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.   

Comments

[Mark Gisleson]

Oh wow do I ever disagree with you on this Sara.

I'm a former officer of the Democratic party in Des Moines, and have been a political blogger for City Pages and my own blog here in the Twin Cities, and my biggest complaint about the DFL is that the two systems are entirely different.

Yes, the DFL may use Iowa walking caucus rules, but in Iowa caucus goers get all the glory on caucus night, and little ego boo or publicity again until the next round of presidential caucuses.

The DFL system, while using the same rules, is horribly flawed due to the DFL's insistence on having an endorsement convention well before their late primary. As a result, the real action at a DFL caucus isn't the presidential race, it's the ambitions of those DFLers who want to be delegates to the convention that picks the gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, and other statewide office candidates. It's not a binding endorsement as the primary is the legal means of picking the nominees, but most candidates drop out if they don't get the endorsement.

This single difference has corrupted the DFL, and as a result they can't elect a governor to save their asses, despite Minnesota being a far more liberal state than Iowa.

I understand why people hate the Iowa caucus rules, but as a result of that system, Iowa has a very strong Democratic party that elects Dems in far greater numbers than the one-third of the voters who are registered Democratic would suggest.

This is a bit immodest, but even though it's been a quarter-century since I ran a caucus, you could plop me into any part of Iowa, assign a caucus to me, and I'd kick ass because the Iowa caucus system rewards hard work, whereas the DFL system encourages cronyism.

Sorry to be long-winded, but I can kvetch about the DFL's horrible system at great length.