The Iowa caucus is tomorrow night and I’m not even going to try to predict the outcome. The polls are all over the place, but I must admit that I’m hopeful Edwards will come out on top. As for the Republican side of things, I’d like to see Ron Paul get put out of his misery so that his supporters can turn off their computers and go back to reading The Fountainhead for the nth time. That’s probably expecting too much, though. Frankly, I regard the whole caucus process as woefully undemocratic. Why should ten percent of voting-age adults of a relatively obscure Midwestern state exercise such tremendous influence on the selection of a presidential nominee? I get the fact that we like to perpetuate the myth of the heartland as the soul of the nation, but it’s just that, a myth. Not to pick on Iowa, but it’s hardly representative of the country as a whole. Hell, it’s not even that representative of the upper Midwest. The Iowa caucus is just one more example of American tradition getting in the way of progress.
