I made the list of most unique subscribers, at least of those sharing their reading lists. I guess that means I have odd tastes in reading. I noticed that most of the people who are subscribed to this site are also on that list, so we're all weird together.
Temperature right now as I walked in from the parking lot: -2°F, Wind Chill: -25°F. That's breathtaking, painful cold.
While the Iowa Caucus is fresh in the news, I want to take a bit of umbrage with how the media reports the outcome. From the coverage you see on TV, you'll think that Kerry won by a landslide, Dean lost big time, and Kucinich was absolutely slaughtered, with only 1% of the votes. Well, that's the problem, the media keeps talking about the number of delegates like they're an exact representation of the number of voters for a particular candidate, when they are most certainly not. It's like the electoral college, it can distort the actual votes by the people, and, as we saw in 2000, may actually be different than the outcome of the popular vote. Now, I'm not having sour grapes here, and trying to claim that Dean really won, or anything like that. I'm just saying that you can't take the number of delegates as the true representation of the votes that were cast. Let's take my precinct, for instance. The four delegates from our precinct look like this:
Kerry - 2 Dean - 1 Edwards - 1
Well, looking at that, obviously Kerry had twice as much support as Dean or Edwards, right? That's what the media will say. And nothing comes from the district for the other candidates who didn't have enough people present to earn a delegate. What were the REAL numbers at the caucus though? At ours, it broke down like this, we had 56 people in attendance:
Kerry - 21 Dean - 17 Edwards - 12 Kucinich - 6
When you look at the numbers like that, it's pretty obvious how the number of delegates distorts the actual results. Kucinich doesn't get a delegate and earned only 1% of them statewide, but he had over 10% representation in our precinct. And Kerry gets twice as many delegates as Dean, though he only had 4 more supporters. Dean has 5 more supporters than Edwards, (a larger difference than that between Dean and Kerry), but receives the same number of delegates. The four Gephardt supporters threw in with Edwards, as there were only 8 people in his camp when the caucus started. The Kucinich people should have joined one of the other three camps, since they gathered no delegates, but apparently they didn't have a preference among the remaining candidates, so they chose none of them, and thus probably should have stayed home.
So what's the take-home message here? That the number of delegates a particular candidate receives is not equal to the amount of support they had in the state.
I attended our local caucus, in favor of Howard Dean. We had four delegates to send to the county convention, and 56 people attended the caucus. I wound up being the delegate for the Dean group, the Edwards group got a delegate, and the Kerry group got two delegates. Only 4 souls showed up to support Gephardt, 6 showed up for Kucinich, none for Sharpton, Leiberman, or Clark. So, I guess I'm going to the Black Hawk county convention on March 13, to support Howard Dean. Kerry had a great night tonight, as did Edwards, but I don't think this is over for Dean, not by a long shot. He's got a lot of supporters nation-wide, and I can't wait to see what happens in New Hampshire.
This was the first caucus I'd ever attended, and I kind of enjoyed it. I've heard all the arguments about what a bad predictor the caucus is, and how they're such a small subset of voters, but it feels good to participate in such a grass-roots democratic process. There were no slick salesmen present, just honest and friendly neighbors, respectful of each other's differences, but dedicated to their candidates of choice, and willing to engage in meaningful discussions about issues, which is decidedly not the kind of debate you see on Crossfire or Hannity & Colmes.
So, what do I, a random computer nerd, think about Bush's plan for Mars? I'm a bit dismayed at the low level of funding it's being given, the budget is off by an order of magnitude, but it's better than nothing, and hopefully the next President will fund it at a much higher level. It's going to be expensive, and it's going to cost human lives, we'd better accept that now before we start. The debate over whether or not we should be doing this reminds me of this bit from The West Wing:
Sam: There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry 'cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder, and certainly none of them are dumber 'cause we went to the moon.
Mallory: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?
Sam: Yes.
Mallory: Why?
Sam: Cause it's next. 'Cause we came out of the cave. And we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration, and this is what's next.
