2024: Is the End Nigh?

2024 might be the end of the "First in the nation" Iowa caucuses. At least for the Democrats anyway. Over the years I’ve written in different places to different people about the caucuses. Whether I think Iowa should go first is moot, But I find the Caucuses so interesting. I grew up in the 80s and I remember watching the news about the Iowa caucuses and it was as interesting as sports to me. There were about a bunch of unusual names like Bruce Babbitt, Pete DuPont, Al Haig, Dick Gephardt, Ruben Askew, and Ernst Hollings. Caucuses are the fun part of the political process. Let’s face it politics sucks but a candidate running for election is the greatest thing. The future is wide open, dreams are shared and promises are made. No wonder Donald Trump never stopped running for president. The 2020 caucus had the inevitability of feeling doomed. Maybe it was when the final Des Moines Register poll was canceled with the news that not every candidate was being included. It might’ve been the weather which caused the cancellation of the last Elizabeth Warren event I was going to attend. But sure enough on caucus night, the catastrophe unfolded. Not to be “that guy “but I blame the media. The anchors seem totally unprepared when they had to wait for an outcome. Now to be fair, 2016 had been a two person race and in 2008, it had been a three person race. But surely someone should’ve realized that this was a race with as many as four front runners, and no expected winner. How the local news was expecting to have a winner within 30 minutes (and no Plan B) is more of a reflection of them than anything. Ok, so I lied above when I said I don’t care if Iowa goes first. I think it’s cool but I also realize it’s just an opinion. That said, I’m perfectly flummoxed why the Iowa Democratic Party and local media are so blasé about this. “Caucus fight light on intensity” read the front page of the June 19 Des Moines Register. “Whatever is going to happen is going to happen” Former Part Chair Sue Dvorsky is quoted as saying. Ironically, that was also the Iowa Democratic slogan for the Gubernatorial campaigns of 2014 and 2018. (The Iowa Dems do have an exciting candidate for 2022 despite their best efforts otherwise) So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that a Democratic Party that isn’t competitive, a newspaper that lost some fantastic journalists who made the world stage, and activists who get blamed for merely being part of the caucus aren’t willing to fight. “(The caucus) is just not what Democrats on the ground are focused on” Dvorsky says. Here’s the thing the Dems are going to have to be focused on the ground because the Iowa Republicans secured their status as the first in the nation. This means that GOP Fundraisers in the upcoming months will bound to be headlined by Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Candace Owens and probably TFG himself. Democrat fundraisers will feature the local dog catcher as everyone important goes elsewhere. Hyperbole aside, the 2020 Caucus brought not just the candidates but people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Megan Rapinoe, Michael Moore, Mandy Moore, and Jonathan Van Ness. I guess that I would think that Iowa Democrats would want the attention and prestige, but even then, you would think that the Iowa Dems have a good case to make. In recent times, the Iowa Caucus is full of revelations. Of course, everyone points out to the electability of Barack Obama who entered the caucus trailing 10-15% nationally. In 2016, the Caucus showed that Hillary Clinton was a largely fallible candidate. Even in 2020, the Democrat candidates seemed to take it upon themselves to accomplish what the Caucus is set up to do- line up behind one candidate that they thought everyone could agree to get behind for the reason of winning the General Election. Will it be the end of Iowa’s first in the nation status? Will it be the same if Iowa goes, say fourth? Will it be a loss of millions of dollars of revenue or have negligible effect as others argue? As Sue Dvorsky says, “What will happen, will happen”.