The Iowa Caucus Has Problems

Though the Iowa Caucus has been a great idea, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get great ideas working as they should, in this new improved world of ours!  (Last I heard, someone had created an App for the leaders of the Iowa caucuses to send in their numbers, and either the App did not work as advertised, or the leaders didn't use the App appropriately.  Apps are tricky things.  And furthermore, any and all Apps can be made to report to people and websites of which the users don't know anything about.  I'm not saying that happened in Iowa, but . . . the fewer Apps, the better, if you know what I mean.)

Anyway, its going to be a while before the information from Iowa comes out, but the null hypothesis there is (in other words, what we would believe if new information is not forthcoming) that the top four contenders are running neck and neck: Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg.

Now it is time for us to worry less about what everybody else thinks, which is what most of us have agonized about thus far, and settle what we think. 

Those who simply focused on getting rid of Trump (to put it crudely) have wondered which candidate can get the most votes at the general election.  Well, for those who are afraid that the most radical candidates will alienate moderate voters, listen: a Democratic president cannot simply put things in place without the active participation of Congress.  (Well; he or she might be able to do this, but it will create a stink from both the conservatives and the liberals.)  So the most far out schemes of both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren will be toned down to the sort of plans that Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are likely to try to float anyway.  So let us not worry about our nominee being too radical.

As far as the unaligned moderates out there: we can't do better than choosing someone who is not looking to antagonize the GOP.  None of the Democrat candidates are looking for a fight with the GOP (though, to be honest, we do think that they have betrayed themselves, and the conservative part of the population, by going this route of hostility to migrants, and belligerence to foreign nations.)

Biden: historically, he has been willing to compromise with conservatives (to the extent of talking in conservative language, occasionally).  But I'm afraid that, as some commentators have pointed out, if he is elected, Republicans could try to impeach him simply based on the Ukraine fairy tales that Trump and Giuliani have manufactured.

Warren is against the usual Washington shenanigans, but (she claims) she isn't prejudiced against the GOP as such.  I believe her; the question is whether the moderate rank and file believe her.  She has a few months to make them believe her.  She can be an excellent president, and in fact, I don't believe we can do better than her.

Sanders is becoming increasingly belligerent.  I think he would win if we have a massive Democrat turnout at the polls in November, but he is likely to get the Republicans all fired up as well.  I don't see a lot of healing taking place with Sanders on the ballot.  Now, bear in mind: Sanders is not mad at the GOP as such (or rather, he hasn't been.  After this impeachment, he is likely to be quite angry and disappointed in the conservatives), he is angry against money in politics, and corruption in government, and against the tax laws.  But those who are against money in government (and the tax laws) must also have conservatives among them.  It has only recently been the case that those who call themselves Republicans have been OK with the sorts of shenanigans that they have got into recently: with Russia, and bribery, and spreading false rumors, etc.  It is as if they're saying: we can't beat the Dems legitimately, so let's hand over the elections to Trump and these crooks, and see what we can get.

Yang is really a millennial moderate.  The young folks who have phones surgically planted in their palms see Yang as a hero, and he isn't really bad.  He hasn't alienated the conservatives, and he has retained a large number of liberal Democrats who are not interested in getting hostile with the Alt Right.  He calls himself 'a numbers guy,' and he seems at home with the numerical gymnastics that the economists like to play with: let's cut taxes by this much, and people will spend that much, and the unemployment rate will fall that much, and Wall Street will do that much.  I don't like these sorts of calculations, but if he must be the one who gets the nomination, I guess I can stand four years of him.  He at least knows the language better than Trump.

Buttigieg is a moderate.  Electability-wise, we have to consider all those whose view of the White House is that of a distinguished-looking guy in the Oval Office, and a gracious woman standing behind him, ready to help host a few nice parties for bigwigs from Europe.  I only know a few people among my neighbors.  I don't think having Buttigieg in the WH will be a disaster, but I have a feeling that it would be a tough sell.  Heck, a woman president would be a tough sell, but people have done it, and it has worked nicely.  But in these matters, the USA is not a trail blazer; we wait until it has been done in, say, Netherlands, or Russia, before we elect a gay president.

Klobuchar (Amy to her friends) is also an excellent choice, but she can't do it alone; she needs to be backed up with a strong army of administrative supporters, but I'm sure she can get one together.  She isn't committed to any of these Health Reform plans that have got some people all upset, but neither is she very hostile to any of them.  Honestly, a Health Reform plan must come from some sort of committee; I don't think it needs to be a detailed Take It Or Leave It plan.  A president needs to have the will to make it palatable, and not likely to be repealed by the GOP if they win the next election.  (The difficulty the GOP has had with repealing Obamacare simply goes to show how well the latter was put together.)

Bloomberg.  I hope he doesn't win the nomination.  If he does, it will go to show that only someone who can mobilize big, old-fashioned pots of money can win this election.  Maybe Trump has set us back a decade or two, and the idea of Big Money Can Win has captured the electorate, but I fervently hope not.  The same goes for Tom Steyer.  They both have excellent ideas, but they're sort of a tough sell; many people are tired of the bi-coastal power wielders to let them keep the leadership of the nation.  All the other candidates except Buttigieg and Klobuchar are bi-coastal types, but these two billionaires are obnoxiously bi-coastal.

So that's my take on the acceptability vs. electability conundrum we're faced with.  Of course, these issues will be decided one state at a time first.  But unless we stand by whoever the Party picks, no matter how lame, we're screwed.

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How the Iowa Caucus Works (AFAICT)

I had misunderstood how the Iowa Caucus(es) worked, and it is quite possible that I haven't got all the details right, but here's what I understand.

On the designated day, across Iowa in numerous neighborhood gathering places (analogous to voting precincts, but possibly smaller), Iowa Democrats gather, to do the following, called caucusing:

Various places in the room are set out for each candidate.  (This year, for instance, there will be an area for Bernie Sanders, and area for Joe Biden, and so on, down the line.)  Each Iowa Democrat voter goes to stand at the space set aside for the candidate that he or she prefers.  There is also a space for those who are still undecided.

Thirty minutes are permitted for those in each little group to persuade those in the other groups to join them (for instance, the Pete Buttigieg group could be trying to persuade the undecided voters to join them.)

Now, if I understand this correctly, any voters who are in any group that contains less than 15% of those in the room are required to abandon that candidate, and join the group of another candidate.  In other words, the least favored candidates are removed from consideration.  (This is similar to, but not the same as, the method used to select a new Pope from within the college of cardinals, in Rome.  In that situation, all the cardinals are considered in the first round, so that the process is self-nominating.)

Obviously 15% is an arbitrary cutoff level, but has probably been selected for the sake of efficiency.

Once the 'low-scoring' candidates have been eliminated in the first round, it could still be that one or more of the remaining groups does not have the requisite 15% to survive, in which case, it must be dissolved, and its members redistributed.  This process is continued until every candidate has at least 15% of the vote, and an elected person records the result, to be sent on to the district, which is next higher up in the hierarchy of polling regions.  Each group elects delegates to actually represent them, as I understand it, in the caucuses that follow--District Caucuses, presumably--until the State Convention meets, at which time the delegates choose a candidate somehow; I had lost patience with the whole business by the time I was reading about the State Convention. 

However, please note, that the raw "votes" of the first round are reported to the media, and the aggregated votes are publicized, despite the fact that the State Convention might produce a different candidate rather than the one who wins the most total votes in that first round.

(Despite my having said that I had gotten impatient with the process, I should not be misunderstood as being unimpressed with the process.  In a race where there are numerous candidates, such as we have this year, this process is probably the most fair, and the various opportunities for convinced voters to persuade other voters to their way of thinking is an imaginative means of explaining why a particular candidate might be a better choice, or at least a good fallback.)

The Republican Caucuses

Evidently the Republican Party of Iowa has its own, different rules.  They appear to me to be less reliable, and less successful at delivering, historically at least, a candidate who goes on to win the nomination.  Their process, which has changed over the years (as has the Democratic procedure, to be fair,) is available for your edification in Wikipedia.  And while you're at it, shoot the Wikipedia fellows a contribution, if that fits in with your plans.

The Debate

The question has come up: now that all the non-white candidates have been almost completely eliminated, as well as many of the female candidates, should Democrats select a woman candidate, since the minorities have failed to poll up to the bar set by the DNC?

Here's my thinking.

There are two objectives.

Bringing diversity into Presidential elections.

Electing a suitable president.

Of these, it seems to me that the nominee should be one who will move forward the desperately important Democrat agenda, following the devastation of the ultra-conservative four years that have gone by.  Making a statement about diversity takes second place.  This is not to say that it isn't possible to do both.  Select a president who can stand up to the nonsense of the ultra-Right, and inspire voters to go to the polls, and elect Democrat congressmen and congresswomen and senators; and if it is a woman, so much the better.

Electability rears its ugly head.  This is why the Iowa Caucuses are so important.  They subsume the problem of electability, and deliver a candidate with electability baked-in, as it were.

Still, there's no getting around the problem that Iowa has been a state with very little diversity, and one wonders whether they are competent to be the proxies for the nation in its needs for diversity of all kinds, including biodiversity, and ecological diversity.  Do they even understand the problems of the Farming Industry, and the Manufacturing Industry, though one would expect that they are placed well enough to understand those?

But as Democrats across the country walk about in bewilderment, trying and usually failing to allow their prejudices to select a candidate, given that none of the candidates are TV celebrities, to make things easier for us, it is good to get a head start with those brave idealists in Iowa!

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The Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primaries, and what is a Washington Insider?

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Haha.  Ted Cruz has evidently come out slightly ahead of Trump and Rubio, and is basking in his slight victory.  (It is hard to imagine how the more sophisticated and socially aware within the GOP can bear the boorishness and hypocrisy of Ted Cruz; but he comes off looking good compared to --well, others of their candidates.)  You just know that the better-educated within the GOP do not believe in Creationism, or in banning abortion.  But it suits their purposes to encourage Presidential hopefuls to spout this extreme propaganda.

Hillary Clinton seem to be slightly ahead in Iowa, and there are rumors that she and Bernie Sanders were in a dead heat in a number of New Hampshire caucuses, and the ties had to be broken with coin tosses.  And she won every single toss, I'm hearing.  I sincerely hope that the Secretary of State did not flood the state with fake coins, though I think she would make a good president.

The problem with Hillary Clinton is that she is viewed by (and heavily painted by) the GOP propaganda machine as a Washington Insider.

What does that mean?  (See the article in Wikipedia about what a Washington Insider is, and "Inside the Beltway," and "Beltway Bandits".  You can Google it.)

Hillary Clinton was in the White House as Bill Clinton's wife for eight years, and as Secretary of State for another eight years.  She has lots of friends and acquaintances in Washington, D.C., but I doubt whether that gives her access to the halls of Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the White House (if it happens not to be occupied by a Democrat), or the Treasury.

Once Obama leaves, he would not be much of an insider either; though one can imagine that his emails could get in to certain influential people.  The political actors in Washington are not the insiders.  The insiders are those in the Washington Think Tanks, and the Lobbyists.  To the extent that anyone has friends among this crowd, they are Washington Insiders.

That would make Hillary Clinton a Washington Insider.  This is the single factor that worries me.  To the extent that Hillary Clinton believes that American Business is the Strength of America, we are in trouble.

I do think that Obama pays lip-service to this idea, and he may even believe it to a certain extent.  But I think Obama is fundamentally a Washington atheist, and doesn't truly subscribe to any of the sacred superstitions about How Things Are Done that political addicts spout.

One doesn't really know what Hillary Clinton believes, any more than one knows what Bill Clinton believes.  They both have a certain level of openness that they let the world see; but there is a deeper level that is kept hidden.  That's fine by me; I'm probably the same way.  Obama is probably the same way, but it seems that there is greater overlap between Obama's professed principles and his real principles.

My wife seems to think that Bernie Sanders's big problem is that he wants to butt heads with Business.  "Every State has some big businesses," says my wife, "and it's difficult to go up against them, because they spread a certain degree of wealth around the cities and states in which they're located."

Hah.  Tell that to Seattle.  There was news recently that Microsoft and Starbucks had negotiated such huge tax concessions with the State Government that they paid practically nothing in taxes.  It was the same with Boeing, apparently.  I wonder how it is with Exxon-Mobil?  No.  The big businesses no longer believe in trickle-down.  They do not believe in dividends, either, which is one reason Wall Street has such a bad time.  Prices of stocks go up and down, but the dividends stay low.

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