Why-owa?

It’s idiotic that every year, the same few states have such an outsized influence on presidential nominees. I’m going to pick on Iowa here. I have nothing against the state but its caucus is the one that comes first and determines a significant part of the election narrative that comes after it, so that’s the one I’m criticizing.

The other day I heard on the news that “Iowans like to meet their candidates in person.” Well, la-dee-friggin’-da, Des Moines! Isn’t that nice, to be able to have presidential candidates pandering to you—you personally—over pancakes at the diner. I guess the rest of the voters in unimportant states such as California can just wait six more months to have any say in their party’s nominee.

Oh, you’re meeting your candidates personally. Is there anything else we can get you, Iowa? Another pillow for your back?

This system is stupid because the Iowa caucus is Byzantine. I’m not an uneducated person and just reading this article about the system gave me a headache. Iowa had previously measured Democratic candidates’ totals in state delegate equivalents, not votes. (Republicans have a more straightforward system.) This defies the common sense “one person, one vote” standard that most of the rest of us generally accept. In 2020, they will record actual vote totals for the first time, but there are still problems. The caucus system seems to alienate people with child care issues or who work late and can’t get to the caucus place at the specific time and stay there for hours. How does this serve democracy?

Why Iowa? What reason is there beyond tradition to give this state such an outsized say? We should rotate this every four years.

The other problem is that Iowa doesn’t represent the American population as a whole very well (New Hampshire doesn’t, either). They should have the first contest in California or New York or Florida or Texas, states with larger populations and a broader cross-section of people. Iowa is overwhelmingly white, something like 85 percent, which alienates everybody else, including populations of people who vote in overwhelmingly Democratic numbers (and without whom the Democrats cannot win). The media interviews Iowa voters and it’s always the same: a sea of alabaster faces at Karen and Chad’s Grain Silo Diner.

And don’t give me this horseshit that Iowa somehow represents the “real America” because when people say an 85-percent-white state is what’s real, the implication is clear. That dog whistle is a klaxon.

It’s all real America. Iowa is real America. Maryland is real America. California is real America. New Mexico is real America. South Carolina is real America. Farms are real America. Cities are real America. Suburbs are real America. So why not share the wealth and let another state have a say in presidential nominations, one with a more diverse slate of citizens?

And don’t give me any nonsense that the Iowa caucus has to come first because it’s “tradition.” A lot of traditions are stupid and once enough people wake up to that, we stop doing them.