Alright, enough with this "Caucus" business...

I'm fed up with the Iowa Caucus system and the fact that basically two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, get to decide who the Democratic and Republican nominees are going to be. How did it get to this point? Didn't the primaries used to be in February and March? Going even further back, weren't they held in the spring and summer of the ELECTION YEAR? It was only about 30-35 years ago that the Democratic and Republican nominations were actually still up for grabs by the time the respective parties held their nominating conventions in the late summer! Nominating conventions actually used to NOMINATE someone, rather than just confirm what everyone in the nation now knows since Feb. 5. This has become a joke, and I hope this whole system disappears in my lifetime.

Just to rip on the Iowa Caucus for a moment; I won't tell you the details of how it works, but the Iowa Caucus sounds to me like a Sixth Grade Civics expiriment. They have little groups that get together and debate, and then physically stand together based on what candidate they want (which completely flies in the face of the whole "secret ballot" idea, which is pretty sound in my opinion)...then they write their candidates names on peices of paper and throw them into straw hats. This all sounds charming but THIS IS 2008!!! And, you're not electing the chairman of the County Little League Commission! Maybe there is some middle-of-the-road solution that would allow Iowa to keep their traditions but update the process a little bit. It just sounds like an anachronism on which entirely too much emphasis is placed.

I've also read that only 10% of the state's population actually shows up for the caucuses. Let's see...Iowa's population is 2.9 million, so that means about 300,000 people come out to vote, or caucus, or whatever. The population of the U.S. is 300 million. So, in essence, 0.1% of the U.S. population votes in one of the two contests which basically makes or breaks a presidential candidate's campaign. Does that irritate anyone else?

I'll skip over New Hampshire and go right to the fact that basically all of the states that matter have their primaries on Feb. 5, almost nine months before the actual election. I modern times where party politics are now cemented into our system, this might actually work in the candidate's favor. They have plenty of time to raise money, organize their campaigns, and galvanize their support throughout the nation.

But maybe they have too much time. In nine months a sense of candidate fatigue can set in. In my opinion this happened with John Kerry back in 2004. With all of that time to spare, the back-biting and jockeying gets out of control, and the wave of excitement on behalf of a particular candidate tends to subside. Again, perhaps that's a good thing. But I think if the 2004 election had been in August, Kerry would have won. Call it a gut feeling.

So what's the alternative? Well, I'll let the editorial section of the New York Times explain it better than me. There is a good editorial about this issue in the paper today, 1/4/08, if you can catch it in time. It basically advocates a rotating system by which different states go first each time. It would eliminate this pathetic one-upsmanship that states have been engaging in over the past 30 years; trying desperately to be the first in line, which, just you watch, will end up with us holding primaries in the calendar year before the election.

My personal prediction? The current system will be gone in three election cycles, and it will be for the better.

Comments

Eric said…
The problem is linked back to how we go about electing a president. Rather than popular vote, we elect by electoral college in which each state sends a set number of delegates to vote for one candidate which "won" that particular state. This reinforces states rights and their relevance to the system.

Your idea of rotating which states go first every four years is a good one, but unlikely to have much impact. Rather than you and I upset about how Iowa and New Hampshire are influencing the vote disproportionately, the next time around we will want to know why Wyoming and Vermont have so much influence.

The only way I see the current system changing is by those candidates who have huge war chests (Hillary, I'm looking in your general direction) who are able to take three or four early hits in states that are irrelevant and then crush the competition on whatever super day of the week in which the majority of states select their candidates. In fact, I'm surprised a Mitt, Rudy, Hillary type candidate has not launched a massive PR campaign downplaying NH, Iowa, SC saying they are so disproportion to the overall population that they in fact are not going to waste time and money in them. Rather, they would concentrate on NY, FL, CA, TX based solely on population, diversity, "the issues," etc. This is the strategy Rudy is going for in '08, let's see if it flies. My prediction, he will be dead in the water by the time Feb 5 roles around because he didn't spend enough time telling us why Iowa and New Hampshire don't matter.
Grant Catton said…
Still, the main point is a disproportionate amount of influence being placed on two small states much, much to early in the game. It's like a baseball game in which the team who scores the most runs in the first inning wins.

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