Squirrel Killer
Member
Truer words were ne'er spoken.Gruco said:cynicism explosion
I don't get how everyone seems to be saying that Gruco's post is awesome except perhaps as an example of tight writing. That level of cynicism is caustic.
So as an Iowan, I guess I better defend my state.Gruco said:Tomorrow, a minority of people from the fine state of Iowa, itself a small, unrepresentative state, will go and vote. After having forced the candidates to spend a ridiculous amount of time campaigning in their state (instead of, you know, governing, legislating, etc) and pretending that their parochial interests are far more import than they actually are, these people will exercise a hugely disproportionate influence on the process. Its not really clear why this is the case, but one has to assume its because people from Iowa are really fucking awesome. Or something.
First, while it's ranked 30th, that means there are 20 states that are smaller. It's really only small compared to the biggest 8-9 states, and while there are several states that are count their blessings to have even one Congressional representative, Iowa has a sure lock on five for some time to come. Let's call it on the small side of average.
Second, it's more representative than people think. In the last seven presidential elections, it tracked with the national popular vote six times, going narrowly for Gore in '00 and narrowly for Bush in '04. (For some reason, we liked Dukakis in '88.) Also, while everyone stereotypes it as a farm state (which it is), it is still over 60% urban.
Third, forcing candidates to campaign is a good thing.
Fourth, the disproportionate influence is over-blown. As I've mentioned before, the Iowa winner has only won the nomination six out of twelve times. While that sounds pretty good, the fact of the matter is that most nominations are really only between 2-3 people. The only people who drop out because they lost in Iowa are those who didn't have the support nationally to continue (i.e. the people who didn't have a chance anyway.) Counter-intuitively, I think one way to decrease Iowa's influence is to slow down the nomination process, this front-loaded process forces a massively expensive national campaign and no recovery time. For example, Dean could have come back from the scream if he had a little more time to get back on message.
Finally, why Iowa? Why not? It's cheap to campaign in, voters are educated and active, it tracks with national preferences, and both parties are competitive. That's a combination that's hard to beat.