Joe Biden has never been afraid of getting out in front of his party, or even his boss when he was VP.  After all, we have Biden to thank for dragging Obama over the line on marriage equality when it counted, and he’s also done it on assault weapons, troop support, healthcare, and other key issues.  He’s doing it again by shaking up the 2024 primary season, and that shake up is long past due.  The most controversial elements of the schedule is pushing South Carolina to the front, and relegating Iowa farther down the line.  New Hampshire would share the second night with Nevada.  Not surprisingly, Iowa and New Hampshire are pissed.

I happen to agree with Biden 100% in this change.  First let’s look at the obvious – diversity.  Iowa and NH are two of the whitest and most rural states in the US.  Iowa is 90% white.  NH is 87% white and packed with libertarian gun crazies.  After all, their state motto is Live Free or Die, which is not exactly comforting or consensus building.  Ignoring all other factors, the demographics alone disqualify these states as leaders, period. But it gets worse. In the last 12 primaries, Iowa chose a candidate who didn’t eventually win the nomination 4 times.  In 1976, in fact, Uncommitted beat Jimmy Carter by 10 points. In those same historic primaries, NH picked the wrong candidate 5 times.  To me, though, the death blow for Iowa happened in 2020 when it took them THREE WEEKS to announce the results, and that delay managed to pick…wait for it…Pete Buttigieg.  Biden placed fourth.  The Iowa caucuses can best be described with the words SHIT SHOW and have caused the state to lose all claims to being first in the primary/caucus season.

The rest of Biden’s plan is to push very important states to the front – South Carolina, then adding Nevada to the second week along with NH.  Those states will be followed by Georgia and then Michigan to round out the early states.  This plan makes a lot of sense as it brings demographic diversity, geographic diversity, and battleground states into the early results which will hopefully bring candidates with the broadest appeal to the front sooner.  This is a welcome change that has a number of advantages, not the least of which is motivating more people to participate.   I won’t be surprised, though, if the calcified leadership of the DNC kills it, once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The DNC is now considering what to do about Iowa in terms of where it sits in the order of presidential primaries, since it is traditionally first to go in the presidential race every 4 years.  My opinion?  Dump it.  The unmitigated shitshow of 2020’s caucuses should be the nail in the coffin of Number One Primary, but it goes beyond that.  Iowa voters are not predictive of a winner; its population is older, more rural, and generally less informed than many other states. As an aside, I even question the importance of New Hampshire, but whatever, let’s dump on Iowa tonight.  I’ve got an idea, how about we start out with Super Tuesday and just go from there?

There’s also other upsides to dumping Iowa; no more stupid steak fries, corn on the cob roasts, butter cow sculpture contests, and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on bus rentals going from VFW hall to VFW hall to press the flesh of octogenarians.  On top of that, the Iowa Dems can’t even manage implementing a Goddam iPad app, hence 2020’s disaster.  In short, fuck those hayseeds.  Go to the back of the line; sit down, shut up. Eat your corn.

Not that I’m opinionated.  Or worn out.  Or just sick of hearing about Iowa.  Rant over, good night.

File under: How Can You Be This Stupid?

Last night on national television, the Iowa Democratic Party shot itself in foot, and this morning it’s holding the same gun to its own head.  At this writing at 6:00 am, results of the caucus last night are still not in, and no one can say when they will be.  Holy Jesus.  With the 2020 election being probably the most significant presidential election in US history, some genius in Iowa decided it was a REALLY GOOD IDEA to roll out a new app to report caucus results.  AND, employing typical state party incompetence, training on said new app was between lame and non-existent.  Chaos ensued during the evening caucuses and the app, as apps are wont to do, locked up.  The state party then told precinct chairs to phone it in, jamming phone lines.  Some precincts actually had to take a photo of the app screen and drive the results in.  Stupid.  Incredibly stupid.

I’ve never really understood why Iowa has been so important for the last 40 years since Jimmy Carter put it on the map.  Or why it goes first.  Or why it still uses the caucus system which has never been all that reliable. Along with New Hampshire and Vermont, Iowa is probably the least representative of national diversity.  It’s sparsely populated and overwhelmingly white. I do know one thing – the Democratic Party didn’t need this, and is a terrible start to the 2020 election cycle.  Also, I predict that this is Iowa’s last time to be first and last caucus.

I have a suggestion for reforming Iowa’s caucus system and it goes like this:

1. Print up a whole bunch of sheets of paper with the candidate’s names on them.
2. Find a whole bunch of buildings around the state (churches, schools) that people can easily find.
3. Provide some little tables that have some privacy (We can even call them voting booths).
4. Have people come to this place, take a form, and put a mark next to the name of the candidate they want.
5. Count the marks for each candidate.
6. Send the totals in.
7. Go home and drink a beer.

I know this is a really unique approach to picking a presidential nominee, but it might just work, especially if the precinct chairs could read and count.  And, it would eliminate the idiocy of hopeful candidates spending years and millions of dollars drumming up support among the three dozen or so people living in the goddam state.  Iowa never deserved to go first with it’s stupid caucus system, and richly deserves to be moved to like the last on the list of Super Tuesday (or later).

Sheesh