Iowa is a fine state, full of civil, hard working Americans. Yours truly once did a fellowship at the University of Iowa’s journalism school and came away impressed with how dedicated and bright were the students and professors. They were also very nice folks.
Nobody has anything against the good people of Davenport, Cedar Rapids or Sioux City. But their state shouldn’t be the kickoff event in choosing candidates for the most powerful job in the world.
Some of this is obvious. The state is much whiter, older and more rural than the nation. As the New York Times recently pointed out, Iowa demographically reflects the United States of 1870. The largest city, Des Moines, has a population of about the same as Providence and is 70 percent white.
Along with all this white, rural privilege is a focus on topics –think ethanol subsidies and farm price supports–that have scant traction in the rest of the country.
This isn’t to say voters in Iowa are any more provincial than Anywhere Else, USA. They meet and greet candidates and thoughtfully consider the campaigns of the White House wannabees who throng their state fairs, farms and factory gates. Despite being mostly white and rural, they were the voters who gave a black man from Chicago, Barack Obama, the early victory that fueled his 2008 election.
Yet, since the caucuses first drew notice, in the 1970s, Iowa Democratic voters have only chosen two non-incumbents who made it to the presidency–Obama and Jimmy Carter, the little-known Georgia governor who won in 1976.
The base of the Republican Party in Iowa is dominated by conservative evangelicals. Democratic caucuses are flush with liberals, union members and Midwestern isolationists. Yet, the biggest drawback of Iowa may be the system that has evolved over the years in the Democratic caucuses.
To vote in Iowa, you have to spend two or three hours on a freezing night at a local school cafeteria or firehouse. You listen to speeches, then in front of all your neighbors, stand up publicly for your candidate.
If your choice doesn’t get 15 percent, there’s another voting round, called realignment. That allows voters whose candidate didn’t hit 15 percent to toss their vote to viable campaign that hit the threshold on the first round.
Thoroughly confused? This year it gets more bizarre. The Iowa Democratic Party has decided to report three different results tonight –the vote totals from the first round, the realignment totals and how many state convention delegates each candidate won. Iowa measures intensity and ground game organization but little else.
Polls show Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren and Pete Buttigieg bunched together. This is a recipe for each campaign to put their spins into overdrive by midnight and claim victory. But if everybody wins, nobody wins. Participation trophies have no place in politics.
Next week, the spotlight turns to New Hampshire, which has held the first primary since early in the 20th Century. Unlike Iowa, New Hampshire is a straight up election. There is same day registration and turnout will probably be around 50 percent.
Neither New Hampshire nor Iowa is representative of 21st Century America. It’s time for a series of regional primaries. We could borrow from college sports and have a Big Ten primary for the midwest, a Pac 10 event for the west coast, a SEC primary for the south and a Big East primary for the northeast. And rotate them each cycle so no region is automatically first.
Scuttling the Iowa first caucus would also have the advantage of shattering the myth that elderly white heartland voters are better or more worthy citizens than voters in Boston, Cranston or San Diego.
Scott MacKay’s commentary can be heard every Monday at 6:45 and 8:45 and at 5:44 in the afternoon.
Correction: an earlier version of this commentary mentioned Sioux Falls. This has been corrected to Sioux City, Iowa.
