyone else and we have 415 delegates, but what really matters – to these people who seem to genuinely want to be savvy and do the right thing – is who can win Iowa and New Hampshire. Why??

    I honestly don’t get it. If you choose to vote for A because they won Iowa and that makes them seem like a winner to you, then that’s just circular reasoning. If you vote for B even though they didn’t win Iowa, and then A wins everything else… fine, that’s what people want, you didn’t prevent it. If B is your choice and B wins, then you were right not to care about Iowa.

  155. 155.

    James E Powell

    @opiejeanne:

    I think she’s a really a Trump supporter. Caucusing for Bernie doesn’t make her a Democrat.

    I makes her a Democrat hater. They are every reporter’s number one choice for interviews, every time, every place.

  158. 158.

    Kent

    @joel hanes: I’m sure the candidates go there.  Don’t they?  Is it just the press that doesn’t bother to follow?   I really know nothing about how things work in Iowa except all the candidates are always serious about hitting every damn county in the state.

  159. 159.

    Brachiator

    @cmorenc:

    consider the possibility the lady who says she is a bernie-to-trump to Buttigieg but if-not then trump voter is – just fucking with her interviewer in order to piss off and confuse liberals – and shes really MAGA from the get-go.

    I’m just curious as to the sincerity (and coherence) of her views.  But you have a point.  She could just be screwing with the interviewer, wasting his time.

  161. 161.

    joel hanes

    @Kent:

    Is it just the press that doesn’t bother to follow?

    Bingo

    Interviewing black or brown people in Iowa would not support the narrative to which the editors are committed.

  162. 162.

    Kent

    @Repatriated: Campaigning is done by media markets.  So that probably wouldn’t make sense.  Especially the way so many congressional districts are gerrymandered.  You couldn’t just drop in and do one district in NYC and then one in Houston.  You pretty much have to campaign in Houston and then campaign in NYC.

    I’m sure there are a lot of ways to do it.  None are perfect.  There is some argument to starting with smaller states.  They just don’t need to such unrepresentative old white red states.  New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, South Carolina, Arkansas, etc. are all small states with small media markets too, but all are much more diverse.   Even a state like MN which is basically Iowa but with big cities and more ethnic diversity.

  164. 164.

    Ruckus

    @Kent:

    Stereotypes are just that. They are not generally predictive of anything. Other than of the person that uses them. It’s stereotyping and it doesn’t work when they do it nor does it work when we do it.

    And yes I was doing it as well. And only about the picture you posted. If you take a closer look at that picture, a number of the women up front might fill that bill, at least one doesn’t, and if you look in the larger picture many do not.

  165. 165.

    Kent

    @joel hanes:

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone:

    caucuses are not small-d democratic, and that’s never been one of their claimed attributes.

    They’re not fair, either, for the reasons you mentioned.

    Caucuses are really a way for party insiders to maintain their power.  I lived for a decade in TX and only once in 2008 did the Caucus ever mean anything nationally.  The rest of the time it is just picking delegates for the regional and state-wide convention and the time to figure out which party insider was going to be the candidate for which county commission seat or board.  That sort of thing.

    The whole dog and pony show in Iowa is really the exception to how caucuses have traditionally worked around the rest of the country.

  166. 166.

    Ruckus

    @Hob:

    I think a lot of people know that they really don’t know a candidate but do want to vote so they want someone else to show them the way. Hard to fully blame them, if you hadn’t been following politics for quite a while, who would you trust to give you the reality?

  167. 167.

    Repatriated

    @Kent:  “Media markets” was my first thought, but I didn’t see any reasonable way to allocate them definitively.

    I do like the idea of primaries below State level for better apportionment.

  168. 168.

    Kent

    @Ruckus: I’m sure you are right.  But if we can’t stereotype Trump women, who the hell can we stereotype?

    The NYT has been following them around breathlessly reporting with dead seriousness every damn thing they say about “economic insecurity” and “religious freedom” and how they only voted for Trump because Hillary made fun of them.  And never actually asking the hard questions about race which is at the bottom of it all.

  169. 169.

    Kent

    @Repatriated: Spitting states probably only makes sense in CA where there is a distinct separate geography and culture between northern and southern CA and two separate big media markets.  Even TX would be hard to split.  You could maybe do South Texas (Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and the border) and then North Texas (Austin, DFW, and the panhandle.  But it wouldn’t be as clean as the CA split.

  171. 171.

    James E Powell

    The Democratic Party ought to rule that delegates cannot be earned in a caucus. Go ahead and have them, but only primaries count. And if a state wants to be an early state, they have to meet standards for encouraging voting, free access (no suppression), ballot security ,and whatever else makes it more little-d democratic.

  176. 176.

    opiejeanne

    @Kent: Wait, where would you draw that line when you cut CA in half. There are more than two distinct cultures, more like 5 or 6. Could be as high as 25.

  177. 177.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Given Bernie’s laser focus on economics as the primary cause of our social problems, I would say that he flirts with white supremacy without crossing that line. Mayor Pete is, I think, more of a clueless technocrat who doesn’t get why being “colorblind” isn’t enough to create equal treatment.

    I’m speaking of them in comparison to the other viable Democratic candidates, however, not on an overall scale. Neither of them goes nearly as far as Trump and the Republicans do and I think they act more out of ignorance than malice. 

  178. 178.

    Brachiator

    @Chyron HR:

    Oh, is it the DNC’s fault that Bernie keeps explicitly stating that the working class people he cares about are the white ones?

    I have no idea what point you are trying to make. And I am going out to get some dinner, so good luck to you.

    Sanders is not and never will be a candidate that I think much of.  But an accusation that he is a white supremacist is uncalled for, unless you got some serious proof.

    If I cared more, I would note that there is a certain type of progressive who is simply blind to race because it does not easily fit their narrow economic and class schemas.  Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison noted this very incisively in their works.  And some folk like Cornell West never learn and look to people like Sanders for solutions that they will never be able to provide.

  179. 179.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @opiejeanne: It’s basically idiocy.  Once you start cutting states apart, there is no logical end point.  Do we really think that having more primaries is really going to make anything better?

  180. 180.

    Kent

    @opiejeanne:@Kent: Wait, where would you draw that line when you cut CA in half. There are more than two distinct cultures, more like 5 or 6.

    I dunno.  Maybe draw a straight horizontal line midway between Fresno and Bakersfield and then adjust as necessary for precincts and legislative districts.  Fresno and the Monterey Bay area to the north.  Bakersfield, San Louis Obispo and everything else to the south.

    I’m not saying it is an ideal solution.  But if we want to argue putting CA first some day, it might make sense to make the state a bit more manageable and affordable for the lesser known candidates.

    And yes, I know there are at least 6 separate regions of CA:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias

    Everything is a compromise.   I’m curious how a 2-region or multi-region primary would work in CA for state-wide offices like governor.  What do the Californians think?

  181. 181.

    Kent

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think it only makes a bit of sense for CA and only if we want to give CA a chance to go first.  Even if you split CA in half, the two separate halves are still larger than every other state except Texas and New York.

  183. 183.

    Villago Delenda Est

    How these reporters find these cretinous excuses for “voters” is one of the mysteries of our age.

  184. 184.

    Kent

    @Omnes Omnibus: Honestly, this entire thread is intellectual wanking because we are never going to get away from Iowa and NH going first.  People have been talking about this problem for decades.  At least since the 1980s.  And nothing ever happens because of inertia.  But if we are going to wank, we might as well go full on wanker.

  185. 185.

    CaseyL

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I participated in the caucuses as far back as 1980 (!).  I liked them because, at least back then, they allowed a lively debate about candidates and issues.  Caucuses began discussions that would shape the Party Platform, and elected delegates to the next level up caucus.  TL;DR: they were more participatory than primaries.

    But they’re not small-d democratic, for all the reasons listed.   And tedious as hell: I was at the 2016 caucuses, and every single issue had to be thoroughly thrashed out, with absolutists refusing to compromise on anything, so things went on interminably until someone gave up and let the absolutists have their way just to move on to the next topic…where the same thing happened.

  186. 186.

    Kay

    Steven Dennis
    @StevenTDennis
    One interesting point of context: McConnell has told me he hopes to work with next Democratic President to trim Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Says you need bipartisan deal to do so.

    The SECOND Trump is gone they’ll start handwringing over the budget again. Set your watches! First up? Social security, because nothing on God’s green earth can ever be cut other than the few threadbare social programs that people actually rely on.

    I also love how all of political media adopted the word “trim” rather than using the word “cut”. I mean, come on. Where did this word come from and why did they all go along with using it? It’s so clearly intended to avoid saying “cuts”. Was there a directive?

  188. 188.

    opiejeanne

    @Kent: I remember the smoke-filled rooms from which some older white men would finally emerge and tell us who our candidate would be. I don’t remember primaries when I was a kid.

  189. 189.

    opiejeanne

    @Kay: Getting rid of SS completely would not have any impact on the deficit. Not a penny’s worth of impact.

  191. 191.

    Another Scott

    @opiejeanne: Dunno.  SS accounting is weird.

    E.g. SS running a surplus increases the national debt.

    It’s true.  How?  Because SS funds don’t just sit in a lock box somewhere – the excess money is spent (as it should be) and in return there’s a bond saying that the money will be paid back (with interest).  Preso!  The national debt goes up with a surplus.

    (But it’s money we owe ourselves, so it’s even more confounding than the OMG!  TEH DEBT is GOING TO KILL US IN OUR BEDS!! people want us to believe.)

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  192. 192.

    Kay

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    A lot of voters are idiots. Go to any town hall. Half the time they ask federal candidates about state and local issues. Fully half the town hall will be someone asking the wrong person for help. Another quarter is one or another conspiracy theory. These are people who went to a town hall. Could they possibly prepare a little? Like figure out the difference between federal and state law?

  193. 193.

    Kay

    @opiejeanne:

    Why couldn’t he cut Social Security when Trump is President? Why do Democratic Presidents have to worry about solvency and Republicans do not?

    Trump brags about spending money. He told his gross country club members he “doesn’t care” about the budget. I refuse to be scolded by these people- people who gave farmers A BILLION DOLLARS as a bribe so they wouldn’t be pissed off at Dumbo’s trade war.

    I want to cut defense spending. Slash. Let’s say “slash”. That drunken party needs to end.

  194. 194.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    The SECOND Trump is gone they’ll start handwringing over the budget again. Set your watches!

    They always fucking do.  Rethuglicans never wring their hands over being able to afford bombing the shit out of a brown country.  Lockheed Martin never has to hold a Bake Sale for Bombs.  It’s always “Waaahhhh we’re fiscal conservatives and are concerned about how we can afford social welfare programs!”

    ETA – “We’re not cutting social program funding.  We’re manicuring it like we have brown people manicure our lawns at out 30 homes.” Also, fuck John McCain and Mittens Romney.

  195. 195.

    Kay

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Over my dead body do they cut Social Security so they can take the money and hand out bribes to their asshole donors. Never. Is never soon enough? They’re just mad because they can’t skim off the top of it- it doesn’t involve layers of people taking 1/10 of a cent of each dollar.

  200. 200.

    Kay

    Elizabeth Warren
    @ewarren
    ·6h
    Amazon made over $10 billion in profits but paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2018. That won’t happen when I’m president. Use this calculator to find out how much big corporations would pay when they pay their fair share

    I will never again have a candidate who so completely “gets” me :)

    “Use this calculator” Has she MET voters? They’re like the lady at the top of the page “I’m torn between Mayor Pete and Donald Trump”
    That’s what we’re working with here.

  201. 201.

    opiejeanne

    @Miss Bianca: Took me a while to work through it. Had backtrack to the arguments on the Right that only criminal offenses are impeachable, and he’s disputing that bit of stupidity.

  202. 202.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay:

    A lot of voters are idiots. Go to any town hall. Half the time they ask federal candidates about state and local issues.

    Yes, and sad to say, sometimes even Dem candidates are idiots. I know the woman who is currently campaigning to run for state Senator in my district in Colorado. She said in her initial communication with the Democratic Party in my county that she was running on Medicare for All  and the Green New Deal, among other things. I mean, WTF, woman, these are *national* issues that aren’t going to mean jack and shit to the voters who have consistently sent a Republican to this seat. smdh

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