The Iowa caucuses are absurd. They were designed to exclude. When the parties reformed their nominating systems in the seventies, taking the power from party brokers and handing it over to the people, it was assumed that most states would use a caucus system, which would attract party regulars and could be more easily controlled by state and local leaders. The opposite happened. The parties became more polarized, and caucuses, while still excluding most voters—who find the process intimidating or don’t have the time to commit an evening to party business—became dominated by the more extreme factions in the parties. If even a third of registered Republicans show up tonight to caucus, it would smash previous attendance records.
‘How Stupid Is Iowa?’
The problem is not that the people of Iowa are stupid. They are not, by most measurements. It’s that Iowa looks nothing like the rest of America. As a result, the winners, more often than not, are nationally unelectable extremists. Who can remember President Rick Santorum or President Mike Huckabee, both previous winners?
.. You’re supposed to be vetting, Iowa. You’re supposed to be culling out the crazies. You’re supposed to recognize the fraud of Ted Cruz and how Donald Trump is playing you. For all your touted small-town verities, you’re not doing your job. Your bull manure detector is broken.
Plutocrats and Prejudice
To oversimplify a bit — but only, I think, a bit — the Sanders view is that money is the root of all evil. Or more specifically, the corrupting influence of big money, of the 1 percent and the corporate elite, is the overarching source of the political ugliness we see all around us.
The Clinton view, on the other hand, seems to be that money is the root of some evil, maybe a lot of evil, but it isn’t the whole story. Instead, racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice are powerful forces in their own right.
.. Crucially, the rise of the American hard right was the rise of a coalition, an alliance between an elite seeking low taxes and deregulation and a base of voters motivated by fears of social change and, above all, by hostility toward you-know-who.
.. On the other hand, if the divisions in American politics aren’t just about money, if they reflect deep-seated prejudices that progressives simply can’t appease, such visions of radical change are naïve. And I believe that they are.