Closed Caucus

The 2024 election season was littered with noteworthy events. While a few moments sent huge shockwaves, exactly one managed to flush fifty years of political tradition down the drain: namely, the Democrats' decision to take away Iowans' first-in-the-nation vote.

In an era where the phrase "democracy is on the ballot" is parroted by blue team supporters, isn't it interesting that almost no one in the mainstream media was outraged at this calculated move? If anything, the reporting blamed the locals rather than the DNC string-pullers responsible for it.

That's a slap in the face of every registered Dem in the Hawkeye State.

Only a full post-mortem can explain how, in just three cycles, the left-leaning side of the aisle turned Iowa's bipartisan point of pride into little more than a disjointed footnote.

Background

To truly comprehend how the situation reached this point, start by turning back the clock. Few people below the age of sixty have any clue that Kamala Harris is not the lone replacement candidate anointed by modern Democratic leadership. When LBJ dropped out during the 1968 presidential race, internal fave VP Hubert Humphrey was instructed to sit out the primaries to avoid any messy losses before convention insiders could secure his lock on the top of the ticket.

[Talk about déjà vu! Same party. Same city. Same opposing family (RFK). Same playbook.]

This gamesmanship almost ripped the party in half until a brokered agreement chilled an International Ampitheater in Chicago which had hit its boiling point. Subsequent "paperwork" in 1972 secured Iowa's leadoff spot in the order. State law was updated to enshrine it.

But it wasn't until Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere four years later that the country woke up to how crucial a good result was there. The midsize state became a potential springboard for underdogs willing to barnstorm. Iowa had to be a part of campaign calculus from 1980 until recently, no matter how popular the aspirant was.

To be competitive, politicians needed to pick up delegates across the 99 counties' caucus meetings. Yet, unlike the GOP (which, to this day, utilizes a simple method of counting folded papers to tabulate percentages), the Democrats settled on a goofy technique where head counts are taken after citizens twice form literal packs around civic rooms.

That doesn't hold a candle to this next detail. These packs added up to delegates which were converted to something called a state delegate equivalent (SDE). As former Wapello County Democrats chair Zach Simonson referred to them on the Well There's Your Problem podcast, SDEs are "a black box... where they feed in some numbers and then a different number comes out in the end." In his words, "I don't know what the SDEs are!"

Not too encouraging. More to the point, doesn't the SDE system seem ripe for exploitation?

Ask Bernie Sanders...*

2016

According to the history books, Senator Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton by 3.55 SDEs in 2016. Did he though? There were a whole lot of questions surrounding the disparity between caucus-night numbers and the stats printed the following morning that don't appear to have been adequately answered. Like, how many of the instances involving transposed data were properly remedied?

Note that for every flip-flop where a Sanders win was counted as a Clinton victory, the effect on the total is doubled. [Going from up-1 to down-1 is a difference of 2.] Considering the final 0.25% margin, you can probably count the mistakes necessary to swing the election on two hands.

In at least one of those cases, the overnight changes were done on purpose. Journalist Ben Jacobs documented a "shift" from the Sanders column to the Clinton column at Grinnell College. Even if the logic behind it was sound, it still stinks to high heaven when (to some degree) overseen by a woman who had earlier sported 'HRC2016' plates on her car.

Thankfully, a comprehensive audit was done to appease those with doubts. Okay -- not really. Quite to the contrary, the Iowa Democratic party (IDP) shot down any notion of verification.

2020

When Bernie decided to run again in 2020, many of the same, um, quirks resurfaced. Precincts screwing the pooch, like when Des Moines' 55th temporarily credited hundreds of his backers to Gov. Patrick, a guy who got zero pledged delegates. Controversial coin flips. SDE stuff. Etc.**

A bunch of curious tweaks accentuated the chaos. At Sanders' request, mid-caucus figures were logged after the initial alignment of packs. Supposedly, it was also the first election where folks could opt out of selecting a viable candidate in round two... a somewhat paradoxical wrinkle of flexibility in a year where elected delegates were told their selections were locked.

Then there was the introduction of satellite caucuses. Eighty-seven special rooms were set up to accommodate unique circumstances, including more than two dozen in locations outside of Iowa's borders.*** Because what caucus would be complete without at least one individual in the Caucasian country of Georgia getting in on the action? And what screams 'legit' more than a lady who continues to affect races about 1000 miles from where she has spent the last half-century?! 

All of it pales in comparison to the insanity connected to the software used in Iowa. Circling back to Wapello County (home to the American Gothic house) and the recap of its party chair Simonson, there were tech problems galore. Certain volunteers found themselves blocked at the new account setup stage of an app that allegedly didn't let them download it in advance. The app itself needed to be installed via a link within another download called Test Flight, which undoubtedly confused the "caucus chairs who need their grandkids to program their DVRs." All told, under ten percent of Wapello caucus leaders were able to run the app gauntlet.

To top it off, Simonson was informed of an assertion claiming counties' input was migrated into a Google Doc spreadsheet managed exclusively by the app's creator, Shadow Inc. Ready for two fun facts about the company with the ominous name? (1) The candidate who edged out Sanders by a whisker, Pete Buttigieg, was on their books for $42,500 that cycle. (2) The owner of Shadow's parent nonprofit (Acronym) was "a real enthusiastic Pete Buttigieg guy" while the founder was married to a Buttigieg senior strategist. Hmmm... some heavy food for thought given that the soon-to-be Secretary of Transporation was eventually handed victory by a fraction of one SDE!

2024

The chaos churned up by the delay in declaring a winner was probably the death knell for Iowa. Everyone and their mother, it seemed, was out for blood. To quote one Stuff You Should Know podcaster, "It so needs to go away. Yeah, that's my opinion, of course, but it's just so dumb."

Enter the DNC's rules and bylaws committee. Under the guise of a more representative future, they had sixteen states (and PR) pitch why they should go first. In predictable fashion, South Carolina -- the state that essentially made Biden an incumbent -- was chosen. The status of the Iowa caucuses and their primary parallel in New Hampshire was snuffed out.

As the 2024 race approached, both IA and NH tried to defend their standing. Both were threatened for stepping out of line, a challenge Granite Staters took head-on. So, how did the DNC respond? New Hampshire was stripped of its delegates. They refused to put the sitting president on the ballot there; instead opting to wage a Biden write-in campaign to ensure any opponent momentum would be stifled. Absolute vindictive savagery!

The Midwesterners, who faced brutal press headwinds generated by the previous debacle, agreed to a compromise that gutted their (now performative) in-person caucuses. A mail-in process, with a built-in seven-week muzzle on the outcome, was instituted to replace them. The silver lining: a virtually meaningless Caucus Day gave thousands of Iowa Democrats the chance to meddle with the GOP's countrywide kickoff by becoming "Republicans for a day."

Yes, not content after diluting the state's federal relevance, they rigged the opponents' race.

Aftermath

Looking at everything that's occurred in the last decade, how can anyone honestly argue that Iowans caused their own demise? Sure, the IDP and those ephemeral voters have their fingerprints on various elements, but the critical failures stem from national directives and tools.

Yet, journalists almost never give the latter angle air. Instead, folks like NPR's Ron Elving reframe the reset as a positive by promoting the view that it allows Dems to lean into their "appeal to the metropolitan areas and to a more diverse audience." Pair that sentiment with other ploys to jettison historical precedent, then take a moment to digest what a huge chunk of the map the DNC is inclined to neglect.

Other talking heads take it upon themselves to speak for the populace. Like when a host at (the now defunct) FiveThirtyEight Politics cavalierly announced that "Iowa Democrats generally seemed to get on board" with the caucus demotion.****

Regular taxpayers seem at odds with these political hacks. In Ottumwa, a Coal Palace Café employee bemoaned, "Iowa has always been one of the places the presidential candidates always want to hit cuz Iowa's got such a strong vote; but it doesn't feel like we've been heard."

That's real. And that's what was lost when the DNC deep-sixed Iowa's unique electoral role.

* Can we take a minute to reflect on how funky it is that the self-admitted socialist Senator from Vermont almost received the Democrats' nomination on two separate occasions despite his refusal to ever actually join the party?

** Yet another example of a radical political team with a double entendre name hijacking civics. Notice how this kind of 'prank' never seems to target the politicians or ideas they support.

*** Full disclosure: after attending just one event for a 2020 candidate, I was offered the opportunity to be a witness at the DC satellite caucus. I accepted out of morbid curiosity. I held and still hold strong contempt for this bastardization of democracy.

**** By extension, does that means we should assume he generally has no qualms with ABC terminating him and all of his coworkers?

Note: the post above may contain commentary reflecting the author's opinion.

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