Dude, Where's my Caucus

December 17, 2007

Dude, Where's my Caucus

Last week I talked about the smackdown between the Democratic Presidential candidates over the Iowa Caucus.

The update: it opened a floodgate of push back from all the cool people:

Politico,Student PIRGs, Bowers at Open Left, 450 comments in a post at Kos, The American Prospect, & at AOL.

Folks came together to do a full page ad in the Iowa Register - the newspaper where this all started.

The NYTimes piece says it well:

"Student are rightly up in arms about these statements. The law in Iowa is crystal clear: students who attend school in the state are entitled to register to vote in the state as long they are not registered anywhere else. The two parties’ rules say registered voters may participate in caucuses in the precincts where they are registered. Students have the same right to do so as any other Iowan. But statements challenging their right to vote may intimidate some students into staying home.

Hammered by student groups, the candidates have reframed their statements. But the episode has left a bad taste in the mouths of many students and of the groups that have been working feverishly to bring more of them into the electoral process. Anything that undermines student voting is bad for politics and bad for the nation."

Young Voter PAC gives us a Cliff Notes version of the statements:

"Hillary Clinton: "Hillary wants every student who lives in Iowa and wants to caucus in Iowa and is eligible to caucus in Iowa to do so. We hope that they will and we hope that they will caucus for Hillary. The Iowa caucus is special because it is based on Iowa values. We hope and trust that every campaign is making sure that potential caucus goers have all the information they need, and in no way explicitly or implicitly encourages anyone to break the law by participating in two places. Not only is it okay to engage students in Iowa, but it is critical to ensure that they are active participants in the process, and we are doing everything we can to get them out to caucus."

Chris Dodd: “Clearly students who are eligible can vote under the law and of course we welcome the participation of Iowa students in the caucuses”

John Edwards: "The Democratic Party has set clear rules on who can caucus and all the campaigns should follow those rules. Students who move here for college and are properly registered have always been able to caucus."

Barack Obama: “Barack Obama doesn’t believe that we should disenfranchise Iowans who meet all the requirements for caucus participation simply because they’re in college. We should be encouraging young people to participate in the political process — not looking for ways to shut them out.”

Bill Richardson: "Bill Richardson looks forward to students caucusing for him on January 3rd. He believes that the caucus process is an excellent opportunity for young voters, and he encourages all students who are eligible to participate and experience the excitement of the first-in-the-nation caucus."

But the best comment on this is from Mike at FM who says

"Over the past two weeks, we've seen a number of things. We've seen progressive bloggers and youth organizers working together on an issue - something that rarely happens....The result is that what would normally have been a blip on the media radar - a few panders to Iowa nativists at the expense of students - has blown up into a national issue in the paper of record. Not only that, but we won on the issue. Big time. Every campaign except for Biden retracted their comments, and the Edwards campaign - which was totally above this fray - weighed in as well.

What it has also done is gear voters up for another hot website You Can Caucus, for Iowa Students who want to come back to the caucus but don’t have a place to stay because student housing might not be open.

So there are some positives and negatives. It was a sucky experience that we had to step up to defend our rights to begin with, but we won. And Mike is right, if this is any indicator, we'll win again.

I feel like we spend so much time working on issues that matter to us. Whether its Darfur, or voting rights, or health care, or AIDS, or whatever. But a lot of times we don't get to see the victory because our goals are so big. This one was big because it was about our right to vote, but it was easy because the law was already on our side and the people who were against us quickly evolved once they saw the error of their ways.

We get a lot of flack from Thomas Friedman who says that we are "too quiet." Well, I think this is just another indicator of something we took up, fought, and won.

So, go team! Good job to those who bitched, and emailed, and talked to their friends, and joined the facebook groups, and signed up online, or commented on blogs, or raised your fist in rage. Good job for defending the rights of students to caucus in Iowa. Now get out there and show off that hot caucus action!

lly was raised in the south before escaping to Kansan heartland. Having worked on numerous campaigns from presidential campaigns to city council races, she says she likes the smaller campaigns the best. Today, she guides youth based organizations to major donors across the country and lectures at campaign schools and classes to help develop the next generation of leaders.