A Look At The Iowa Caucuses
By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
This week’s edition of The Wanderer will be the last before the Iowa Caucuses formally kick off the 2020 race for the White House. And while the focus of the February 3 caucuses is on the Democratic race for the nomination, the Republicans will also caucus on the same night, at the same time.
So what is a caucus and what do the participants do? Well, for starters, a caucus is not like a primary election where a voter can just check a box for his favorite candidate and go on about his day. A caucus, if done correctly, is a bit of work. First, anyone who will turn 18 by the election (November 3) may attend and participate. The task of the participants is really threefold: party building, platform building, and candidate selection. And, keep in mind that these are precinct — neighborhood — meetings, where you can go and argue politics with the guy next door who always puts out those ugly posters for candidates you hate.
Let’s start with party building. Each precinct will elect committee people to serve on the party’s county central committee which will coordinate with the state party’s efforts in the next election. In addition, they will elect delegates to the county convention, which in turn will elect delegates to the district and state conventions where delegates to the national convention and presidential electors will be chosen.
Participants at the caucus can also offer resolutions on issues for inclusion in the party platform. Those resolutions which pass will then be referred to the county convention and can be further considered by the district and state conventions, as well as the national convention. Thus this is the first step for adopting a party platform.
But what most people are interested in is the beginning of the presidential selection process. Here the parties operate a bit differently. The Republican caucus will take a vote as to who should be their presidential nominee. Those results are forwarded to the county, then state parties, and then are released to the public. In 2016 Ted Cruz won with 27 percent of the vote, followed by Donald Trump at 24 percent.
Democrats, on the other hand, select delegates to move forward based on their presidential preference. Thus participants must gather with those of a similar candidate preference to determine their delegate choices. The trick here is that there is a threshold number to be able to select a delegate. Those preference groups who do not achieve that threshold number (15 percent of caucus attendees in most instances) are considered non-viable. Those in non-viable groups will then be given the opportunity to regroup with a group that is viable or merge with another non-viable group to make themselves viable.
The projection of national convention delegates from Iowa (which will have 49) will then be reported and the press will determine, or report on, who was the “apparent” winner of the caucuses, yet the winner may not be the candidate who places first or has the largest following.
So this is how it gets tricky for the Democrats. According to the latest Des Moines Register Poll, there are four candidates, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden who are polling at 15 percent or above, meaning that if those figures hold for caucus night, each will be able to claim at least one delegate to the next level. However, according to the poll, there are 11 percent who are undecided and several other candidates who split another 19 percent.
So let’s assume that in a precinct with five delegates to the county convention, they split according to the poll: Sanders would get two delegates and Warren, Buttigieg, and Biden would each get one. Now assuming the non-viable groups join and support Amy Klobuchar from neighboring Minnesota to prevent Sanders from “winning,” results could be Klobuchar (or uncommitted, which is possible under the rules) with one delegate and the others with one. Thus the regroup can be used to take away Sanders’ second delegate in this example.
And here is a change from the 2016 rules. If you are initially a member of a viable group you must stay with that group. Previously, any participant from any group could choose to regroup. That is not allowed this year, so if a participant groups with one viable candidate because his first preference was not viable, he cannot regroup to that candidate’s group if it later becomes viable.
Confused? Now you know why the press extrapolations of the precinct delegate count could seriously misrepresent candidate strength.
Right now candidate managers, especially for those not now polling well, are formulating possible alignments with allied candidates for just this scenario. The eye will be on how the candidates perform, but the results may hinge on how their managers navigate the preference groups.
The ultimate goal, however, is to amass a majority of the national delegates to ensure a victory at the party’s national convention this summer. With the large number of viable candidates on the Democratic side, especially since all delegate selection — whether from caucus or primary — is proportional, it might be possible that no candidate will have a majority for a first ballot victory. The last time that occurred at a Democratic convention was 1952 when Adlai Stevenson won the nomination after the third ballot.
Over the years, it should be noted that only 30 percent of Democrats nominated on the second ballot or beyond went on to win the presidency. In 1952 Adlai Stevenson lost to Dwight Eisenhower.
For those political junkies reading this, here are the winners of the Iowa caucuses from 2000 onward, GOP listed first, then Democrat, then ultimate election victor: 2016: Sen. Ted Cruz; Former Secretary Hillary Clinton; Donald Trump. 2012: Sen. Rick Santorum; President Barack Obama; Obama. 2008: Gov. Mike Huckabee; Sen. Obama; Obama. 2004: President George W. Bush; Sen. John Kerry; Bush. 2000: Gov. George W. Bush; Vice President Al Gore; Bush.
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Larry P. Arnn is president of Hillsdale College and, unlike most academicians mentioned in this column recently, is smart. In early December he spoke at a Christmas open house for the college. His words were reproduced in the college’s publication, Imprimis. The topic was a celebration of the 175th anniversary of the founding of the college.
Dr. Arnn noted that most of the founders were white and male, and while celebrating such persons may not be considered kosher today, there were reasons to do so and to celebrate the college.
The first was due to the founders themselves: “They thought liberal education was the road to good living, good citizenship, and good statesmanship….These founders were patriots [committed to] perpetuating the ‘inestimable blessings’ of ‘civil and religious liberty and intelligent piety’.”
He continued, “These founders thought that liberal education should cultivate the practice of the moral alongside the intellectual virtues….[They] thought that liberal education required thinking about God, known to reason and in philosophy as the perfection of all being, known to these founders’ faith as Jesus Christ. They followed the classics in thinking that all of our judgments of good and bad, better and worse, implies some standard that is complete or perfect. In philosophy properly pursued, the subject of God cannot be neglected.”
Another reason for the celebration, he said, can be found in the “nature and ground of the contemporary aversion to such things….Colleges today are increasingly collections of hostile identity groups, each clamoring against the crimes of the other. Students are not invited to step outside themselves, to step outside their own time, and to look at things as they have been understood by the best over time. If they did that, they would then learn and grow not by invention but by discovery.”
As Arnn suggests, the four pillars upon which Hillsdale College was founded, learning, character, faith, and freedom, should be a model for all bastions of higher education; unfortunately they are not.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com.)
