It is a strange time to be a Democrat in Iowa. Sometimes it’s downright surreal. While our Republican neighbors have been basking in the glow of the national political spotlight, we simply haven’t had much to do. With an incumbent shuffling around the White House, there has been no real campaign beyond RFK Jr.’s fitness videos. To add insult to injury, earlier this year the Democratic National Committee officially stripped Iowa of its first in the nation caucus - as a consequence of the epic dumpster fire that was the 2020 caucus.
While rank-and-file Democrats in the Hawkeye State were understandably disappointed, this did present a unique opportunity. Namely, the chance to resistance caucus. Because while the Democrats dumped a bucket of hog manure on their own heads in 2020, the state GOP made no such error. They still have the leadoff spot. As an American, I want to do everything possible to prevent Trump from returning to the White House. So on Monday, this Democrat decided to step through the looking glass and attend my first Republican caucus.
I did not make the decision to go caucusing in bizarro world lightly. First, I asked my wife to join me as a precaution against an accidental self red-pilling. It was not an easy sell. I won’t divulge the specifics of that negotiation, except to say that I will be doing most of the household chores for the foreseeable future.
On top of worrying that I might come away from the caucus actually believing some right-wing conspiracy theory, I was a little worried that I might be discovered as a liberal interloper, and you never know where that might lead. I’m a 40-something white guy, so I don’t exactly look out of place at a Republican caucus, but I figured a traditional-looking wife on my arm couldn’t hurt.
We were able to participate in the Republican caucus due to the beauty of same day registration, an old-fashioned, “small d” democratic idea that allows you to register for the party of your preference on the day of the caucus. Despite seemingly being against everything Republicans stand for, they still allow it in Iowa. So, Monday night at the caucus location, we simply changed our party affiliation from D to R, then walked right in and caucused with our now-fellow Republicans.
Our caucus location was a local elementary school in Des Moines. We arrived about 30 minutes early so that we would have time to become Republicans. When we walked in, there was a small line of people quietly waiting to check-in. I was immediately jarred by how calm and quiet the crowd was. Democratic caucuses tend to be loud, raucous, chaotic affairs. The atmosphere typically resembles nothing so much as a group of people trying to exit a theater on fire. By contrast, this Republican caucus had the feeling of a church potluck.
As I expected, the crowd was also older and whiter than a Democratic caucus, with more men than women. The crowd was also significantly smaller than Democratic caucuses in the same precinct. (Like most Americans, I live cloistered with my ideological compatriots, which is to say, I live in a deep blue precinct.) Also, it was ungodly cold. There was some speculation in the room that the weather may have depressed turnout among older voters, and the statewide numbers seem to support that. The official total for my precinct was 25 voters. My unofficial count showed two African Americans and eight women, all of them white. Everyone else was a white man. Suffice it to say my precinct was not exactly representative of the country at large. And yet, statistically, it was more diverse than the Republican electorate.
We made our way to the registration table and went through the process of changing our party registration, which was surprisingly easy. It’s basically the same process as changing your address at the post office. Show two forms of ID, fill out a form and you’re a Republican. As I checked the R next to my name, I felt my stomach churn. My wife shot me a death glare that told me I will never live this down, no matter how many dishes I wash. I paused to marvel that a party that seems to fetishize stricter voting laws has done nothing to prevent Democrats from influencing their caucus.
The looking glass nature of the evening began to set in when the Republican caucus started on time. Democrats never start on time. Democratic caucuses are notoriously messy, even before the train wreck of 2020. In previous years when both parties had competitive primaries, the Republicans in our precinct were done before the Democrats got everyone in the door. The benefit of caucusing in a looking glass world is that the Republican caucuses are extremely organized and efficient. Monday’s caucuses began promptly at 7:00 pm. If you’re late, Republicans are more than happy to disenfranchise you.
The proceedings began with party business, which consisted of electing central committee members and delegates to the county convention. It was all boring, tedious stuff, just like it is on the Democratic side. The one key difference was that the party business did not include proposing planks to the party platform. At the Democratic caucuses, anyone can and frequently does, propose new planks to the platform. For the Republicans, the platform simply wasn’t on the agenda. That struck me as fitting, since their platform in 2020 essentially amounted to “let Trump do whatever he wants.”
After the party business came the speeches in support of the candidates. This is where I journeyed to the dark heart of GOP looking glass logic.
As a Democrat, my biggest conundrum was picking which candidate to support. None of the above was not an option. Since I didn’t agree with any of them on anything, I decided to use the process of elimination and choose the candidate whose supporters seemed to live in the reality closest to my own.
Each candidate was allowed to have one supporter speak for three minutes. The representative from the Haley campaign asked to go first. She stood and read from a prepared speech that included lines like “Ambassador Haley is the only candidate who clearly beats Joe Biden” and “she will secure our border, rebuild our economy and keep Americans safe from criminals, terrorists and communists.” The speech succinctly made the case for Haley’s nomination and the speaker did an adequate job delivering it. It roughly had the feeling of a cover band playing the original’s hits. In normal times, this would be exactly what is expected at a local precinct.
Next was the Ryan Binkley supporter, an older gentleman who cited Binkley’s “list of his specifics of what he wants to accomplish.” The voter said he was impressed that the Texas pastor is “a man of God” who is “not afraid to not say that's what he believes in” and was “trying to bring the country back to what it was originally founded about.” It struck me that in normal times Binkley would have also garnered significant support among traditional conservatives. On Monday, however, Binkley received 754 votes statewide, according to the Associated Press, pulling ahead of only former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.
In normal times, I wouldn’t be here. We left normal times the day Trump descended the golden staircase. After Binkley, the Trump supporters started speaking. This was the moment when the train left for crazy town. True to form, there was not just one Trump supporter that spoke, but four. The first speaker started with a list of Trump's main talking points that are now very familiar to the American public. Lines like “He's a fighter,” “he was not a politician,” and “he doesn't need to go (to Washington DC) but he's doing it for us.” The second speaker followed suit, saying “Trump's been through the learning curve. He knows the swamp now. Give him a chance and he'll get it drained.”
After the second Trump supporter, a Vivek Ramaswamy supporter gave a brief speech describing him as “probably the brightest person I've ever seen run for president, in this country, in my lifetime.”
Then a third Trump supporter spoke, saying “Nobody called him a racist, nobody called him a criminal, nobody called him a bad person until he ran for president.” The thousands of lawsuits Trump was involved in prior to running for office apparently don’t count. The third speaker concluded by saying “it's hard to argue that he didn’t do a great job for us.” Mentally, that is when I flipped through a large Rolodex of ways that Trump didn’t do a great job.
The fourth Trump supporter spoke immediately after the third. He began by extolling Trump’s experience saying ”We have an experienced man running for office. Anybody else who comes in is inexperienced.” True enough, I began to think. But before I could finish the thought, he continued “we're on the verge of third world war, okay? And we can't have the Secretary of Defense in the hospital for four weeks when it takes 15 minutes to go nuclear bomb our property.”
That escalated quickly, I thought.
Not once did any of the Trump supporters, or anyone else, mention his 91 felony indictments, the January 6 insurrection or his COVID pandemic response. I found myself thinking “did these people not just spend two years inside?” Then, just as quickly, I answered myself. “No, they probably didn’t.”
After the fourth Trump supporter spoke, the Haley speaker became visibly annoyed and reminded the precinct captain that each candidate was only supposed to have one speaker. The captain apologized and then spoke on behalf of DeSantis, saying he supported the Florida governor because he wants to empower state legislatures “to amend the Constitution to really address the problems that all Republican counties that are running into right now with the bureaucracy in DC with the spending control and with government overreach.”
As the speeches concluded, my wife sent me a text that read “I just realized I have to go to the DMV to change my registration back to Democrat. Like, tomorrow. YOU OWE ME.”
The final portion of the evening was the secret ballot. As a Democrat, this was perhaps the most jarring moment of the night, because it’s the part where the 2020 Democratic caucuses turned into a complete debacle.
In order to vote, everyone simply wrote their vote on a piece of paper. Then they handed it to the precinct captain who counted the votes. There was no moving around the room, no picking a second choice if your first choice wasn’t viable. Just a simple vote. Democrats could definitely learn from this.
CANDIDATE SPEECHES over at this site for the #IowaCaucus in West Des Moines. Voters jotted their candidate on sheet of paper before they were all collected in a brown grocery bag. pic.twitter.com/oP4QcauK99
— Jason Whitely (@JasonWhitely) January 16, 2024
I couldn’t help but let out an exasperated chuckle. It’s a little too on brand that Democrats would manufacture a fiasco by using a non-functional app, when their problems could have been solved with pens and paper.
I voted for Haley based on our shared annoyance with the Trump voters.
When the votes were counted, the outcome was a bit of a surprise. Unlike the state as a whole, in my precinct Trump and Haley tied with nine votes each. Ramaswamy came in second with four votes and Desantis a distant third with two votes.
By 7:45 pm, my wife and I were back in the car, the ruthless efficiency of Republicans having rendered their caucus mercifully quick. I was enjoying a small sense of satisfaction at having prevented Trump from winning our precinct when the strangest moment of the evening hit me.
“That was oddly pleasant,” my wife said. I had to agree. Because even though I completely disagree with them on almost everything, the Republican caucusing experience is significantly better than the Democrats. As usual, they’re just more organized.
On top of that, I couldn’t help but notice that progressives and Republicans actually share a common point of agreement: they are completely fed up with the status quo in Washington D.C. We’re simply staring at the problem from opposite sides of the mirror, as if we are mutually staring at the negative images of each other’s photographs. It’s no wonder we can’t see the same picture.
My journey through the looking glass was complete.
“I need a shower,” my wife said, “to get the conservative off me.” I laughed, started the car and drove home through the frigid cold to the liberal side of the looking glass.
