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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Beware the Wrath of the Butter Cow

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Beware the Wrath of the Butter Cow

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I, for one, do not miss watching Democratic candidates attempt to eat corn dogs without making fools of themselves.

Actual journalism (the butter cow is recycled!) from Mr. Pierce, at Esquire:

In 1911, a guy named J. K. Daniels sculpted a cow out of butter and sent it along to the annual Iowa State Fair. To this day, about 600 pounds of butter is spread upon a wood-and-metal frame in a refrigeration unit kept at a steady 40 degrees. After the fair, they turn up the heat, and when the butter is soft enough to be removed, they collect it in five-gallon buckets and use it again the following year. The butter cow is eternal…

Every four years, it has become customary for presidential candidates of both parties to attend the Iowa State Fair as part of their campaign to win and/or survive the Iowa caucuses, a nominating mechanism so preposterously arcane that even when it awarded the win to Pete Buttigieg in 2020, a considerable chunk of the population didn’t believe it. In 2012, Mitt Romney was the unofficial winner for two weeks, until the state party reversed itself and gave the victory to Rick Santorum. It can be said that there never has been a real winner to this day.

At the fair, they stand behind a bunch of hay bales outside the pavilion in which the Butter Cow is kept, and they talk to a crowd of beer-drinking farmers and sunburnt children and a huge, unruly scrum of reporters and camera crews.

The great exception came during the run-up to the 2016 caucuses. While the other candidates were working the midway to get their five minutes on the soapbox, Donald Trump was giving people rides in his helicopter, which was stationed on a ball field by the fairgrounds. So people would gather to hear, say, Jeb Bush outside the Butter Cow pavilion, and then the Trump copter would clatter on overhead and everybody would look up, completely ignoring the speaker on the ground. In retrospect, after the election, the symbolism of these events verged on ham-handed. They also may have marked the beginning of the end of the bipartisan consensus that nominating a president should begin amid hay bales on the midway of the Iowa State Fair.

In December 2022, the Democratic National Committee decided it had had enough. The Democrats determined that it no longer made sense to begin winnowing their primary field in Iowa and then New Hampshire—a pair of states that are too old, too insignificant in the general election, and far, far too white to have any relevance to the election’s ultimate outcome. It hadn’t made sense for a long time, and the fact that Iowa had made a terrible hash out of the 2020 caucuses made the move imperative…

One question is asked, endlessly, every four years. The other question is almost never asked. Its answer is simply assumed, as though it were some sort of natural law in operation within our politics. It is a curious paradigm that shows no sign of dissolving, and one that is illustrated sharply by the adjustments made in how we elect a president for the whole country.

The first question has given birth to a journalistic cliché over the past seven years. The country was so gobsmacked by the election of Donald Trump that the elite political media went into an intellectual frenzy. What had they missed? Where had they gone so very wrong? This begat what later became known as Diner Stories—or, less graciously, the Cletus Safari. Reporters were sent out to the wilds of Ohio and the scrapple wastelands of western Pennsylvania to talk to the good burghers who had fallen so very hard for the blandishments of a Manhattan real estate sharpie who claimed to be working for them. This, in turn, summoned to mind the recurring question of when and how the Democrats had “lost” rural and exurban white America, and how the party could get these voters back.

That brings us to the rarely asked second question. The Democrats have changed the schedule to empower their most loyal voters—the Black and Latino voters who brought Biden back from the dead in 2020. The question is almost never raised as to why Republicans “lost” these voters. After all, Black voters once reliably voted for Republicans. Party of Lincoln and all that. And Republicans were central to the passage of both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But we had none of the deep thinking about how Republicans had “lost” those voters because the answer to that question is obvious. The GOP didn’t “lose” Black voters. It threw them away…

The division is also central to why the Republicans have maintained the status quo. The decision merely acknowledges a situation that the GOP has created for itself over the past half century. They are going to dance with who brung them, as so many phony hayshaker Republican politicians have put it. This election will be conducted on parallel tracks, and it is entirely possible that the last truly neutral character this year will be the Butter Cow, the first victim of the divisive politics of the 2024 presidential election.

Moooo…

Minor candidates: At least Burgum’s team had the sense to send him out before the fairgoers got bored with speeches…

Minor, minor candidates:


(Remember, Kucinich is RFK Jr’s campaign manager.)

And then again, seriously…

Reader Interactions

88Comments

  2. 2.

    Betty Cracker

    From WaPo:

    …a mysterious plane circled over DeSantis’s “fairside chat” with a taunting message echoing criticisms DeSantis that is too stiff: “Be likable Ron!” The Trump campaign paid for the banner, according to a person familiar with the situation.

    😂

  3. 3.

    Jeffg166

    That one photo of TFG is very telling. He looks like he may have lost weight. Wonder why?

  5. 5.

    Trivia Man

    I enjoyed the Iowa City Yacht Club shirt from  the “I’m glad they didn’t hang you” guy. Likely a shout out to the Dead show of 08/10/82. Looks like a fine 80s show I’ll check it out.

  7. 7.

    Ken

    I can’t watch the video because Twitter, but is is clear he said “I’m glad they didn’t hang you” and not, say, “sad” or “mad”?

  8. 8.

    Ken

    @Chief Oshkosh: I have them once in a while, usually a summer picnic at someone’s party. At a fair — well, after the revelation about the butter cow, I may never eat fair food again.

    Which reminds me, the other place I sometimes see corn dogs is on gas station hot dog roller machines, but I’ve always assumed anything on those might have been there a week or more.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    Keep your infants away from the water.

    A research team in France found the Nile crocodile reacts to the distress cries of many different baby mammals, including humans.

     

    Their response is sensitive to specific acoustic details, which may help the predators gauge the severity of their prey’s distress before attacking.

  11. 11.

    p.a.

    Iowa state faire, hot temps.  How many in the med temp from eating bad mayo-on-Wonderbread sandwiches?  Please force feed some to the national press.

     

    p.s. Wonderbread is still a thing!!!

  12. 12.

    Spanky

    Two things I note from the above:

    * 88 degrees in Des Moines

    * Dennis Kucinich in a fleece ves

    ETA maybe he was in the cooler with the butter cow.

  14. 14.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud:

    Their response is sensitive to specific acoustic details, which may help the predators gauge the severity of their prey’s distress before attacking.

    THAT’s what we’re missing at Republican rallies. Need more crocs

    ETA: And vegan corndogs.

  17. 17.

    Ken

    @eclare: Some of those videos are painful to watch.

    Painful as in “please clap”? Maybe I should figure out one of the twitter workarounds. Then again after last week’s legal news, I might OD on schadenfreude.

    (Lookit that, I can spell “schadenfreude” without looking it up. I suppose that’s one thing to thank the Republicans for.)

  20. 20.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I lived in Iowa for 20 years and never once went to the fair, but in an election year, I’d skip it twice. It’s ridiculous.

    I think moving the first Democratic primary was a good and necessary idea. But I still treasure the memory of being there to pick Obama in 2008. I’m sure I said before that we Obama people were hanging around in a hallway, waiting for things to proceed, when a Black woman next to me said her husband hadn’t wanted to come because it was so cold that night. But she told him “Baby, you got to come. It’s history.”

  21. 21.

    evap

    @p.a.:  I watched The Apartment recently (the Jack Lemmon film from 1960).  When the Jack Lemmon character brings a bag of groceries into his apartment, I noticed the polka dot Wonder Bread peaking out.   Ah, the memories… I loved Wonder Bread as a kid. ​
    ​
    ​

  23. 23.

    Mousebumples

    Ahh, Iowa. I went to college there (Drake, in Des Moines), and caucused in 2004 (Edwards – yes, I am now aware that he was not a great candidate in retrospect). The Dean Scream was kinda crazy in the moment.

    Was told repeatedly by Iowa local friends to go to the State Fair. Biiiig LOLNOPE from me. I mean, I didn’t live in Iowa year round, so why interrupt my summer of working to afford tuition to drive to Iowa to go to a Fair?

    Glad the Dems have mixed it up a bit.

    One of my college friends (works for the VA in Iowa City) is Not Happy about the constant political ads for the 2024 campaign still happening. I keep telling him to just focus on ad free streaming choices…

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    As a sculptor whose medium is also butter, I am surprised to learn the Iowa fair’s butter cow is melted down and the butter reused each year. Could they not pass out hot biscuits and plastic knives and let fair attendees use the sculpture to butter them? That would be better! Maybe also make jam available.

  29. 29.

    Sebastian

    @Betty Cracker:

    Medium boiled eggs, while still hot and sliced in half, are delish with a little bit of salted butter on top. One of those things I’d never expected to work, but wowza!

  30. 30.

    Trivia Man

    I’m dense. Mrs Trivia pointed out that Vivek is Hindu and thus vegetarian. Good luck explaining that to the salt of the earth in Iowa.

    the corn dog taunt was too subtle for me, apparently. Filthy casual, I am.

  31. 31.

    Nelle

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: We left at 4:30 am to get out of Iowa.  We’ll be gone all of State Fair week.  Didn’t plan it that way but see it as a bonus.

    I’m at my sister’s,  above 8000 feet, looking right into Rocky Mtn National Park, rising sun glowing on the mountains.  Good to be reminded of beauty when there is so much political pettiness.

  33. 33.

    twbrandt

    I have a hard time believing they’ve been using the same butter for the past 112 years. I think it would deteriorate after a while.

  34. 34.

    Scout211

    Fun fact:  The blame for the Iowa caucuses becoming first in the nation belongs to Democrats. I grew up in Iowa but I left the state in 1974.  The history of how the caucuses became so important in presidential primaries was unknown to me until now.

    Link

    2. Why is Iowa first?
    “The really important thing to remember about Iowa is not that it’s first because it’s important. Iowa is important because it’s first,” said Kathy O’Bradovich, political columnist for the Des Moines Register. She acknowledges that Iowa didn’t really happen on purpose.

    “It happened after the 1968 Democratic National Convention,” she said, which was marred by violence over the Vietnam War and racial tension. “The Democratic Party nationally and in Iowa decided they wanted to change their process to make it more inclusive.”

    Part of that meant spreading the presidential nominating schedule out in each state. Because Iowa has one of the more complex processes — precinct caucuses, county conventions, district conventions, followed by a state convention — it had to start really early. (The Democratic Party held Iowa caucuses first in the nation in 1972; the GOP followed suit in 1976.)

    And once a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter rode an Iowa caucus win all the way to the White House, Iowa suddenly became a thing.

  36. 36.

    Sandyz

    It’s hard to see something new at the state fair. Trump’s cuff linked long sleeved shirt was it!

  37. 37.

    Butch

    @eclare: The one of Reynolds and DeSantis in cowboy boots was too much for me.  I’m going to go mow the lawn, or straighten the sock drawer, or anything else that gets me away from the Internet for the rest of the day.

  38. 38.

    oatler

    That Vivek performance reminded me of the fair scene in The Music Man, if you replace Robert Preston and the Buffalo Bills with…Vivek.

  39. 39.

    Lapassionara

    @Betty Cracker: The effin’ NYT has a front page article about the “drag” that the Hunter Biden investigation is having on Biden’s re-election campaign. I see another “butter e-mails” in our future.

    sigh

  44. 44.

    Josie

    @eclare: ​ Also, remember the important thing–Uncle Joe is not a woman.​
     ETA: Not to say I don’t support him. I always have, even from the beginning. Just pointing out how things are.

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    @Lapassionara: The NYT political desk hacks may try a butter e-mails strategy, and if the newly minted special counselor is a Starr-class douchebag, they’ll have lots of salacious material to cover. But I don’t think it’ll stick because the scandalous stuff is about the son, not the father. Folks rightly think a father’s unconditional love for his children is a virtue.

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @Trivia Man:

    Mrs Trivia pointed out that Vivek is Hindu and thus vegetarian.

    I’m sure some of the practicing Hindus in the comments will have something to say about this, but plenty of Hindus eat meat.  Within Hinduism, vegetarianism tends to be a caste thing, with higher castes being more likely to be vegetarians.

  51. 51.

    Lapassionara

    @Betty Cracker: here’s hoping. I for one would enjoy a deep dive into the many ways Jared and Ivanka enriched themselves while serving as White House employees.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    But I don’t think it’ll stick because the scandalous stuff is about the son, not the father. Folks rightly think a father’s unconditional love for his children is a virtue.

    “Could Joe Biden’s concern over Hunter Biden be responsible for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan?” /NYT

  54. 54.

    Ohio Mom

    @eclare: Does Eminem know about this?  I am pretty sure his people are going to contact Vivek’s people and tell them to stop.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    Europa colony, A.D. 3045:

    Teacher: “And so, younglings, that was actually part of the process of how they picked the leader of the free world on Earth back at that time.  Can you believe it?”

    Child 1: “It seems counterintuitive to me, Teacher.  Wouldn’t the smartest, best leader avoid those horrible ‘food’ products, high temperatures, and degrading spectacles?”

    Teacher: “You are sooo smart, Chelsea478!  *sigh *  If only…”

    Child 2: “IMMA HAVE THE FOODGEN MAKE ME A ‘CORN-DOG‘ FOR MEALTIME!!”

  57. 57.

    eclare

    @Josie:

    Yep!  And the MSM has not hated him for decades.  NBC giving bad coverage?  The station that employed Matt Lauer to cover Hillary?  I’m shocked!

  59. 59.

    MomSense

    Eat corn dogs from the side like corn on the cob unless you are Mr. Michele Bachman – Dog knows you need outlets to get your freak on.

  60. 60.

    M31

    @twbrandt: the same butter for the past 112 years

    lol look up “Bog Butter” — they’ve found 100lb chunks of butter in Ireland that were buried in peat bogs 5000 years ago, those Iowans have a lot of catching up to do

  62. 62.

    MomSense

    @Jeffg166:

    It appears his weight loss gave him a bad case of vagina neck.
    O/T but Ozempic neck is a most unfortunate side effect of the medication.  Lots of Hollywood actors wearing turtlenecks and scarves as a result of their ill advised fast weight loss with medication they should not have taken.

  65. 65.

    artem1s

    I can’t imagine how disruptive it is to be a ‘first in the nation’ primary state. Having candidates, their entourages, and the media endlessly crawling all over the state can’t be fun. Maybe it’s good for local businesses but damn, I’d hate to reside in a neighborhood or have a business that has to put up with this kind of disruption.
    But then again I’m especially irritated today because the local Fox new helicopter decided it needed to buzz my neighborhood covering a marathon for over three hours since about 7:30 this morning. I can’t imagine why they thought they needed non-stop live helicopter feeds when they also had camera trucks onsite.

  69. 69.

    UncleEbeneezer

    That brings us to the rarely asked second question. The Democrats have changed the schedule to empower their most loyal voters—the Black and Latino voters who brought Biden back from the dead in 2020. The question is almost never raised as to why Republicans “lost” these voters.

    Republicans hate minorities. PERIOD. They made their choice in the 50’s to only pander to white voters (and voters-of-color who also hate minorities) and have never gone back. They CAN’T. The only thing they can offer non-white voters is to punish some other group (Black People, Women, Immigrants, Transgender People etc.) that they also hate. Any attempt to actually help any marginalized group will lose the 27% of MAGA voters that the GOP can’t afford to lose. So they can attract Black Republicans like Kanye and Latinos and Asian-Americans who hate Black People (and Women, Transgender People etc.) but they will never capture a majority of non-white voters because the whole GOP platform is White Supremacy, Patriarchy and Tax Cuts for the 1%. It’s all they have.

  70. 70.

    Roger Moore

    @artem1s:

    Being first in the nation has been very good for Iowa as a whole.  It almost guarantees their political concerns are given disproportionate weight.  There’s a good chance getting rid of Iowa’s first in the nation status will have a measurable effect on the political viability of stuff like ethanol-based fuel.

  71. 71.

    dm

    All the corn-dog talk made me nostalgic, so I googled for “corn dogs near me”.

    There’s a Korean place just a few miles away across town. Turns out corn dogs are Korean street food.

    Probably spicier than those from the A&W root-beer drive-in of my childhood, but that’s okay.

  73. 73.

    Suzanne

    Trump spent less than two hours at the Iowa State Fair. Part of why people don’t perceive him as old is that he doesn’t let them. His carefully choreographed image disguises the fact that he is 77 now.

    WTF does this even mean?!
    So now his behavior — which is nothing if not the middle-school bully — is a “carefully choreographed image”?! GTFO.

  74. 74.

    Suzanne

    Oh, and thoughts on corn dogs:

    I was born and lived my early years on Long Island, then moved to Arizona when I was nine. I had never had a corn dog in New York, had never even seen one. Had never heard of this. (Or Mormonism, for that matter.) We moved to Mesa, and all the Mormon kids ate corn dogs. Some of the other kids did, too. Mind: BLOWN.

    I do not corn dog. Tried one once, decades ago. Never again.

  77. 77.

    eversor

    @dm:

    It could be spicier but a lot of Korean versions of American stuff are not.  I’ve not a spicy Korean corn dog, and I’ve found most Korean spicy fried glass chicke isn’t spicy.  But then there was a Nashville Hot Chicken place that was full of Koreans around there that was insanely spicy which is what I want.

  78. 78.

    eclare

    @Suzanne:

    They are ok from time to time.  What shocked me was when a coworker and I were discussing food.  She mentioned that she likes the mini corn dogs that you find in frozen foods.

    This is a thing?  Note at the time we were both in our forties.

  79. 79.

    eversor

    @Suzanne:

    There are different versions and not all are foul.  Also the sauce is going to vary.

    Corn dogs fall firmly into the “most are bad, some are OK, some are good if you are drunk enough”.

  82. 82.

    RaflW

    The sad thing is, corndogs are delicious. Yeah, Michele Bachmann looking like she’s never, ever in her life… did set the bar for how bad eating one can look. But I hope these candidates get to enjoy one of any state fair’s finest culinary histories off camera. (As a Minnesotan, I’ll add that a Pronto Pup is just not even a close second. It’s the contrast of sweetness to salty that makes the corndog the boss.)

  83. 83.

    Hoppie

    @Scout211: My memory is that a certain South Dakota Senator ran the Democrats’ reform committee and, ahem, arranged for Iowa to go first.  1972 nomination for the win!  I think it was a whitewash (see what I did there?) to blame it on Jimmy Carter.  But we are the olds who remember stuff…

  84. 84.

    Glidwrith

    A candidate could truly set themselves above the others in eating a corn dog: whip out a knife and cut a slice, use the blade to pop it into your mouth.

    Hilarity would then ensue, because guaranteed the candidate would cut their finger, mouth or drop the slice.

  85. 85.

    dm

    @Hoppie: Yes, McGovern chaired the rules reform committee that gave states’ caucuses and primaries a bigger voice in candidate selection starting in ’72, and, yes, he did ride those reforms to the nomination, but the Carter organization was really effective. Carter was much less well known than McGovern when his campaign started.

    I volunteered in the McG general election campaign, then went away to college a couple of years later. When I returned home for Christmas ’75, my parents had saved my mail. I had a stack of letters a foot high from various candidates, most of it from the Carter campaign. Plus, as I said, they’d already been active organizing the previous summer.

  86. 86.

    Hoppie

    @dm: Thanks for on-the-ground data.  Jimmy Carter very effectively managed the process, but I disagree that it was his campaign that first did that.  Not sure the writer had an agenda there, but it was curious.

  88. 88.

    Expletive Deleted

    @dm: Here in the UK Korean corn dogs are all the rage at the moment, if they’re the same then I haven’t noticed them being especially spicy. The gimmick is that they’re rolled in a crispy outer coating (usually there are a few different flavour options, possibly one being spicy).

    I love ‘em, although admittedly my favourite is the vegetarian option, which substitutes the meat with cheese, so I’m not what you would call a purist.

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