As The Daily Howler points out below (emphasis added), only about 4% of Iowa’s voting-age population will participate in the Iowa caucuses. Why don’t we hear about this from the mainstream media? Why does the mainstream media give so much coverage and credibility to something that isn’t anything more than a party hack straw poll? Why does the Democratic Party showcase the Iowa caucuses and protect its early status from states that actually use democracy (i.e., primary elections) to choose their party’s convention delegates? Not to mention, but why too do the media & the Democratic Party protect the crucial ‘selectoral’ status of such a white, rural state?
THE FOUR PERCENT COLLUSION: This is off our usual beat, but yesterday morning’s Washington Post included a truly remarkable number. It appeared in a graphic we can’t find on-line, but here it is: In January 2000, four percent of Iowa’s voting-age population took part in the two parties’ caucuses. That was the last campaign in which both major parties held contested presidential races.
Let’s repeat: Four percent of voting-age Iowans took part in the 2000 caucuses. Hence the difficulty of polling Iowa–and the sheer inanity of the way we select our White House candidates.
Why do so few Iowans take part in the caucuses? It isn’t like voting in a primary; you have to sit around all night having pointless discussions with your Iowa neighbors. So why do some states still do things this way? For the two parties, it’s a way of keeping control of the process. Normal people won’t waste their time this way. Therefore, the two parties’ “regulars,” who do show up, maintain their control of the process.
The sheer inanity of this process is almost never discussed in the press. We can’t vouch for the perfect accuracy of that number. (By way of contrast, the Post says that 26 percent of the voting-age population took part in the 2000 New Hampshire primary.) But the absurdity of the caucus process has been clear for a very long time.
And the caucuses ‘first’ status plus media’s fawning over the Iowa caucuses obviously has a huge impact — the Iowa Bounce — on which two candidates we eventually will ‘choose’ between for Prez.
Fukc Iowa and the Dem/Repub party hacks who come out on a THURSDAY night (you think they’d have some decent respect for working people and choose Saturday or Sunday night for these long-winded manipulated blab fests? no, fukcing Thursday) to choose our corporate democracy’s President.
Huckabee has never lost sight of the core fact of the Iowa caucuses: turnout is minuscule. Because of inconvenient scheduling (on a school night and opposite the Orange Bowl this year) and arcane rules for voting, candidates can look like giant killers here with about as many votes as it takes to be elected to the Fresno school board.
Also at http://politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1303
