Iowa Caucus Guy’s Presidential Election Blog

Life has been strange, of late, but I always intended to write at least three (and heck, maybe four) posts covering the Iowa Libertarian Party Presidential Forum. It was very exciting to have something like this in my backyard, and I feel obliged to write about it, since I didn't see anything about it in the Des Moines paper (Not to worry, they barely cover the Democratic and Republican races either, these days). The Libertarian Party, of note, has established itself as America's third party- in 2016, appearing on the ballot in all 50 states, gaining over 3% of the vote, and receiving in the neighborhood of Four-and-a-half million votes. There has always been a strong contingent for a Third Party.  In my lifetime, the Reform Party made a strong impact, but seemed to be tied to the personality of Ross Perot.  The Green Party under Ralph Nader similarly was able to get the nation's attention, but has become something of a boutique party for Jill Stein, and now, Howie Ha...

The Libertarian Party of Iowa Presidential Forum may have been the most fun I have ever had in politics.  The Gazette's Adam Sullivan was a fantastic moderator. I will get to that at some point, but today, I want to focus on my big three takeaways. First, I was amazed at the fraternity and camaraderie that I observed before and after the debate. Contrast this to the Democrats who have slowly aligned behind Joe Biden. If you are reading my log, you likely watched at least part of one of the Democratic debates this cycle.  I mean, there were like, a dozen of them. Can you picture any three of the candidates onstage having a cordial conversation afterwards?  Could you imagine Bernie and Elizabeth laughing together?  Did you feel the tension when Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Bloomberg, and even Tom Steyer were on stage?  Would John Delaney be welcome in a crowd? That's all speculation, of course.  The Dem Crowd of 25 may have been 'thick as thieves' off camera...

The 2020 Primary Season in Iowa ended not for me with the February Caucus but with the Iowa Libertarian Party Convention on February 29. I went as a non-Party attendee with friends in the Party and real interest to see a Presidential debate in my backyard.  I hope to share some of my thoughts over the  next few days, with today's focus on the candidates themselves. There is no clear frontman for the 2020 Nomination like Gary Johnson was in 2012 and 2016.  Indeed, though all share the same principles, the candidates sometimes come from different directions themselves. The current Libertarian Presidential field is quite large with the Party recognizing 19 candidates under their set of criteria, and there are easily a dozen more candidates with what can be considered serious campaigns. With Libertarian party conventions in every state seemingly every weekend, it is likely a costly proposition to try to attend them all.  It also makes debates unwieldy (for exampl...

You probably figured with me a political buff and in Iowa, that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. So in conjunction with my last post as I talk about that weekend of January 25-26, ( I will focus on the last political rally I attended of the Caucus season) it is worth mentioning that I did my part in supporting the Buttigieg campaign. My role was minimal. As I have mentioned at various points, there are competing interests for my time, but I did do what I could. My greatest 2020 Caucus memory will be getting a text on a weekend afternoon from Chasten Buttigieg. Getting communications from candidates are not isolated incidents and what is awesome is hearing stories from staffers how Elizabeth Warren called them from out of the blue. While the caucus might be flawed, there is an element of it that puts the candidates face to face with their possible future constituents. Nobody can argue that isn’t a good thing. I only hope we don’t get completely Television studio campaigns. ...

One of my thoughts was that after the Caucus was over, I would throw together a couple of pieces of commentary of how it was to be part of the Caucus process. I didn't expect, we would have seemingly bungled results and would want to take a break from talking Caucus. Anyway, a thought I had was that I could take a 24 hour time period with a lot of activity, and work in a lot of my opinion and observations.  I would wait until after the Caucus because I was focused on more serious stuff.  Then I would write my Unanswered Prayers and name names and throw all caution to the wind (as you will see, that's not my nature).  Interestingly, the Des Moines Register did something similar on January 26, in a special pullout section called 10 Hours on the Trail .  It's an interesting piece with some of the mundane things you might have in a day's work like campaign event audio issues, the 12 degree weather, catcalls at Candidate events ("No Malarkey!"), brokedown buses, a...