The Next Hurrah

The Iowa Crockuses

by emptypockets

As you're no doubt aware, the Iowa crockuses are tonight. They are a folksy homespun tradition -- you can tell it's folksy and homespun by the living rooms and pie -- that was invented by Dr. Alfred Crockus, who believed that participatory democracy would be made most inclusive and the results most accurate if everyone went to strangers' homes at night, got drunk, and performed arithmetic.

This year's crockuses seem, to me, to have less media gravity -- to have sucked fewer words and ink into their orbit -- than the ones in 2004, which took place on Jan. 19 of that year. The Christmas and New Year's holidays provided a nice winter snowstorm of light, fluffy news which is great for packing into cable news, as long as you don't have to shovel it. By comparison, at this time four years ago we had another couple of weeks of Iowa campaign events and media coverage to inflate the significance of that state's results. To my mind, this year's crockuses feel more like a starter's gun than a finishing line.

My favorite site for tracking news about the race is http://www.electoral-vote.com, which has switched fully into primary mode as of the New Year. As you can see there, the polls are essentially "25% +/- 5%" for all three of the Democratic contenders, and they've been that way for nearly a full year. It's difficult enough to interpret poll numbers on a two-way race, where the preference numbers are typically an order of magnitude greater than the error. In a three-way (or more) race, where everyone's close and the fraction favoring any given candidate is small relative to error, the polls are almost as short on substance as the crockuses themselves.

And that's not to mention the funny way the crockuses themselves work, prone to mistakes, manipulation, and mess-ups. There may be disputes about the tally at the caucus site, where the loudest voice usually wins, and misinformation about the numbers and the candidates spread on-site to screw with people's votes. And, after all that vote-wangling and miscounting, we may never know how many individual voters were, in the end, recorded as having voted for a given candidate -- because those person-by-person counts are mailed to party headquarters and kept there, not disclosed to the press or the public. Ever.

I was only beginning to read blogs, and had not been commenting or writing, during the 2004 crockuses, but I recall well watching the broadcast of a couple of individual crockuses on C-SPAN that night, and following along on the DFA blog. I've been looking back at the archive of the site from that night, and find that my reactions were well mirrored by a series of comments from someone commenting as "Perry Young," who was liveblogging (perhaps?) before liveblogging was a word:

69. I am watching the Caucus on CSPAN 2, it is a disorganized mess. The people can't get phone calls out due to Bush callers blocking the line - they are having trouble with the math - and it looks like bedlam!!!! For a person from Texas this looks like madness. People trying to do math and they can't get figures to balance. They are getting cut off. Maybe it is just that I am not used to it, but this looks like a nightmare!!!!!

86. How can anyone assure accuracy in an environment such as what I am seeing on CSPAN-2 right now? It looks really really confused. I think I see why Dean spoke out against the Caucus system. It is a prescription for mass error. Wow, never seen anything like this.

115. Watching CSPAN-2 - this looks crazy. Can these people run a calculator? What is the control for error? I am amazed, I have never seen one of these before. Very very very weird. I am used to primaries.

That's just about how I felt. In fact, this post is something of a political birthday for me -- as best I can remember, the first time I commented on a blog or used the name 'emptypockets' was around Jan. 25 2004, in a sort of talking blues about the Iowa system and the race so far. (And, listening to it again now, it's not half bad!) So, happy birthday to me, and -- to you -- happy crockusing!

A little North of Iowa, but the same system.

by Sara

You all may or may not know that the Iowa Democratic Caucus Rules are the same or similar to the Minnesota DFL Caucus Rules.  Yea, we, maybe made a few changes and all, but the intent is the same.  It is simple, Advantage the activists, and discount the bandwagon.  While I strongly believe that early efforts at organization and with candidate offices can help, no way that late efforts will.  Iowa is about the locals sitting in the cafe, and discussing how to caucus over pie.  If you are not in that clan forget it.  Many issues are involved, and none of the networks seem to be able to report.   

A little North of Iowa, but the same system.

by Sara

Sara,

a bit off Topic, but I was in my Physical Therapist's office today checking out my knee. Old basketball injuries! I saw a copy of The Weekly Standard, Nov 12, 2007 which had an extensive article on Antioch College.

i.e. Death by Political Correctness (Who killed Antioch College?)

Very interesting read. - - - - -

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Yes, I suspect most interesting.   Jodi, remember, I am a child of the old Trots from back in the 30's.  But I grew up and thought for myself.   I own a lot of old manuscript, and control a bit more, but I am also a Historian and believe in putting documents and all the rest in the public domaine. 

I doubt if you know what an interesting read is all about. 

New Year's Hope -- it is not in my power to resolve

by Sara

I was invited to two New Year's parties tonight, but I am tired of not being home and among my books, and cooking the food I like.  Later tonight I will make the second installment of Oyster Stew -- having bought two pint's of good Oysters prior to being diverted to emergency duty. 

But my New Year's hope is that the Alumni and the donors to Antioch College, and others who understand the need for strong Progressive Institutions, will succeed in rebuilding what Holiday Magazine called, in 1956, that Great Quaker Workcamp in the Woods.   The College is not really a Quaker institution -- hardly, in the last several decades, but elements of it have survived the onslaught of business minded boards of trustees, (business sometimes is about mergers and acquisitions actually and too many folk who keep secrets as if they were CIA and FBI and all rolled into one.)   Too many folk went around quoting Horace Mann about winning victories for Humanity, without a grounding in what dear old Horace really meant.  Hard to win one unless you have a sense of what contemporary mass humanity is all about. 

Horace Mann's great contribution to American Culture was an understanding of what was necessary to "keep a Republic" as Ben Franklin expressed it -- Mann was, as I see it, the second generation of the Founding Fathers.  He spent his political career, I think it was 18 years in the Mass. Legislature, and 2 years in Congress, advocating free public education for everyone.  His years as a legislator were involved with finding a means to both tax for a public education system -- and provide oversight on the funds thus raised to see to it that they were honestly spent for that purpose.  He did not succeed till 1839, but when he did, he assumed the leadership of the Boston School Committee so as to set an example as to what oversight of Public Education would involve, and in those days it involved three things.  First, Set a secular curriculum.  Second, build the necessary schools, buy books, and fuel the classroom stoves, but make certain no dollar is misspent. Third, accredit teachers as at the time no teacher training academies existed.   

After more than a decade setting the Boston School Committee as the leading example of how to administer a Public School System, Mann was attracted by a project of his friends, some of them Brook Farm Folk -- the locus of Jo's father in Little Women -- Lousia May Alcott's father -- but also a mite of Emerson and Thoreau.  But the project was that of the Christian Connection -- an early effort at ecumentalism that was less than successful because of hidden sectarian tendencies, but just the same, they tried around the matter of abolitionism.  Some of them were also transendentalists.  That idea survived but without sharp defination.  Yes they were abolitionists -- afterall they founded a school with no gender or racial proscriptions.  Beyond that they did not go -- at least for the next 60 or so years after Horace Mann charged the first graduating class with the mission of winning victories for Humanity.  (many died or were seriously wounded in the Civil War -- the college closed so the students could join the Union Army.)

In 1866 Antioch beat Ohio State 66 to 0 in a football game.  We hold that victory out as "fair game" -- given that we have more prizes for non- muscle competitions. 

Antioch went into dead null after the Civil War -- they had a religious war about doctrine, and all the rest, and the place went dead.  (Lesson).  What was that Christian Connection all about?  Well it was not settled. 

What brought life again was an odd sort of Capitalism. Very few folk these days know much about Arthur Morgan's ideas about the importance of small communities owning their own industries and capital formations, but Morgan was the source of rebuilding Antioch in the 1920's. and he was favored by FDR and Eleanor until he opposed the court packing plan in 1937. and published his objections in the Wall Street Journal.  FDR fired him from his TVA Trusteeship, and that was that.  (Personally, I think Morgan should have known better.)

Morgan had a unique sense of who should teach at Antioch.  He needed a Historian, so he hired a former Monk to do European History.  He ran into Manmatha Nath Chatterjee at an engineering Conference in Chicago in 1928. and he instantly converted him into a Sociologist, in large measure because he was the personal representative of Gandhi in the US, and it was Chatterjee who taught Coretta, and it was Coretta who taught Martin.  Virtually every Historian of the Movement has missed this as too many are overly male oriented. 

But that is not why Antioch should survive -- it is about moving that tradition into the future.   Right now as the Alumni Association is essentially buying back the college from the board that wanted to destroy the college -- it is hard to make all the arguments, but once things are settled and determined, the story is going to blow minds. 

Jodi -- much of what you read in the Dentist's office was swiped from my posts to private Antioch lists. I recognize my wording.   I too have read that article, and I have done the contrasts/comparisons with my own materials, and yep, whoever wrote it, had access to my (password protected) materials.  Of course I am a critic of a Board and all the rest who crashed my college.  Remember, I was there between 1957 and 1962.  But I know a good deal about what happened after I graduated. 

My hope is that you would wish us well in fixing things so that we can educate and train 10 Martin's and 10 Coretta's in each graduating class.

But it is going to take hard work  -- very hard work. 

And that is my wish of 08 -- Hard Work that manifests itself.

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Save your money honey

put it in a sock

When your kids grow up don't send them to Antioch

Save your money, S----ave your money,

Save your Money Honey, ..CCNY is Free.

(folk song from the late 50's)