This morning, as I hurriedly entered gifts into our donor database (for my day job), I listened to Michael Moore’s podcast “Rumble.” As he introduced today’s topic of discussion, he recounted his experience campaigning for Bernie Sanders in Iowa earlier this year:
”…back when we were on the trail with Bernie Sanders in January and February we found ourselves in the state of Iowa for the Iowa Caucus… you remember the Iowa Caucus don’t you? The brilliant… brilliantly managed Iowa Caucus? [laughs] We’ll never do one of those again, right folks? Yeah, that’s right. Now remember this was pre-pandemic so all… you’re making the list, right… of all the things we’re never gonna do again? Where we’re just saying, ‘Fuck that. That’s the end of that’? Okay, that’s one of them, right? We all agree on that, right? No more Iowa Caucuses… it has to be a real primary, run by the state. Everybody votes. Everybody has a chance to vote. Every vote is counted — a novel idea.”
Photo by Max Goldberg
I perked up… because this is exactly the proposal I am making as a representative of the Bernie Sanders campaign on the 2020 DNC Rules Committee! In fact, me and my colleague Maggie are hosting the first grassroots organizing meeting tonight! The reason this issue became so important to me is that I was a precinct captain in Iowa during the caucus in February and saw first-hand how mismanaged the election was. I think it is crucial that we make this reform because of how easily an election can be manipulated by the Democratic Party (the state party runs the caucus, rather than an independent entity), and how detrimental the outcome can be, particularly for anti-establishment candidates.
This got me thinking about how people like Michael Moore (and other well-known pro-democracy advocates) might get involved in this process (or perhaps just lend their very large megaphone). More to come…
