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The Iowa Caucuses

The first nominating contest in the primary season, the Iowa caucuses were last night! And coming to you live from my couch, at 7:30 Pacific, the votes still aren't in. Well, at least, 98% of them aren't. (Trump won on the Republican side; we know that.) It's not a problem per se–the votes will be known, and they'll turn into delegates, but. Wow.


Introduction

Welcome, welcome, welcome! Chromatic Conflux is supposed to be me writing down my thoughts, and my thoughts this week have been about the Iowa caucuses last night. It's a bit awkward, since I'm writing this paragraph in advance but trying to remember to write it in the past tense. Anyway, I thought I'd look at what the Iowa caucuses* mean.**


Note that because last night was weird, I tried to delay writing this post for a while until returns were coming in. Here's what we've got:


62% of Precincts Are In

As I write this during the afternoon on Tuesday, 62% of precincts report, and they have Sen. Bernie Sanders at 26%, essentially tied with Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 25%, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 21%, Former Vice President Joe Biden with 13%, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar having 12%. The actual delegate counts translated that into a Buttigieg win with 27% of delegates, largely at Warren's expense, as she is expected to receive 18% of the delegates. Again, this is with 62% of precincts reporting, and this will likely be modified as the Democratic party resolves its issues.

I'm told this is a German news anchor talking about the caucuses, but never confirmed or denied this from anywhere. Source: Niki Paumi on Twitter.

The Media Narrative

Imagine if, at the beginning of the Super Bowl, there was a minigame lasting fifteen football minutes,*** with all the usual pomp and circumstance. Points played in the minigame would count in the Super Bowl, except that they would be divided by a hundred.


Iowa's delegates account for around 1% of the total delegate prize. So the real purpose of the caucuses is the media coverage. Often, that can result in the winner of Iowa getting a bounce in support. With the impeachment trial of the president and the State of the Union address sucking up media attention, this bounce will be much less pronounced than usual. Which is a good thing in a vacuum.


Winners? Losers?

Sanders has benefitted from this whole mess. He's winning (sorta) in the returns we do have, and he has developed a strong position in New Hampshire and onward. (I think Sanders has some serious flaws, including his lack of ability to compromise, but that's beyond the scope of this paragraph.) Warren and Buttigieg did well in Iowa, but they need the delegates less and the bump more. Warren is in a decent position in New Hampshire, though, so it's not game over. (I'll get to Buttigieg in a minute.) Similarly, though Klobuchar beat expectations and polls, it won't be enough to get a strong fifth place. She should drop out. Whereas, though Biden underperformed poorly, his rivals have likely lost a key opportunity to get a surge, so I'm tempted to say it helps him.

This result is absolutely perfect for Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's strategy. Will it be enough? Doubtful.

Will It Help Bloomberg?

Yes. This result is absolutely perfect for Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's strategy. Will it be enough? Doubtful. I've said it before and I'll say it again: skipping the early states is an inane strategy. On the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast, Nate Silver compared it to sitting out the first quarter of a basketball game to see how your opponents play: it might work, but it won't win.


Pete Buttigieg

Personally, I'm a Mayor Pete fan. Basically, here's why. He's overperforming in Iowa, according to what we know right know, and I'm very happy about that. I obviously want him to win the presidency. But, and here's where I'm conflicted, Buttigieg will likely get a very minor surge because of the lack of a clear media narrative. (His people are spinning it as a win, but so are Sanders' and, less overtly, everyone else.) He needs an Iowa surge to win; his support there is much better than nationally.**** Will he get it? Should he get it? I'm not sure exactly. I will say that Iowa doesn't deserve that much attention, but also that Pete Buttigieg should be elected president.

Pete Buttigieg. Source: People.

A Sport with Consequences

In any case, onto the prewritten stuff! It's not every day that an American election season kicks off. The 2016 caucuses feel like ages ago. It's a flawed system we have in America, but it's the system we've got. In some ways, the election season has been a sporting event for me, excited to tune into each game and rooting for my team.


It's also the way we choose our leaders, and it's important that we take it all seriously, of course. I've thought about the deep underlying philosophical ideas of politics–see "Who Should A Representative Represent?" The system we have is ugly and flawed, based on single-minded reforms and short-term thinking. But it's also a beautiful rendering of the American democratic spirit; look at all the places that have it worse. This life is beautifully ugly at times.


The Ugly Part (forget the beautiful part)

Iowa is not a state that's representative of the nation at large. It's more liberal than the Democratic Party, and has a relatively high percentage of white people. It's not particularly informative about the Republican Party either, for that matter, as it is more heavily concentrated with the religious right (think Ted Cruz).


If I were to design the system from scratch, it doesn't make sense to have so many distinct days, though I like the idea of having more than one. In late October of 2016, then-FBI director James Comey reopened the investigation into presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's emails. This made huge headlines several days in a row, and almost certainly cost her the election. By contrast, when the Access Hollywood tapes, capturing extremely disparaging comments about women made by opposing nominee Donald Trump, were released just a few weeks prior, they got equally major news coverage. However, undecided voters had time to move on before Election Day. The very day the election was held swung the election.

The very day the election was held swung the election.

To compensate for this, it makes sense to me for different regions to vote on different days. This would rotate year-by-year so each region has the same potency over time. This way, the media narrative on Election Day doesn't particularly affect the election's outcome.


Sidenote: Will the Iowa Caucus Go Away?

After this mess in Iowa, and some hiccups in the past, it's certainly a possibility. But there are lots of people who are responsible in making a change, and it's a hard path. Ultimately, like everything, it's uncertain.


Conclusion

The Iowa caucuses this year clearly showed the system not working, though ironically, the version of Iowa without a clear narrative for one candidate can be considered more equitable. In terms of the election, Sanders benefitted and arguably so did Biden. Warren was probably hurt, as was Buttigieg, to be perfectly honest. Klobuchar is out for sure. No one else had a decent chance coming into the caucuses.


As always, we'll see what happens in the future. There's really no clear takeaway here, but you know what? This is my blog and I don't have to use your post structure. This post is just as much a mess as the Iowa caucuses.


This is where I'm hitting publish...

–beautifulthorns


*Is it "the Iowa caucuses" or "the Iowa caucus"? I've seen the first in more formal contexts, and the idea is that each precinct has its own caucus, so that's what I'll go with. Both are probably correct.


**This whole post is a weird amalgamation of "I wrote this with 62% of the votes in," "I wrote this with 2% of the votes in," and "I wrote this with no votes in," so my deepest condolences.


***By "football minutes," I mean what it says on the clock. The clock gets stopped so much that it's equivalent to thirty minutes or an hour.


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