Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Iowa Caucus

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

The Iowa Caucus is super important. But not really. Find out why.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Yeah, let's get it started in here, go. Timely episode. So timely. We are rarely recording to release the next day. So I was like, hey man, let's do something super newsy. What's something that's super newsy that's not impeachment? And turns out the Iowa caucus is getting a little news. Yeah, just a tad.

It's crazy, like we thought that we would have the results to talk about, nope. I know, because I pitched this yesterday. Right. And the day of the caucus. Right. Woke up this morning to S Show in Iowa as the headline. Cluster F, crazy.

Yeah, but we're talking about caucuses in the Iowa caucus and why it's important and where it came from. We should define caucus, because a lot of people are thinking just like, what does that even mean? Well, I mean, for good reason, it's kind of an old timey thing, a relic. And that's still in use in Iowa.

Caucus, though, is a meeting. This is the strict definition. Webster's defines caucus as, a meeting in which local members of a political party register their preference among candidates running for office or select delegates to attend a convention. Right, but the thing about a caucus is,

it's not like just going to vote. That's a primary. A caucus is where you are physically present in the room, like that meeting you described. And the way that you show, at least as far as the Democrats caucus in Iowa, the way that you show you are planning to support or vote, most normal people would call it,

for a candidate is you go stand in a portion of the room that's been set aside for that candidate supporters and their names on the wall or something like that. It so needs to go away. Okay, that's just step one. Yeah, that's my opinion, of course, but it's just so dumb. Okay, it is-

Such a dumb way to do it. And you can tell, like Iowa is fiercely defensive about it's caucus tradition. I don't want to go on record as saying like, I don't know if it's going to survive until 2024. Well, I don't think it will now. But it is under some serious threat of not- It's more at risk than it ever has been after last night.

Yeah, ironically, by trying to modernize the caucus. Right. So we'll get to all that. Okay, so you go stand by your delegates name. Yes. And if enough other people who are present at that caucus go stand with you by the delegates name, that delegate is a viable candidate.

Usually that means they have about 15% or more of the room. Yeah, if you're a candidate that you want to go stand under a sign of in a high school gym is not considered viable. You can go join another group. You can try and recruit people, say, hey man, stand under this sign. Come ye.

Or you can go home if you want. Sure. You can be like, all right, that was my candidate. Right. There's only like eight other people here standing under the Yang team sign. Yang had more than eight. Yeah, of course he did.

I think you're thinking of Biden. But yeah, that is how they run, the Democrats run the Iowa caucus Republicans and the GOP or the Republican National Convention. They just vote like a regular old primary. Right, and like you were saying, ironically, they tried to modernize the caucus, the Iowa caucus and that's what caused this huge problem.

With an app, isn't that right? Well, originally they were gonna have virtual caucuses. They decided not to, the DNC rejected Iowa's plan to have a virtual caucus where you could go online and be like, I'm standing in the Yang gang room. Right. So I'm caucusing for Yang. This was rejected by the DNC.

They had too high of a potential to be hacked. But they still did use an app to tally these delegates and apparently it was not doing what it was supposed to do. At least this is the official line. Everybody is saying, no, it's everybody from Russia to the DNC, engaging in all sorts of terrible stuff. Regardless, this app apparently really screwed up the caucus and in an attempt to modernize the caucus,

it actually set it back and possibly drove it to extinction. Yeah, I mean, they're saying the app did not crash and then there's other people saying the app totally crashed. So I don't know who to believe. The long and short of it is we usually wake up on the following day of the Iowa caucus with a decent idea of who the top three candidates are going to be going into primary season.

But we woke up this morning with no idea and I just looked on my phone. The breaking news is that in two hours from now, they will have 50% of the results released by 5 p.m. Eastern. Yeah, usually you don't even have to wait. Yeah, you wake up and you're like, oh, okay. No, no, I mean, you don't even have to go to sleep. Oh, wow.

They usually report within a couple of hours. If you're in the Eastern time zone, or no, if you're in the Western time zone. Yeah, you might know. Like you're eating a cheeseburger getting all the results, you know? Yeah, so it's been a big embarrassment. But maybe we should take a break

and talk a little bit why the Iowa caucus is important to begin with. It's not. It's not. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, this is one thing that makes the Iowa caucus so at risk right now because of this 2020 problem that came out of the 2020 caucus. Okay? Yeah. It is artificially important. The Iowa caucus is not actually, when you dig down into it,

substantially important in any real way. No. It is important, but it's important because the media has made it important over the years. That's right. It is, well, first of all, it is not the most diverse state in our union. That's one criticism of the Iowa caucus.

Yeah, I saw apparently the caucus goers were 91% white. Yeah. Largely rural. A bunch of white people standing around in the gym. Yeah. I know people in Iowa are going to be so mad at us. But I think it's antiquated, I'm sorry. I saw that they're, sorry, just real quick.

Two things last night. There were at least two ties. And so to figure out how to divide delegates to break a tie, a coin was flipped, and a name was drawn out of a hat. Wow. That's how they broke ties with the Iowa caucus last night. To decide delegates for the state. Okay, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, that's unbelievable. But then again, what's more diplomatic than a coin toss than getting more 50-50 than that? Are you ready for some football? So in 1972, Senator George McGovern was running for president. He did a pretty good job at the Iowa caucus, and that was good for his campaign. And it was sort of the first year that the media really put a lot

into this on reporting on it. And I think from like 1972 is sort of looked at as the watershed moment of when the media would come out the next day and start saying things like dark horse and front runner. And the media has, it's maddening, but the media has such influence on the way people vote. And not just by saying like, here's this person's policies, is people saying like, oh, I don't want to vote for the dark horse.

Who's the front runner? I might be interested in that person. Precisely, it's absolutely true. It's all fake. They can influence voting or caucusing, not just by releasing polls, but by withholding polls, too, even, right? So this 1972 is a big year,

and the reason why is because it was the first year that Iowa became the first in the nation. That's why Iowa is important. It's the first time that voters have any chance anywhere in the country to say this is what I think about all these primary candidates celebrating at each other the last few months. I'm going to go stand over here. We're going to see where the rubber meets the road for the first time.

Iowa was the first at that. And it became first for two reasons. In 1972, the GOP decreed that you had to give 30 days notice before any kind of caucus or primary was held. And apparently that meant that Iowa had to move their caucus closer to the beginning of the year. Right. And secondly, they couldn't get a hotel for the convention,

the Iowa State Convention, at a time when they wanted it. So they, again, had to push the caucus back. So it inadvertently became the first in the nation. And they said, oh, everybody's paying attention to Iowa all of a sudden. Yeah. We're getting a disproportionate amount of interest from the National Press, from these candidates that are coming into town spending money. Yeah.

And we have influence politically. Exactly. Because they're going to listen to us. And they're going to make a state law that says Iowa has to be the first contest in the nation, no matter what. Doesn't matter what any other state does. Iowa has to figure out a way to be first. Right.

Which doesn't mean there's some sort of federal rule that says you go first. That just means that in Iowa, they're like, well, if New Hampshire wants to move it up a week, then we'll move it up a week. Yeah, it's a state law there. Yeah. And New Hampshire has a state law as well, that they're the first primary. That's right. That's how Iowa's gotten away with it.

There are caucus, New Hampshire's the first primary. New Hampshire's like, we vote. Right. We don't go stand around in a gym. I saw a tweet, apparently, the New Hampshire Democrats tweeted to the Iowa Democrats and said, don't worry, we've got this. Really? Yeah.

They got faced. So that is why the Iowa caucus became such a big deal, because they're first, because the media has an outsized influence on elections. Whether or not it matters is a matter of debate. In the history of the caucuses, you've never gone on to win the nomination if you finished worse than third. But there have been cases where Bill Clinton placed third. So it's not like you got to win Iowa.

Look what happened to him. Yeah. Two-termer. Sure. Impeached. Right. Went through it all. He went through it all.

The highs and the lows, the good and the bad. Right. George McGovern, the first candidate in 1972 when Iowa was a big deal for the first time. He came in first, second, and he got the nomination, but he didn't win the presidency. So it's not necessarily that good of an indicator. Jimmy Carter won the presidency. What place did he come in, Chuck? Well, apparently he did a really good job in Iowa, because he spent a lot of time there

stumping. For a year. But it says that he was actually beaten by uncommitted. So the people who said that they hadn't chosen a candidate yet outnumbered anybody supporting Jimmy Carter, which makes sense. But when you just hear it like he got beaten out by uncommitted, that's even, that's so Jimmy Carter. I know.

It really is. Or it's so 1976 Jimmy Carter. Yeah. Because that guy has turned into one of the greatest statesmen and living saints in American history. The best thing ever is being at like at a Braves game when they showed Jimmy and Rosalind are at the game and they're like, just hold his dirt and they always give each other a kiss and everyone in the stadium melts.

I know. It's amazing. And she's always like got, she's always chewing on a hot dog or whatever and she has to like stop and swallow before she'll give Jimmy a kiss back. It's their thing. The other thing about Iowa is if you don't do well there, then you might drop out. If you do surprisingly well there, then you might, you know, that could kickstart or very much will kickstart your campaign again.

So now we've reached why Iowa is actually important. But again, this is artificial because it's the media putting labels on people. That's right. So the media basically says, hey, this candidate is expected to do really well. If that candidate doesn't do well in Iowa, the media says, this is not a viable candidate. You should drop out. Yeah. This actually causes funding to dry up for the campaign.

Why am I going to get money to someone who's not viable? Right. The media said they're not viable. Yeah. And then conversely, like you said, if somebody's not expected to do well and then does really well in Iowa, their campaign can just take off. That's what happened to Obama in 2008. Yeah.

Oh, Iowa made Obama in 2008, right? Yeah. Really launched that campaign. So all of this stuff again is just self-fulfilling prophecy, which is what makes 2020 so nuts that all of the Democratic candidates spent so much time and so much money and so much effort in Iowa to get this. I saw a tweet from Glenn Greenwald actually basically laying this out to get this artificial bump.

Yeah. And then the artificial bump didn't come, which rendered the Iowa caucus totally unnecessary. Yeah. The whole thing was unnecessary. I think they're plowing ahead to New Hampshire. Oh, yeah, they're already there. Yeah, a lot of the candidates were claiming victory in sort of backhanded ways, not backhanded, but just sort of, they couldn't come out and say we won.

But every single one of them were like, oh, I think we did very well tonight. Right. They were like, I want to congratulate my fellow nominees on coming in second. Yeah. Everyone kind of claimed victory because no one could. Not everybody claimed victory because some people clearly could not. Yeah. But Jim, uncommitted.

Yeah. Well, if you want to know more about the Iowa caucus, you'd better find out about it now because it might not be around next time. Maybe not. We'll see what happens. I guess, well, let's just save short stuff out.