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From
PaStε

Caucus Night, or How Iowa Failed the Nation and Redeemed It Again


February 2, 2016 | 10:59am
By Shane Ryan


Deep breaths:

“You are SOooo RIGHT about the IOWA CAUCUSES DELEGATES ELECTORAL BULLSHIT!!!! – It is absolutely UNDEMOCRATIC COCKAMAMY CONVOLUTED KNUCKLEHEADED UNFAIR CRAZY BALONEY BULLSHIT!!!! – a true DISGRACE CORRUPTION of AMERICAN POLITICS and DEMOCRACY and should be ABOLISHED FOREVER!!!! ONE PERSON EQUALS ONE VOTE!!!! ONE PERSON = ONE VOTE!!!! WAKE UP STUPID GULLIBLE AMERICANS of AMERICA!!!! – ONE PERSON = EQUALS = ONE VOTE!!!!”

—Internet commenter Garyklara, sounding off on yesterday’s caucus Q&A

I’m not sure exactly how to feel, knowing Garyklara and I are on the same page, because I’m not a native speaker of that strident, glottal, lunatic language known as “Internet-English.” It’s the dialect of the chronically unhinged; a lingua franca uniting the deranged neural web of conspiracy theorists and raging liberals, all of them armed with smoldering persecution complexes, ... Sympathize with these people if you must ... But to my mind, they should be driven from their lands and scattered like rats. Repossess, rebuild, renew! Bulldoze the bastards!

But then again…when you’re right, you’re right. And my man Gary, bless him, grabbed the sons of the bitches by their starched lapels and nailed them right to the wall. ... Facts are facts: Certain things should be simple, and transparent, and fair. Certain things should be treated with a little bit of dignity, and be rescued from our circus instincts.

I did my research, and I arrived in Iowa City already toting some righteous indignation about the Iowa caucuses. The philosophy behind it is deeply flawed, and the anemic turnout numbers make it a farce. Then, yesterday afternoon, I learned that one of the main reasons the state won’t switch to an ordinary primary is because the minute they do, New Hampshire will get pissed off and try to jump the line ...

Then I actually experienced a caucus, and stayed up until 2 a.m. watching the results pour in. I saw at least six delegates decided by coin flip (all of which Hillary Clinton won, the lucky devil). I saw huge numerical advantages in the precincts reduced to ties because of pointless formulas. I saw a campaign plot to make a dead man viable in order to gain slight advantages.

I saw a candidate who almost certainly won the popular vote narrowly lose the delegate count. At least as far as we know, anyway, because I also saw precincts fail to report their results ... I saw voter fraud captured on video, but not corrected or policed. I saw precincts that may not even have had party chairs in the first place. I saw it all go down, and I saw the media throw up its hands, look at each other in bafflement, and call the whole thing a draw.

Maybe we can’t declare a winner, aside from that loathsome fanatic Ted Cruz, but we can absolutely declare a loser. The Iowa caucuses are, for the second straight election, an unforgivable national embarrassment, and a throbbing black eye for democracy.


But then, I saw some other things too…


Late afternoon, yesterday, I had the bright idea to look up the Bernie Sanders student organization in Iowa City. ... I sent an email out to the president, copying the director of public relations. The latter, Saba Hafeez, got back to me immediately. Saba is a 23-year-old first-generation U. of Iowa senior from Sioux City by way of Boston, raised Muslim, parents from Pakistan, politically active as long as she could remember. ... she was a hot commodity sought after by all three Democratic campaigns, ... it was a no-brainer for her to join the Sanders cause.

She gave me the lowdown on the right place to observe if I wanted to see a lot of students and big turnout. She was a captain at Iowa City’s fourth precinct, she said, at an arts center on the west side of campus. I looked it up, and decided to take her up on the offer. If nothing else, it would be nice to take a foot bridge over the Iowa River at night.

...

The lights of the city shone on the river. At Art Building West, a groovy postmodern building jutting out over Riverside Drive ... I waited at the bottleneck entrance. The line was short but getting longer, ... and everywhere inside, Hillary Clinton signs. Older women decked out in blue offered us Hillary stickers and buttons with the “H” logo—I always get a kick out of the arrow pointing to the right, perfect by accident—as the crowd funneled in.

“Hillary supporter?” they asked. New registrations on the right, repeat voters sign in to the left. Fill out your forms, and then head up the stairs, where another volunteer will offer you the chance to take a picture with a Hillary Clinton cutout. The Bernie people, far fewer in number, manned the new registrations desk—their bread and butter. Including my new friend Saba, who later told me that the minute the Clinton army entered the building earlier that night, they painted the place blue, signs everywhere, while the Sanders people just watched. Here were the early signs of the superior organization we’d been hearing about.

The stickers carried an enormous psychological weight, at least to me. Everywhere I looked, I saw Hillary supporters. Because we were on the outskirts of campus, the students mixed in with older voters, and while precincts in the heart of campus were falling for Bernie in total routs, it became clear to me that a different fate awaited precinct four. Again, I let the panic sweep in—if Sanders supporters are outnumbered here, in a city, in a university town, he’ll get killed across the state. They’ll demolish him in Des Moines, and he’ll be laughed out of the rural precincts.

I didn’t know how wrong I was. I didn’t know the drama that waited in the state, or the drama that beckoned inside these doors, in precinct four.


The people kept coming. Upstairs, outside a lecture hall with a ...

There would be 658 people in all—just shy of the Obama precinct record from 2008. The chair, a computer science professor named Douglas Jones with a white goatee and one of those Swiss alpine hats, complete with feather, managed to gather everyone upstairs. Chaos ensued as he tried to speak to the massive crowd outside the lecture hall, shouting into a microphone that could be heard inside the lecture hall. His vocal cords strained, people shouted back at him to speak up, and downstairs a clutter of noise as the last voters registered. Space would be a problem.

...

There wasn’t enough room to run the caucus upstairs, so as Jones began the alignment process, he told Hillary supporters to stay put, Bernie’s people to go downstairs, and anyone undecided to congregate in the upstairs foyer. (He forgot O’Malley, whose advocates were later given a tiny room in a hallway.)

Jones may as well have said, “young people go downstairs, old people stay,” because that was the effect. An exodus of the young flooded down to the main lobby, men and women alike, and I saw almost immediately that I was wrong about Hillary’s advantage—the numbers were staggering. Some friendly trash talk flew back and forth as the groups passed:

“Come with us, it’s so much cooler.”

“That’s right, take the walk of shame.”

...

I walked downstairs, pushed through the Bernie crowd, and found O’Malley’s room. Inside, about 15 people sat in glum discouragement, nowhere near viable. They looked at me hopefully as I entered the room, then saw my “observer” sticker and fell back into a funk. ...

Outside, Bernie’s precinct captain tried to speak to the milling group. ... when assertiveness verging on bullying was a prized asset. His voice wouldn’t carry, ... so another man had to step in for him. The supporters handed in their cards, and soon a total was announced: 333 voters. More than half of 658, just barely. Bernie had won. A loud cheer went up, followed by a “Feel the Bern!” chant.

Big problem: He hadn’t won a thing.

And here’s where the lack of organization and preparation hit the Sanders crew hard. The fourth precinct had eight delegates to award, and with an even number, the winning side has to do much better than 50 percent to avoid a split session. ... Each of the eight delegates in precinct four was worth 82 voters, based on turnout, so to avoid a 4-4 draw, Bernie had to win half the votes (329) plus half of a new delegate (41), for a total of 370.

And they had a chance—with the O’Malley and undecided groups not viable, those last 37 voters were out there to be absorbed. But while the Sanders precinct captain smiled and accepted congratulations, the Clinton deputies upstairs had their asses in gear. ...

They poached an O’Malley supporter or two, but as I walked upstairs to the group of 40-or-so undecided voters, I saw six blue-clad Clinton volunteers break them off into small groups and deliver their spiel. ... Meanwhile, there wasn’t a single Sanders rep to be found, and by the time they understood ... it was too late—the Clinton group already had what they needed.

... I had to tip my cap to the Clinton side. They were a well-oiled unit that had saved a delegate in a desperately narrow race where every single one would count. ...

“In Iowa City,” an ecstatic Clinton volunteer told me, “a tie is a victory.”

And she was right.


This, of course, represented another huge failure of the caucus process—it’s a place where strategy and assertiveness can win the day, and that’s an absurdity when the whole thing could have been settled by a secret ballot like the rest of the sane world. Sanders “won” the precinct by 60 votes, but that advantage meant nothing. And all over the state, especially in the cities, similar results were flooding in. That’s why his campaign is demanding that Iowa release the popular vote totals. ...

...

On her recommendation, I walked back over the river and found a bar and restaurant called “The Mill.” They had CNN on the big screen, audio blaring, and over the next two hours, at least 200 Bernie supporters filtered in ... watching the returns come in.

...

At 9:00 p.m., Hillary held a 20-delegate lead. ... dropping to just three delegates at 10:02. Her overall numbers fell below 50 percent, and Bernie would come as close as two delegates.

At some point, Hillary declared victory, despite having no clue how it would play out.

...


...

The irony here is that along with the narrow margin and the popular vote issue, the corruption and luck that benefitted Clinton just casts more doubt on the entire process, making it impossible to declare a victor. ...

It’s a bittersweet result for both sides. Clinton is re-living the nightmare of 2008, and Sanders proved that his appeal and his organization are legitimate, and ready for a protracted battle. Even if the results and she ekes out a close win, it’s the ultimate pyrrhic victory that raises more questions than answers. As for Sanders, ... If it’s true that he took the popular vote, it’s a maddening missed opportunity to generate a huge amount of momentum that could shift the dynamics everywhere, ...

They’ll both survive. So will the Iowa caucuses, probably. ...


Cynicism was prevailing, I’ll admit. But there came a moment…

At the bar, a girl named Veronica takes the microphone ... thanks the people around her. Veronica is the organizer, and these kids mean business. ... Even though the caucuses are over and the nation leaves Iowa behind, she wants to ... to keep the movement alive. She passes around an email list, and by the time it circles the room it will have a hundred signatures, maybe more.

I imagine these mini-movements are happening all over the state, and maybe some day soon they’ll happen all over the country. I don’t know these kids at all, but at this moment I love them. ... At times like these, I despise pragmatism and fear and lowered expectations, because I know that their spirit is the only thing that matters.

...