It’s still January, and still cold, but Iowa’s caucuses seem long behind us. Barack, Hillary, and John labor on for the Democrats, as do Mike, John, Mitt, Fred, and Rudy on the Republican side.
Iowa’s impact was enormous this year, vaulting two non-establishment candidates–Obama and Huckabee–to the forefront and making “change” the new favorite word of every other candidates’ speechwriters.
But, before Iowans savor the successes of this year’s caucuses, perhaps we should be thinking about “change,” too, because the drumbeat to take away Iowa’s lead position in the nominating process is much louder than in previous years.
The New York Times didn’t waste any time as a leading anti-caucus voice. On Jan. 4, the morning after the caucuses, they published an editorial titled “Let It Start Now” — that is, let us start the whole nominating process with some other place than Iowa.
Some of the complaints are tired old jabs. Iowa is “cold, snowy and mostly empty” is the weakest of reasons to start somewhere else. (Note to the Times: stretches of upstate New York are colder, snowier, and emptier in January.)
Low turnout is another complaint, with typically about 10% of voters participating in the Iowa caucuses. Yet, Iowans helped respond to that problem this year, with a record 359,000 Democrats and Republicans participating — about 17.5% of registered voters. Still, the record 40% of New Hampshire’s population who cast ballots a few days later in their primary (where one has all day to vote) makes Iowa’s caucus participation look weak.
Another big complaint is that Iowa doesn’t represent the nation because it “is about 92 percent white, more rural and older than the rest of the nation.” You got us there. I can’t help but make the same observation about the Editorial Board of the New York Times, which wrote the critical editorial. The Board has 18 members, is 61% male, and 88.8% white (one black male and one Hispanic male account for the “diversity” of the Editorial Board)– not so good for an organization that can change its constituents a lot easier than a “cold, snowy” state. Now, we’re even.
The Times‘ main complaint is that too many of the contenders drop out after Iowa. People in New York and other states would like to have a chance to vote in their primaries while there are still several candidates still in the running. Yet, this is largely a problem no matter which states would start the process. Some candidates will inevitably be less popular, and some will run out of money.
Still, here I will agree with critics of the Iowa caucuses, particularly the Democratic caucus.
On the Republican side, it’s one person, one vote. You meet with your precinct, and they take a count of hands. Each vote gets counted. (Still, a ballot would be nice. How do you do a recount?)
On the Democratic side, the one person, one vote concept gets lost in the consolidation of votes. Most troubling is the rule that requires that Democratic candidates attain the support of at least 15% of caucus goers in each precinct to be viable.
Here’s how it happened in the Democratic caucus of my precinct in Cedar Falls, with 188 in attendance. In the first round of dividing up the caucus-goers according to preferences, the count was Obama 98, Edwards 35, Clinton 21, Biden 14, Richardson 10, Dodd 4, Kucinich 4, and Gravel 1. (One person didn’t make a preference.)
At this point, the 15% threshold was 28 supporters, which meant Obama and Edwards were in the running and Clinton and others fell short. So, the persuasion began. Unlike other caucus years I’ve attended, there were no speeches in my precinct from the various political camps to woo over supporters, but instead just some one-on-one bargaining. The second count ended up this way: Obama 107, Edwards 48, and Clinton 28. Out of the six delegates allotted to our precinct, we pledged 3 delegates to Obama, 2 to Edwards, and 1 to Clinton.
Statewide, it ended with 37.6% for Obama, 29.7% for Edwards, and 29.5% for Clinton. Richardson got only 2.1%, and Biden 0.9%.
The Iowa Democratic caucus threshold rule is good at winnowing the field, but that’s precisely not what’s needed this early in the race for the nomination. Whereas Biden and Richardson could have had some momentum here — imagine how different the Iowa narrative would have been if Richardson and Biden were nipping at the heels of a third-place finisher Clinton — Biden exited after Iowa, and Bill Richardson after New Hampshire.
One needs only look at the Republic side, where each vote is counted, to see a more fairly distributed outcome. Huckabee got 34.4%, Romney 25.2%, Thompson 13.4%, McCain 13.1%, Paul 10%, 3.5% for Giuliani, and 0.4% for Hunter.
Iowa’s caucus days may be numbered. The Democratic and Republican political parties will reconsider the process before 2012. The most likely option is a rotating system of regional primaries. That leaves open the possibility for Iowa to be first in the nation again, but maybe not until a year like 2024.