Creepy Sleepy 132 - The Iowa Caucus Explained, Analyzed, Awesome
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Creepy Sleepy 132 - The Iowa Caucus Explained, Analyzed, Awesome
The Iowa Caucus occurs on January 3rd, 2008. Why is the Iowa Caucus so important to Presidential politics? How does the hell does this caucus thingie work? Creepy Sleepy explains this strange, convoluted process. Kind of.
Creepy Sleepy show 132 was joined by political junkie, blogger, and Iowa resident Greg Hollingsworth, as well as SCOTUS Correspondent for the Talk Radio News Service,Jay Tamboli to explain and discuss the caucus process.
From the Wikipedia entry on the Iowa Caucus:
The Iowa caucus operates very differently from the more common primary election used by most other states (see U.S. presidential primary). The caucus is generally defined as a “gathering of neighbors.” Rather than going to polls and casting ballots, Iowans gather at a set location in each of Iowa’s 1784 precincts. Typically, these meetings occur in schools, churches, or public libraries. The caucuses are held every two years, but the ones that receive national attention are the presidential preference caucuses held every four years. In addition to the voting, caucus attendees propose planks for their party’s platform, select members of the county committees, and discuss issues important to their local organizations.
Unlike the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, the Iowa caucus does not result directly in national delegates for each candidate. Instead, caucus-goers elect delegates to county conventions, who elect delegates to district and state conventions where the national convention delegates are selected.
The Republicans and Democrats each hold their own set of caucuses subject to their own particular rules that change from time to time. Participants in each party’s caucuses must be registered with that party. Participants can change their registration at the caucus location. Additionally, 17-year-olds can participate, as long as they will be 18 years old by the date of the general election. Observers are allowed to attend, as long as they do not become actively involved in the debate and voting process.
Creepy Sleepy also discussed the remarkable rise of Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney’s slide, and Obama v. Clinton showdown, as well as our super awesome (!) pics for Iowa and New Hampshire winners.
We also touched on a few nifty social media campaign tools. I suspect that some time soon we will devote an entire show to social media and the campaign. For now, here’s some nice campaign-monitoring tools:
Political ClipCast:
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You left out all the best parts. The description of everybody standing in groups for the candidate they favor. Then the second choice if there is no clear winner, where if you like so-and-so and they came in third, you can then pick your second favorite from One and Two in a run-off. This is extraordinarily important for two reasons. And it is why something like this occurring at the very first of the campaign season is so important.
To do this kind of selection process, a candidate must have their act together and the ability to both organize a campaign on the ground and appeal to the grass roots. Excepting this process, everything else is done by throwing money and avoiding catastrophic blunders.