As Iowa Democrats struggle to tally votes and claw their way out of the rubble of Monday’s caucus crackup, there continues to be angst and outrage about the damage the Hawkeye State has inflicted on the democratic process — and the Democratic process. Terms like “catastrophe,” “debacle,” “fiasco” and “disaster” are being tossed about like salad greens.
That’s one way to look at the situation. Another way is that Iowa has done the Democratic Party — the nation, even — a tremendous service. Yes, the reporting of votes was a perfect storm of incompetence. And the muddled outcome failed to give any of the candidates the electoral tailwind about which they’d been fantasizing. But, delayed and deflated though they were, the results provided more clarity than anyone is giving them credit for — in some regards more than if the voting had gone off as planned. Among the valuable takeaways:
1. There is not yet a fresh burst of voter participation. At last count, turnout in Iowa was on track to hit 2016 levels — in the neighborhood of 170,000 caucus goers — a far cry from the Obama-inspired groundswell of 2008, for which about 240,000 Iowans showed up. This should give particular pause to anyone betting on Bernie Sanders’ argument that he will win by creating a new movement, fueled by people who normally don’t vote. But it should also be a warning for anyone counting on anti-Trump fervor to mobilize the masses. Clearly, the masses still need some convincing. Iowa deserves credit for revealing that sooner rather than later.
2. Even moderate Democrats have real concerns about Joe Biden’s ability to go the distance. The former vice president has many fine qualities. His resume is gold-plated, particularly in the crucial area of foreign policy. He’s got his regular-Joe patter down, he adores retail politics and arguably nobody feels voters’ pain better than him. Mr. Biden should have the so-called moderate lane of this race locked down. But he doesn’t. And whatever the precise vote tally, his lagging behind not just the field’s hard-charging progressives, Mr. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but also Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Ind., is a sign that he needs to up his game.
3. The Democrats’ nominating process needs to more accurately reflect its electorate. As is often noted, Iowa is way too white to have so much influence. So is New Hampshire, for that matter. As a party with a diverse electorate, the Democrats should not be spending so much time and money catering to such a monochromatic subset. The current debate over how much weight to give the Iowa weakness of Mr. Biden, who has held a comfortable lead among minority voters for this entire race, should not be happening. It is unproductive.
4. Caucuses should go the way of the eight-track tape. Their convoluted, undemocratic nature has been pointed out again and again. They jettison the principle of the private ballot. They are overly complicated and make participation too onerous for too many. In 2016, less than 16 percent of voting-eligible Iowans took part. This compared with a 52 percent participation rate in the New Hampshire primary.
In 2018, the Democratic National Committee adopted new rules urging states to switch from caucuses to primaries and calling on those that stuck with caucuses to increase accessibility. After the 2016 kerfuffle in which Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin win left Mr. Sanders’ supporters complaining about a lack of transparency, Iowa, in a panicked effort to save the process, vowed to make it more transparent by reporting out more of the raw data. It also sought to make the process more accessible by establishing online caucuses. The latter plan fell apart over security concerns. (They wound up adding “satellite sites” instead.) The additional reporting requirements … well, we’re seeing the unintended consequences of those now. Observers have spent this week critiquing the intelligence, tech savvy and even the advanced age of the legions of campaign volunteers trying to navigate the new app that was supposed to make the reporting process easier but wound up destroying it. But the core problem is the process itself. Don’t hate the player; hate the game. And keep in mind that Iowa is not the only state still relying on caucuses. (Looking at you, Nevada.)
5. There is a strong argument to be made that no single state deserves to hold the rest of the electorate hostage the way Iowa has for decades. Why should the parochial concerns of Iowans be forever more important than those of Arizonans or North Carolinians or Michiganders? Multiple alternative ways to set the calendar have been floated, and it’s past time to give them serious consideration. They could hardly be worse than the current system. If this year’s meltdown doesn’t spur Democrats to take long overdue action, they deserve all their future nightmares.
So, thank you, Iowa. This may be the most you have taught the electorate in a long while. Now take your bows, and step aside.
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