The Iowa Caucus Is Unfair but Democratic

As the NY Times points out today, the Iowa caucuses are not fair to some. For example, Iowans serving in the military, people lying in hospital beds, and service and manufacturing workers who work night shifts are not going to be at the caucuses. They have no way to be heard except from their co-workers or veterans or healthy people who show up and speak their piece. Folks without child care or transportation are at a definite disadvantage, although the campaigns certainly try their darndest to get people to the polls, if they need a lift or a babysitter.

As we become, increasingly, a society that lives vicariously watching other Americans become "Idols" or at arms length from the realities we face reading the news via the Web, the Iowa Democratic Caucus is often thought of as quaint;

"Imagine, Clara, those huckleberries bundling up and going out to huddle together in the gymnasium while they are counted like chicks in a henhouse. Then, waiting around while some complicated mathematical formula is frittered with to award delegates to the county convention. And then, don't you know, some folks don't count at all, because their group is 'unviable,' whatever to Jesus on Crutches that means."

The Iowa Democratic Caucus, for some, may be thought of as akin to one of those fuddy-duddy catalogs that comes to your house sometime before the holidays that offers things like hand-tapped Vermont maple syrup and lace-collared flannel nightgowns.

The Caucus is "old-timey," imperfect, and unfair, but at least on the Democratic side, you get to see democracy in all its imperfect glory at work as friends and neighbors try to button-hole others into supporting their candidate. It is where the marketplace of ideas meets the social network and it is an oh so gooey melange of humanity and ideology.

Feelings get hurt, rivalries are renewed, revenge for past sins are exacted, and opinions are swayed with folksy logic. And that is what makes it so worthwhile. Politics usually are like the weather, everybody complains about them, but no one does anything. This is the place where we let down our societal hair and let people really know what the usually silent, polite, and perhaps even reserved, minority of the majority is thinking.

During this eyelash length of time, we are doing what politicians promise us they will do for us. We are fighting for them. We are their hope. We are real change. They can't be ready on Day One without us.

Many people think that the media has too much power in who gets elected. Others believe it is money. But I believe it is lack of participation. Politics talks about inclusiveness, but the power seems to go to a relative small number of people. Caucuses are a place where anyone can be a player, just by showing up.

In the perfect world, it can be conjectured, there would be a national primary day. Everyone would get their chance to go to the polls and vote. But imagine where that would leave us? Candidates would have to amass much more money just to participate or clean election/campaign finance laws would have to be revised to let more kids in the pool. And what about our participation in the process--shouldn't we have more say than giving money or time to a candidate?

So for now and, I hope, forever, on a very cold night in a state with slightly more than 3 million people, 6 to 12% of registered voters, many of them the same folks who pestered others to come out and caucus, will go to their local schools, fire houses, and other civic buildings. They will rise up and become "the deciders." It won't be pretty, it isn't fair, but it is representative democracy done in an increasingly arcane way:face-to-face by people wearing a candidate's sticker on their chests and their hearts on their sleeves.