Justin Webb's America

The trouble with caucuses

• Justin Webb
• 2 Jan 08, 09:24 AM GMT

One of the points of Iowa is that candidates get to meet real voters and deal with the complexity of real people and their not always neatly boxable views on all subjects.

An example: Glenn Neideigh who runs the Oak View II hunting club outside Des Moines and has voted in the past for Democrats and Republicans, including once for President Bush.

Turning up at his club to shoot TV footage rather than birds, I walked with him all of 20 yards into a field before a windchill somewhere around 0 Fahrenheit started to cramp our conversation.

But I learned a lot even in that short, freeze-truncated meeting: Glenn is a fan of one of the so-called minor Democrats this time around. He cares about illegal immigration but also about healthcare, he cares about Iraq but does not want a withdrawal that damages America even more. He hates political adverts.

In short, he is a middle-of-the-road thoughtful man: Iowa man.

But here is a problem, he is not going to a caucus.

It is not that he does not care - he really does. Or that he is ignorant of he issues - he certainly is not. But he is busy and just cannot make it that night.

And this caucus system (no postal ballot and a set time to turn up) is inflexible. Perhaps that - rather than the choice of state - is the real scandal of Iowa.

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