Last weekend I canvassed for my candidate in the Iowa 2020 caucus and talked to a wide variety of voters. This is not a pro-candidate post but instead a collection of stories of people I met who did not make it out to the caucus due to accessibility issues.
On Monday, just a few hours before the caucus began, I knocked a series of very-low income apartment buildings at the edge of the precinct. I talked to several people who I’d later see at the caucus, but I also met two people who I would not see again. One was an African-American man in his 30’s. He was straight-up beaming while sharing his excitement for Bernie, he shook my hand 3 times while we talked. He told me he’d come out to caucus, he knew the time and location already. I don’t know why he didn’t show up and I don’t want to speculate, but regardless of reason some barrier prevented his excitement from translating into a vote. In a normal primary, early voting or an absentee ballot might have been very useful for him, but these are not options in the caucus.
In that same building, I met a Latina woman who I’ll call “Rebeca”, and we had a conversation that will stay with me the rest of my life. Rebeca was home with her four-year old daughter, who was watching Frozen on the TV and would shyly giggle at me through the doorway while I talked to her mom in the hallway. Rebeca had been canvassed a couple of times already and was really interested in Bernie. We talked for awhile about his plans for healthcare, and she quickly agreed about the need to change the whole system to better support low-income people. It turned out that her situation had a lot of parallels to what my cousin is going through; she’s trying to raise and support her kids, while struggling with rent and dealing with some health issues. My cousin’s child, my goddaughter, was the same age as Rebeca’s daughter. I had just taken her to see Frozen 2 a few weeks before, and I couldn’t help but see my cousin and her child in Rebeca and hers. From the start I could tell that she was hesitant about caucusing because she had never done it before, but at some point I saw something change in her stance and her expression, and finally she gave a big smile and declared confidently that yes, she would caucus.
There was a problem though. Her building was at the far south edge of the precinct, the caucus site was at the north edge, and she didn’t have a car. She said by bus it would take her an hour to make the trip there. I told her that I myself or someone from the campaign could give her a ride, or alternatively one of her neighbors in the apartment building was going and could maybe take her; she didn’t feel comfortable getting a ride with a stranger, which I understand. Finally I asked her if she had the Lyft app (she did), and I asked if she would let me pay for her ride (she would). I handed her twenty dollars, and she took it with a look of gratitude that hurt to see; nobody should have to be that grateful for $20, but that is the America we live in right now. We chatted a bit more and said goodbye, and I kept working through my canvass list.
Rebeca never made it to the caucus. She had planned to come with her daughter and her two older children after they got home from school; maybe she decided it was too difficult to get everyone out on a school night. Maybe she decided she needed that $20 for food or rent or medicine.
Whatever reason, I accept it. The caucus system doesn’t work for someone like Rebeca. America doesn’t work for someone like Rebeca. I have worked in politics to fight the inequities of this country, but making change is incredibly difficult when it requires the votes and the activism of large numbers of disadvantaged people, working in a system that wasn’t designed for them to achieve political power. And so, whether they are liberal or conservative, there is fundamentally more power with wealthier voters who don’t have to think twice about caucusing, voting, or making a campaign donation.
These experiences and the ones discussed below directly lead to a critique of not just the rules and process of the caucus but of the priorities and vision of our party. It doesn’t seem crazy to me to think that the leaders of the Iowa Democratic Party, after all these decades, are very aware that a caucus ensures white higher-income people have disproportionate power in deciding the nominee, and by actively choosing to maintain this caucus system they maintain the power of that group in the nominating process. I agree with many commentators that the silver lining of this Iowa election results reporting fiasco is it may finally end the Iowa caucus as a practice. But what does it mean that this inconvenience of having to wait a few days for results is the main motivation to end the caucus, and that fixing the widespread disenfranchisement of the core demographics of our party is a secondary benefit, which hadn’t been enough on its own to justify a primary? Honestly, demographically unrepresentative Iowa being the first state to vote for presidential candidates bothers me far less than the fact that the caucus system and felony disenfranchisement denies the political voice of the minorities who do actually live there.
Fundamentally, the Democratic Party needs to be refocused on both supporting and building power with the diverse lower classes if they ever want to beat Trump and enact a progressive vision for this country in the long term.
~~~ Extended Edition ~~~
Below, I share more stories of people I met while canvassing in Iowa.
First, a quick intro – I have worked as a field organizer for many Democratic campaigns around the country and in the past few years I have worked as a union organizer. As a Mexican American activist, I am committed to level the playing field for working class and minoritized people in this country. My politics are pragmatic: in blue districts I’ve worked for leftist candidates whose policies I favor more, but I’ve also worked for several moderates in red/purple districts whose policies are often drastic improvements over the reactionary brutality of the GOP. I’m not here to discuss the candidates in the race, just the disenfranchisement of the caucus. In a previous post I discussed the events of my caucus night, and how the Bernie folks were 1 vote short of another delegate. In this incredibly tight contest, the people I met who never made it out to vote could have been a deciding factor in supporting their candidate but were denied the chance by the inaccessibility of the caucus.
In a duplex I met a Latino man who had to work a job in Chicago the whole week. He was such a strong Sanders supporter that he had even looked into going to the satellite caucus in Chicago, but the times and locations didn’t work out with his work schedule and so he couldn’t go. He seemed genuinely bummed. His partner was watching their kids and couldn’t caucus either. Mail-in voting or early voting would have allowed this family to support their candidate.
I spoke to a white Bernie supporter in his late 30s who had moved to Missouri years ago, but he was back in town to help his elderly parents who have mobility problems get to the caucus. It turned out that his dad ended up not going, likely due to those mobility issues. Regardless of reason, an absentee ballot would have allowed him to vote without needing his son to assist him with transit. A different elderly caucuser had some sort of health emergency very soon after arriving and EMTs had to come take care of him. For people with mobility or health issues, going out to caucus at night in the cold weather may just not be accessible or safe for them, especially during flu season.
I met an African-American man in his late 30’s who was a Bernie supporter. He said he had gotten into some trouble in his youth and his felony record meant he wouldn’t be able to vote. While felony disenfranchisement would apply in either a caucus or a primary, this nonetheless occurs with a lingering tacit approval of our own party’s past legislators. Though the Iowa Democrats recently have pushed for a constitutional amendment to end this discrimination forever, it will not pass the GOP-controlled senate, and Democrats did not pass it when they had the state government trifecta from 2006-2010 nor during any previous trifecta. Today one in ten black Iowan men are disenfranchised, denying their political voice and contributing to the difficulty for Iowa Dems to win back the state.
I met a wide variety of young Bernie supporters, many of whom were new to voting and did not understand the caucus process. To an outsider political nerd, one would think everyone in the state was super aware of Iowa’s famous caucus, but I met several people who knew of and supported Bernie, and had even been canvassed already by other volunteers, but didn’t realize they needed to caucus to vote for him. One young white woman with a Bernie sign outside her home literally said “Caucus? Whats that?”. Another recently-turned 18 year-old Bernie supporter said he had too many chores to do that night and couldn’t caucus, but would vote for him in the primary. The caucus process is highly unconventional and implicitly negatively impacts new and infrequent voters who do support candidates but are not tightly connected to the Democratic party or the political process in general. A normal primary would be a far easier way to bring them into the process and prepare them to vote in this and future general elections.
I’ll end with a positive anecdote, one among many from my time volunteering. In the apartment building where I met Rebeca, just 50 minutes before the caucus began, I saw an apartment with both a Bernie sign out front and one in the window, but the lights and the TV were on. These folks weren’t on my walk list, but I door knocked anyways. A young couple answered me, and even though they had told past volunteers that they would caucus, they still weren’t sure if they’d go out. I encouraged them to come with me to the caucus, and they decided to go. They really looked happy about their choice, they really just needed that one more push. That for me is the power of organizing and canvassing, there are many people who want to make change and be involved, but if they haven’t been part of the political process in the past then they often need some engagement from other people to get to the point where they choose for themselves to join the movement. They arrived to the caucus just 2 minutes before the cutoff time and they made their voices heard. It was great! And if the caucus had been more accessible, many more people could have also been heard.
Thanks for reading.