The New Republic Online: Campaign Journal - KERRY ON: Des Moines, Iowa to Manchester, New Hampshire (1/20/2004): ....In his final words before his final Iowa crowd before the caucuses Monday, Kerry implored, "Go to your caucuses tonight and don't just send them a message, send them a President of the United States, so we can say, 'Mission accomplished!'" His eyes were a little moist. "I think this was really emotional for him," said an aide after the event.
Well, yes, one would think that it would be a tad emotional; he was afeared that he'd be unceremoniously punted out of the race if the polls were anywhere near right. So congrats, and all that; thanks for keeping things interesting and keeping the punditry in business for another week.
But here's the question I've been wondering: why Iowa? and why New Hampshire, for that reason? Why do both major parties allow two states with small populations, which cannot in any reasonable way be said to be representative of the country at large, to be the pacesetters for the election? If this were, say, 1804 (except that Iowa wasn't a state yet) or even 1904, it might make slightly more sense, but in this day and age, it's just baffling. I understand why Iowa and New Hampshire are dogged and determined to keep such precedence -- it gives them national attention and influence of a sort that they would not otherwise warrant -- but really, why doesn't the party just say, "You know what? You're skewing our results. We're going to try to set a national primary no matter what you say; states that don't do what we tell them when we tell them will not be allowed to seat delegates at the national convention."
The extent to which Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of this country is really impressive, in its own way.
(Actually, it turns out that there are lovely comparative summary tables for both New Hampshire and for Iowa that do part/whole comparisons of the state against the US at large. Almost everything you could want, census-wise, is on that site, but it's easy to get lost digging in the wrong place.)
On the one hand, the argument can be made that if you can't get the well-off white folk to vote for you, you can't win. That's certainly true enough. However, although most people in this country may well be white, most people certainly aren't that well off, and economics guides people's votes considerably more than race generally does.
The more you look at things, the more it seems that Iowa and New Hampshire really ought not to be allowed to dictate the course of election-season politics in this country.
Posted by iain at January 20, 2004 04:29 PMComments
