by Daniel Mootz
The primary stage of the next presidential election is underway, and it’s worthwhile to clarify some key concepts involved in candidate selection. Washingtonians vote Mar. 10, in an open primary, which means you don’t have to be a registered Democrat, you can be Independent or have just registered the day of, and you can do it from home.
Party politics by town, county, state, and nation exist by social design in order to muster power, wealth, and ultimately the exclusion of undesired others. The system itself is ideologically-driven and prevents solutions to problems it creates. In 2020, a frightening surge of fascist psychology threatens to infiltrate our homes and neighborhoods, militarizing the borders and stacking the courts. This is fundamentally important to remember, and also to resist.
Just watch the video of a low-life political “prankster” storming the stage and sarcastically proposing to Elizabeth Warren during one of her stump speeches in Iowa. She seems to not know what to do as he manages to talk into her mic about his “incel” friend who has never “ … spoken to a woman before.” Then he slinks off with the smirk of someone who always gets away with it, no matter what it is, as Warren instinctively returns to her script, oblivious to the blatant sexism of her own heckling. Of course, it was also candidate Warren who, when asked by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on Nov. 11, 2019, about the importance of the Iowa Caucus, and the role it plays despite being one of the least diverse states in the nation, replied “You know what? I’m just a player in this game.”
February marks the beginning of a long, complicated run-up to November’s election. Iowa became the first state in line to vote in national primaries back in 1972, and it does so by caucusing. A caucus is an in-person process in which different groups gather to represent their respective candidate and try convincing each other of their pick, thereby increasing the odds of their side winning. Over the course of a few hours, in public spaces throughout the state, people congregate to determine which candidate has the most support among them. Every region then reports back to the State Board of Elections, which aggregates the data and confirms a victor.
There’s a video circulating online of a woman who apparently agreed to support Pete Buttigeieg during the caucus, but then changes her mind when she finds out he’s gay. An election official tries to reason with her, but she proceeds to invoke the Bible and demand her vote be switched. It is not entertaining to watch—it is sad, embarrassing, and indicative of the sheer unintelligence imbued in popular politics by a system that relies on multitudes of people voting against their interests.
The forces of ignorance, humiliation, and resentment are not the only ones that pollute the modern political landscape—wealth, technology, and a culture of one-upmanship are also pervasive and interrupt the trajectory of more attractive political prospects. For example, a supposedly innovative new voting app with ties to the former Clinton and current Buttigieg campaigns was directly responsible for a sloppy delay in, and inconclusive tallying of, Iowa’s Caucus results. The app, called Shadow Inc., was created by Democratic Party tech developers yet wound up stymying the grassroots nature of its own party’s election. Incidentally, Buttigieg came out on top with the most delegates, 14, followed closely by Bernie Sanders who, though not from the midwest, has been one of the most consistent allies, and advocates of grassroots political organizing in recent times. Judging by the popular vote in Iowa alone, Bernie is amassing real, working-class support in the “heartland.”
Besides Iowa, only a few other states hold caucuses as part of their voting system, including Hawaii and Nevada. Yet everyone’s vote is subject to the rules of the Electoral College (EC), which is based on the number of representatives in an area. This ensures that citizens constitute something like three-fifths of an actual political voice, the same fraction used in the old South to count slaves. The EC works like a shadow congress because of an ideological compromise made between some of the writers of the original constitution, between state-based and population-based voting power blocks, between slavery and suffrage, that led to the creation of a system only partially concerned with fairness. Specific electors or delegates (who comprise the Electoral College) serve as intermediaries between popular consensus and representative government. That’s why even though Bernie won more actual votes in Iowa, Pete won more counties, more federally represented regions, so they are tied neck and neck. Rather than an abstract numbers game, we need a guarantee of accountability and real popular will. It’s time to move away from a failed republican system and toward a more direct and open democracy, without the Electoral College.
The recent New Hampshire primary narrowly went to Sanders, but Buttigieg earned just as many delegates. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s hokey pitch continues to fall short, and will hopefully break down in South Carolina. On the other hand, if Biden takes South Carolina, he will have the institutional support of a very conventional “early voting” state. The other so-called centrists running present themselves as politically philanthropic, likeable, understanding, but their appeal to some Democrat voters is actually stifling collective momentum. If Sanders can eke out a win against the party establishment in Nevada, there will be a real chance of national political awakening.
Our own state’s upcoming say in who the Democratic nod should be is significant because, if it is Bernie, it follows a path of justice that cannot be divided—that is principled and grounded in reality and common sense. Supported by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Washington state progressives, artists, activists, unions and musicians, Sanders’ sociological platform out-warrants and out-measures the test of Warren’s January accusation that he is actually a closet misogynist. Insinuating, as she did, that Sanders told her in private he doesn’t believe a woman can be president, and then attacking him on stage after a major debate, reveals a tendency to coin Sanders as cold, calculating, and dismal. In fact, that same line is going to be a right-wing talking point in the general election—that Bernie Sanders’ old, radical, democratic socialist tendencies are actually violent, totalitarian, and somehow inherently corrupt. That’s a flagrant attempt to deny society the mind and message it needs to fulfill a revolutionary gap in our nation’s political imagination.
Following the supreme court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling which allows unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, whatever hope may have seemed possible for radical system reform was definitively usurped. Donald Trump’s preposterous win in 2016 over Hillary Clinton, following Clinton’s subversion of the Sanders campaign, is the epitome of a corrupt system. Sanders is not only the least corrupt, and least corruptible one running, but he is also interminably rational, and epistemically right about social economics and the health care of the people in our lives. The Green New Deal has no chance unless there’s a fierce, popular mobilization, on the ground, like a caucus, in primary locations across the country, willing to unite, with common cause at the center.
