Criticize the Iowa Caucus until you’re blue — or for Republicans red — in the face, but our crazy party election system is entertaining. There is nothing more revealing than a Democratic caucus precinct. Sitting across the high school library from people you see at the town festival, Sunday church service and the spring elementary school concert makes a voter feel naked. Joining required presidential preference groups for the entire room to see exposes deeply held political and social ideologies that may not be shared on a normal day of the week.
Not only do the voters know each other, but they also know the small-town reporter covering the caucus. It’s a surreal feeling when trying to be a fly on the wall and the precinct captain, whom I cover as a city council member and have fried tenderloins with at his local sandwich shoppe, has to keep reminding voters, “Mike’s here working. He’s not caucusing. He doesn’t count.”
At Colfax-Mingo Jr/Sr High School on caucus night, a Hillary Clinton supporter strolled over to the Bernie Sanders side of the library carrying a cake pan of fresh brownies. She tapped the pan with a spatula and nudged the Sanders people with a smile, trying to pluck one or two voters for the Hillary camp with the freshly frosted mini-cakes. It was all about that extra delegate, but the chocolatey pastries were not enough to squash the Vermont democratic socialist’s support from promises of free public college and campaign finance reform.
At the sole-Republican precinct in Prairie City nearly 200 voters packed a middle school cafeteria with their kids and grandkids, introducing future voters to the election process and sporting some pretty sweet wearable swag — shouldering a stars and stripes elephant purse and ready for fashion week.
Now that the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries have ended, the national media has stopped conducting the cliché rural voter interview with the hay bale backdrop and have left for warmer primaries. So have the critiques over our system. Commentaries on presidential preference groups, coin flip-tie breakers and secret votes on a little scraps of paper have left the news cycle and they should.
Our party-run caucuses have flaws, including mathematical delegate calculations that would make a calculus II student cry for more integrals, but they’re fun. Our caucus system inspires powerful debate at the precincts between candidates’ supporters. Impassioned surrogates who happen to be the neighbor down the block will try to convince friends and family Donald Trump will make American greater than Ted Cruz or Clinton has the international relationships which Sanders has yet to forge. But they debate with a smile.
The Iowa Caucuses create a dialogue between people that walking into a voting booth and casting a private ballot no longer generates. We live in an increasing computer screen-driven society. Face to face interaction facilitated during the Iowa caucuses force people to engage. It gets a little personal trying their neighbors best brownie batch. That is community that being a keyboard warrior will never match.
Contact Mike Mendenhall at
mmendenhall@jaspercoutnytribune.com