Before the Iowa caucuses, the New York Times published an op-ed calling for the Democrats to ignore the state as being racially unrepresentative.
This must end for Democrats. Everyone knows it. Everyone argues it. But then, everyone throws up their hands. Iowa has been first for nearly 50 years now, a position to which the Democratic Party has given its tacit assent.
Does everyone know it? Does everyone argue it? Does everyone throw up their hands?
The problem with Iowa and New Hampshire, as David Leonhardt laid out in detail in The Times, is that they are horribly unrepresentative of a party that is now, according to the 2017 Pew Typology Survey, 54 percent white, 19 percent each African-American and Latino, and 9 percent other. Iowa is 85 percent white non-Hispanic, and New Hampshire is 90 percent.
Is this a problem with Iowa, or a problem with the Democratic Party? There is no intrinsic reason why the Iowa caucuses come before any other primary. Michael Tomasky argues that the first primaries should be held in Florida and Michigan. The Atlanta Journal Constitution argues that Georgia should go first. I quipped it should be Hawaii, because if you have to spend six months canvassing a state, wouldn’t you rather do it in Hawaii than Iowa?
The argument for states that reflect a racial breakdown that is representative of the Democrats is that it would lock the party into its current status. Remember Solid South? Today’s Dems aren’t the same as yesterday’s Dems and may not be the same as tomorrow’s Dems.
But more to the point, somebody has to go first, and as it happens, it’s Iowa. The smell of the argument against Iowa was close to plausible deniability, that whatever the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, it wouldn’t prove anything because #IowaTooWhite. What nobody saw coming was that the demographic makeup of the Iowa Democrats was the least of the problems.
Is Iowa a metaphor? A harbinger?
Either way it’s a mess — and not the way any Democrat wanted the party’s voting to begin in an election year with stratospheric stakes.
As I drifted off the sleep last night, I heard the somber strains of Rachel Maddow muttering “quality control.” My eyes were closed, so I couldn’t tell if she was smirking.
What Iowa provided on Monday night was a baffling spectacle resistant to any quick, definitive verdict. Hours after the actual, physical caucusing at hundreds of locations across the state had finished, there were no official results, just reports that a newly intricate manner of counting was laborious, that a newly developed app for it wasn’t working as planned, that a backup phone line was jammed and that the campaigns had been asked to join in on a pair of emergency conference calls with state Democratic officials.
There will, no doubt, be a great many discussions about what went wrong, why it went wrong and the legitimacy of the outcome. People will embrace the claims that support their position and candidate and deny all others, because that’s what people do. But there is another perspective, having nothing whatsoever to do with who won, or should have won, and how unfair it is that a bunch of white non-Hispanic folks in Iowa get their say before Florida, which is renowned for its ability to run a fair and trustworthy election.
The more complicated we try to reinvent the world, the more figuratively moving parts are involved, the more opportunity there is for something to go wrong. Iowa’s caucus system was already under fire as being either too complex or allowing the third team to negotiate with the fourth team to undermine the second team’s position. Some call this democracy in action. Others call this politics in action. Still others call this bullshit, usually when their ox was gored.
Is the Iowa fiasco a reflection of the Democratic Party’s inability to run a caucus, which then translates into an inability to govern? Or is last night’s disaster a reflection of an entirely different problem, that as we try to micromanage the world with reliance upon apps, complex system, empirical theories of demographic righteousness, in order to achieve the promised Utopia, we’ve (yet again) made things too complicated, too theoretical, too prone to fail if any itty bitty piece fails to do as expected?
There’s an old saying, Man plans. God laughs. Sorry for triggering all you atheists, but I didn’t make it up. Can prolix theories and arguments, plus some name calling and perhaps an expensive dinner with Saira Rao, give us that better world people keep talking about? Is there an app for that?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.