What’s the current situation with Iowa and their caucuses? Every year, there is talk that Iowa shouldn’t go first, the state isn’t at all representative of the United States and the Republican Party turnout tends to be dominated by Christian evangelicals.
Yet, every year there is endless coverage of Iowa, with candidates rushing to chow down on corn dogs at county fairs or meet the people at Aunt Bee’s Cafe.
Will anything change for the next election cycle? Has the 24 hour news cycle and the internet shown that there isn’t quite the same need to spend endless time in Iowa, trying to win a caucus which draws the most dedicated voters to stomp across the snow in January or February?
It will be interesting to see if the endless cable tv debates are reduced. I don’t think they helped the Republicans in 2012, but obviously the lesser known candidates are going to want more debates in an attempt to lead the front runner into a gotcha moment or at least become better known.
Iowa shouldn’t go first. Nor should New Hampshire. (In fact, the entire primary system is probably fucked up, but that’s a different thread.) Lucky for us, they’ve written it into state law that they MUST go first, and, bonus, the D/RNCs are complicit. So we can look forward to the usual circus, with the usual whackaloon from the furthest right of the Republican party winning the caucuses.
Which is just as absurd as a state legislature trying to pass a law concerning the value of pi. There are some things that a governing body can’t do because they’re forbidden to do so, and there are some things they can’t do because they’re just plain impossible.
Eventually the primary for the next election will be held before the current election. Seriously, you can’t have an election without candidates so there is a practical limit on how far that can be pushed, like not before any candidates have actually declared.
And the simple answer to who goes first is that the national party committees decide that. That already happened in 2012 when some states were told that their delegates would not be recognized if their held their primaries before a certain date. The parties eventually chickened out, but if they wanted to declare Iowa and New Hampshire off-limits they could do so at any time. They’re private entities beholden to no one except opinion. Why do states enable them? Because opinion says they should. Will opinion continue to do so in the future? Reply hazy try again.
Except that in the case of Florida, we pay for the fucking primary. Why is the GOP in favor of government handouts? Adaher? Why does your party accept taxpayer for a job that could be perfectly well (maybe even MORE efficiently) conducted by private business?
The rule should be that if a party doesn’t pay for the primary they should be required to accept the full result. Otherwise, their candidate don’t appear on the ballot. Let’s see a party find a path to 538 without Florida.
They do not determine the course of anything, unless the people of places like New York and California and Texas just blindly follow their recommendations.
This is technically correct (the best kind of correct!), but it ignores the practical impact of campaign contributions. People give to winners, so the Iowa caucus is relevant in that the better your showing, the more cash you have available for the next primary/caucus campaign.
The campaign-finance model explains a lot of the kooky process we have. You want the process to begin with lower spending expectations (since early on most candidates don’t have much in the bank), so your first states should have:
[ul]
[li]a small population (easier to reach everybody),[/li][li]a single major media center (makes ad-buys much simpler to schedule)[/li][li]demographic homogeneity (to avoid the ad-spending complexities of diverse demographics) [/li][li]limited geography (to keep travel costs down) [/li][/ul]
IA and NH fit these criteria almost to a T; it would be nice if other states got the chance to go first, but Iowa has the business now, and will move heaven and earth to keep it.
So my answer is, the Iowa caucuses are relevant as an accelerant for campaign contributions. If you believe (as I do) that campaign money is a strong determiner of victory, then you still need to take them seriously.
The Republicans “chickened out” only when it got to the point where including all of the delegates (and note that the Republicans don’t discredit all of a state’s delegates - only half of them) from the violating states would not change the result.
Meanwhile, remember what happened in 2008 with the Democrats in Michigan. First, everyone was told that none of Michigan’s delegates would be seated at the Democratic National Convention based on the “too-early” primary; because of this, the only candidate with any serious chance of being nominated that was on the ballot was Hillary Clinton, and, based on the primary, pretty much all of the delegates were divided between her and “uncommitted.” When the primaries and caucuses ended without a clear nominee (because of the vast number of uncommitted “superdelegates” the Democrats have), Obama’s campaign wanted to confirm that none of the Michigan delegates would be seated, while Clinton’s tried to get them seated as voted, and when the party reached a compromise position, the campaign threatened to challenge the decision on the convention floor.
California has bucked the trend; after moving the primaries from June to Super Tuesday, they were moved back to June in 2012. This could be a big thing for the Democrats, which have a rule awarding bonus delegates for primaries held after March 31.