LOOKING SOUTH
Cambria coast
The political press seems to have lost touch.
Practicing media craft and skills for a half century makes me think I have an obligation to critique current practitioners. This recent orgy of Iowa caucus is excessive silliness.
Even when I covered politics, including Iowa caucus coverage, I thought too much was made of it.
Here's my argument what we have just seen is much ado about very little, if not nothing. There were simply too many inches of ink and too many hours of blabber for what is only a notch above so what?
All of the attention we endured was for the votes of 110,298 Iowans. Really!
40 delegates up for grab in what almost everyone except Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis says is a done deal.
All of this attention to 110 thousand Iowans about something that doesn't really matter. There are more than 3 Million people in Iowa. 110 ten thousand is what, a drop in a bucket?
The US population is estimated to be 336 million. How important are 110 thousand Iowa opinions? Not worthy enough for all the media time they got.
Iowa is 88% White.
77% of Iowans are Christians. That total breaks out:
28% Evangelical
30% Mainline-mostly Methodist or Lutheran
18% Catholic.
If the Iowa caucus gave delegates to Snoop Dog or Martha Stewart, it would have been news, but still not the lead.
Political journalism these days seems obsessed with the horse race. If a Presidential campaign is a horserace, then the Iowa caucus is as important as a pony ride at a state park.
We are only getting started!
See you down the trail.
Amen. As noted earlier on MSNBC the votes represented only 14% of Iowa
ReplyDeleteRepublicans. I spent a miserable four days in the state in February of 1976 looking for the significance of the Iowa "vote" and found none. What I learned is the first round is not even binding because people can change their candidates during the second and third rounds of a caucus system. This was pretty much a straw vote.
Silliness indeed. Thank you.
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