I was looking through the tweets in Anne Laurie’s post below and it just struck me how much energy goes into the fucked up anachronism that is the Iowa primary.
Not only does the caucus system effectively disenfranchise handicapped voters, it also makes it tough for voters who work evenings, and it’s generally confusing. One of the long-term goals of the Democratic party is to make it easier to for everyone to vote, yet our first big event is probably the least democratic form of participation possible. And, because it gets so much publicity, and idiot pundits fetishize all the dumb little details, it gives off the message that you have to know a lot about politics to participate in the primary process.
Iowa is also lily white and rural, while the battlegrounds we need to win are in the industrial midwest and the sun belt are urban and multi-racial.
Of course, I know how hard it is to get states that are used to the millions of dollars of revenue to change their primaries, but at some point in 2021 we need to have this fight.
Or maybe we just need to get a billionaire to tell the DNC he doesn’t like the process. That seems to work, too.