Caucus Origins

With the election now over, I’m thinking back to the beginning.

On C-SPAN, on a cold Iowa evening, they were broadcasting from somebody’s house during a caucus. The rooms were packed with white people, most of them middle-aged, female, and pleasant. Complicated sweaters with cute attachments seemed to be the fashion, along with down-home democracy.

The arcane rules of caucus procedure meant the ladies would shuffle in groups from room to room, past the TV crew, making physical their politics by assembling a literal majority of bodies who supported John Kerry. Brief moments of negotiation were followed by consensus. One woman who supported Lieberman was politely informed she could either leave or join the Edwards group in the den.

I think John F. Kennedy’s ghost was in those rooms, the smiling handsome prototype of Massachusetts Democrats, a man of conviction who could be winsome or serious, depending on the political need. I have no evidence, but I think those Iowa Democrats might have hoped that Kerry was as close as they come, these days.

Nine months and half a billion dollars later we’ve got a president, it’s not John Kerry, and the Democrats are adrift at sea. Both sides fought the good fight. But I hope those shuffling Iowa ladies have better choices at hand next time, among Democrats and Republicans, because too much depends on them.