David Broder argues that all this attention given to the Iowa caucuses is rather silly. Extremely expensive, of course, with the costs being figured at between $200-$400 a vote...but ultimately silly. You may feel that Broder is a bit dismissive about the grassroots power of "conservative Christian groups, anti-abortion organizations, and home-school advocates," yet his general reasoning is sound.The outcome of Iowa's first-in-the-nation voting is skewed by two big factors:
• The turnout is ridiculously small, barely 20 percent of eligible voters.
• Those who choose to caucus are hardly representative of the population.
This is not said in disparagement of Iowans, whose civic spirit and political acumen are as outstanding as any voters I know. But their traditional way of expressing their early choice for president and the disproportionate influence it exerts in winnowing the field leave a lot to be desired...
That system empowers the activists and those with built-in organizational ties who can mobilize people to leave their homes for a couple hours on a weeknight and motivate them to declare a public -- not private -- preference for a candidate.
On the Republican side, those networks belong principally to conservative Christian groups, anti-abortion organizations, home-school advocates and some economic interests.
On the Democratic side, organized labor and the teachers boast the best existing networks, but the main impulse is a broader populist tradition that tugs the Democratic Party of Iowa to the left. That tradition may go back to the days of Henry Wallace, the Iowa-born vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt. But it has been embodied in recent decades in Tom Harkin, the longtime Democratic senator who ran for president himself in 1992 and quickly fell behind the more moderate Bill Clinton and Paul Tsongas...
It has been an Iowa pattern to tilt the Democratic race leftward and the Republican race to the right. And often it has been New Hampshire, where the primary turnout approximates the pattern of the overall electorate, that restores the balance and corrects for the distorting effects of the Iowa dynamic.
The key to New Hampshire is usually found among the independent voters, who can go into either party primary, depending on the choice each individual makes on primary day...
New Hampshire is a more reliable lens than Iowa to view the presidential landscape.
Michelle Malkin adds:
...One Hillary Clinton supporter -- much to the campaign's chagrin -- couldn't keep his lips buttoned before the votes were cast. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland complained to the Columbus Dispatch that it "makes no sense" to give Iowa the right to hold the first presidential contest and lambasted the caucuses as "hugely undemocratic" because the process "excludes so many people." USA Today spotlighted the "goofy," "eccentric" ritual -- quoting Sen. Carl Levin attacking the system as "cockamamie." The New York Times chimed in the day before the Iowa caucuses with a piece bemoaning the plight of Iowa voters who won't be able to cast votes because work and family conditions will prevent them from attending the lengthy nighttime meetings.
Yes, the rules are bizarre -- particularly the Democrats' arcane setup eschewing paper ballots and forcing nonviable candidates with less than 15 percent of the vote from caucusgoers to throw their votes to one of the frontrunners. Yes, the pandering to farmers and ethanol interests is noxious. And yes, the spectacle of Hillary Clinton lining up baby-sitters and Barack Obama scheduling rides for Iowa caucusgoers smacks of a Nanny State gone wild...
And yet Michelle still finds some good things about the Iowa caucuses. Read what they are in her column here.
