Caucuses Are An Exercise In Privilege By Hobbyists

I went back and transcribed what is one of the best explanations of why  caucuses should be banned by the Democratic Party as a means of choosing the party nominee.  From Alanna Harkin's on the ground in Iowa segement from Samantha Bee's show last week. 

Anybody who would struggle to get to a specific place at an inflexible time, I want them to have options. I understand why people like it, it's folksy and the idea of it is charming, to come together as a community, and we discuss who we want our next president to be. But what it ends up being is an exercise in privilege by hobbyists.  

Emmanuel Smith:  Disabilities advocate

I think if he had said "I understand why people imagine they like the idea of it" I could agree with the whole statement because I think anyone who has actually participated in caucuses knows that view of caucuses is fantasy, not reality. 

Having participated in caucuses for many decades, the folksiness and charm wore off pretty much immediately about fifty years ago.  The first thing I noted was that, honestly, every time except twice, easily fewer than 3% of the registered Democratic voters in my town caucused, a number that would honestly be a far lower percent because we stupidly have same-day party declaration in Maine and same-day registration  for what should be strictly party specific events, so the entire population eligible to vote would be the more honest number.  

The actual practice of persuasion and discussion is avoided because most of the time is spent on a futile attempt at explaining the ridiculous, occult and ever changing rules that the idiots of the rules committees have thought up for every cycle.  That can drag on for an hour or more.  Even the newbies have to have it explained and a lot of them have no idea what it's about.  The people who get on rules committees are dominated by idiots who like having their own way, those are the idiots who love caucuses.  Such as the Dick I'll get to in a minute. 

That theoretical bull shit that is the substance of the "folksiness and charm" has never been manifested in any caucus I've ever witnessed.  I have never seen more than one or two people change their minds to stand with another group than the one they started with.  Usually any discussion is when some carpetbagging Greens or others start fussing over things being "fixed" even though the process is the same for everyone.  The last time the Bernie Bots were the source of most of that.  I still am not speaking with one guy in town who made an ass of himself in that way.  

But that aside, it was the best short description of why caucuses are an abomination. 

In the show Ms. Harkin went back to the idiot brains behind the Iowa caucus, Dick Bender who said with total arrogance and thinly veiled elitism to the point she cribbed from Mr. Emmanuel:

Well, I think they're an exercise by people who really care about who is going to be president of the United States. 

As if people who couldn't get to a caucus, people who couldn't get into a caucus location, people who can't take hours on a week night (at least ours are on the weekend, now) who have young children and can't afford a baby-sitter, etc. don't care about who is president while old, white, affluent, mobile people for who that isn't a problem are the ones, you see who "really care".    What an asshole.  You really should watch it for just what a bunch of jerks the caucus enthusiasts are. 

We The People have got to prevent idiots like this from having such a damaging effect on American democracy.  CONSIDERING THE DISASTER THEY HAVE BEEN FOR DEMOCRATS GOING BACK FIVE DECADES, DEMOCRATS HAVE AN ESPECIALLY GOOD REASON FOR JUNKING THEM.   I don't think, given the debacle that the Iowa Caucus was, last night, those who insist on retaining them are really  that much different from the Republican ratfuckers who did damage to democracy in 2016, the end effect is the same.  Trump is making hay out of what Richard Bender was so self-satisfied and smug about on camera last week. 

Update:  Yes to Dumping The Caucus No To Enhancing New Hampshires Role: 

Reading the ongoing debacle in Iowa, here from Politico (not my favorite source for linking to)

If one thing was certain from Monday's debacle, Iowa had just signed its death warrant as the first-in-the-nation caucus state, the legendary Des Moines Register political reporter David Yepsen said.

“This fiasco means the end of the caucuses as a significant American political event. The rest of the country was already losing patience with Iowa anyway and this cooks Iowa's goose. Frankly, it should,” Yepsen said. “The real winner tonight was Donald Trump, who got to watch his opponents wallow in a mess. A lot of good Democratic candidates and people who fought their hearts out here for ... nothing.


“I expect Iowans will move themselves to kill it off by holding a primary, and let the state move to someplace behind New Hampshire along with other states.”

Living on the Maine-NH border for most of my life, being a life-long reader of news from that state NO.  New Hampshire has a better system, a primary, but no state should have the power that New Hampshire has given itself as "first in the nation".   No small group of states should have that power, certainly not concentrated in one region and with such a small population which has the distinction of being almost as lily white as Maine is and much whiter than even Iowa.  Here is a list of the 10 whitest states in order of increasing diversity. 

Least diverse states:

West Virginia
Maine
Vermont
New Hampshire
Montana
Kentucky
Utah
Iowa
Ohio

Wyoming

Notice anything about how they tend to vote in the general election? 

The whole thing needs to be fixed, have either an election with states from various parts of the country and of diversity go first or have a national primary in which only Democrats vote, preferably by a mail-in ballot.   That ballot should have a fixed form that doesn't change, though I would randomly have the names of the candidates arranged on papers, each one of them appearing first, second, third, on an equal number of ballots.  If you're going to use a computer for something, use it to make the system less biased.