Every four years, the 99 percent of Americans who don’t live in Iowa have perhaps wondered, “Why on earth does the presidential primary calendar always start with Iowa?”
Wonder no more!
The great news is that Democrats, prompted by President Biden, are finally taking action to dethrone the Iowa caucuses – a batty process that was seemingly designed by Rube Goldberg on acid – and stick ’em somewhere down in the calendar where they’ll have zero influence. And good riddance, because (1) Iowa rarely had much influence anyway, and (2) Iowa, which is 90.1 percent white and cares intensely about the price of corn and soybeans, is racially unrepresentative of the nation as a whole.
The new Democratic plan is to award first-in-the-nation status to South Carolina (lots of African-American voters), followed by Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, and Michigan. Biden’s self-interest is obvious – Iowa caucus-goers buried him when he ran in 2008 and 2020; South Carolina saved his candidacy in ’20 – but, that aside, the logic of burying Iowa is irrefutable.
The Iowa caucuses were hyped to the max for more than 40 years (a little-known Democratic ex-governor named Jimmy Carter put Iowa on the map in 1976; he was looking for a small state where he could make a big splash), but take a wild guess how many times the winner in Iowa went on to win the presidency that same year. I’m talking about both parties, because the Republicans put Iowa first as well.
Spoiler alert: A grand total of two times. George W. Bush in 2000, and Barack Obama in 2008.
The rest of the time, the Democratic caucuses have crowned President Dick Gephardt (1988) and President Peter Buttigieg (2020). The Republican caucuses have crowned people like President Mike Huckabee (2008), President Rick Santorum (2012), and President Ted Cruz (2016). Granted, Jimmy Carter did go on to capture the presidency in 1976 – but he didn’t actually win Iowa. He finished second to “Uncommitted.”
I feel bad dumping on Iowa, which is home to some of the nicest folks I’ve ever met while covering politics. And, for the record, Republicans will continue to put the caucuses first on their calendar. But I get why the Democrats have had enough. An overwhelmingly white, heavily rural, red-trending state should not have first say in the nomination grind. And because the caucus system requires voters to stick around for several hours, only a fraction (roughly 15 percent) of the statewide electorate shows up.
Plus, the Iowa Democratic rules have long been Byzantine labyrinth that appear to have been inspired by Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll. Democrats don’t even release the popular vote of their participants. The final percentages posted on TV are something else entirely. (Starting in ’24, the Steve Kornackis of cableworld won’t bother to post anything.) The party’s caucuses are all about choosing delegates to its late-winter county conventions – and the weighted delegate strength of the candidates don’t mirror the popular vote. The final Democratic tallies actually measure the allocation of “delegate equivalents.” Last time around, Buttigieg narrowly won the most “DEs.” The future president finished fifth.
Still with me on the rules? Want me to tease out the definition of “weighted delegate strength?” And explain how participants physically stand with others who support the same candidate, unless that candidate gets less than 15 percent of everyone in attendance at that particular meeting hall, in which case you have to go stand with a second-choice group, unless…
Nah. Nobody outside Iowa will care anymore.
Thirty four years ago, an Iowa newspaper columnist named Donald Kaul watched nutcase evangelist Pat Robertson surge past George H. W. Bush in the ’88 Republican tally (Robertson peaked; Bush won the presidency), and Kaul reached this conclusion: “The caucuses are a nice little oddball political event with considerable charm and some utility. That they should occupy the major role in our political process that they now do, however, is a kind of joke.”
The joke was on the rest of America, but one party has finally smartened up.
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Meanwhile, the Georgia Senate runoff election happens tonight. Which means we have time for one more Herschel-ism. Over the weekend he talked about his voters:
“They know right now that the House will be even so they don’t want to understand what is happening right now. You get the House, you get the committees.”
Who’s gonna tell him that he’s running for the Senate, not the House?