DES MOINES — Time for a civics lesson! In the United States, what is the first step we take to decide who gets to be on the ballot for president?
And then, we pick a weekend — ideally in the middle of January. A holiday weekend when it is so cold and snowy that Iowa, a place that is actually accustomed to snow, begins Friday by canceling school. A weekend when the local weather team is urgently telling you not to leave home if you can possibly help it, because if you are outside for five minutes with any exposed skin, you will develop frostbite. A weekend when the weather is anticipated to hit minus-25 degrees with wind chill, and minus-2 without it — a temperature so low that I had to check that it was, indeed, in Fahrenheit, given that water freezes at 32 degrees. I don’t know what water does at minus-2 degrees, but I guess I will find out!
And to close out that specific holiday weekend, we see who gets the most people to go to a middle school auditorium at night and, after listening to a series of speeches, vote for them. And this is how we winnow down who gets to be on the ballot for the whole country!
I see some problems with this system. I would see more problems with it, but the visibility is not very good here with all the snow. It is like being in a snow globe that someone has shaken vigorously, except you cannot turn things upside down to get them to stop. I spent a few minutes outside trying to see whether I could get coffee, and when I returned, I looked like the last survivor of a failed polar expedition. I felt as though I should apologize to all the boosters of my expedition for not finding the Northwest Passage.
And it is a balmy 18 degrees now! I am going to long for these temperatures come Monday, the day of the actual caucuses! But still, it is already so bad out there that not just Nikki Haley, not just Vivek Ramaswamy, not just Donald Trump, but even Ron DeSantis’s Never Back Down PAC (which has “Never Back Down” in the name) have been calling off events.
Look, it is barely an insult to the Republican candidates to say that it is difficult to imagine being excited enough by any of them to want to go outside in this weather. "We need an accountant in the White House!” is hardly an applause line in a warm room with a bar in it.
I can imagine, perhaps, being excited enough by Haley’s candidacy that I would go to a coffee shop in normal temperatures, if I already wanted to go. I cannot imagine getting 10 friends to come out with me in a sub-zero snowstorm to caucus for Haley. I can barely get 10 friends to come do fun things in normal conditions.
And this is how we wind up with Trump! He is a threat to our democracy, something he keeps excitedly shouting at rallies and having his followers intimate in menacing voicemails to the judges evaluating cases against him. Fortunately, there are many ways of stopping him from becoming the next president. Unfortunately, there are many ways of stopping him from becoming the next president, which means that each individual time, you can say to yourself, “Eh, it’s too cold. I’ll get the next one.”
Look, I think it’s bad any time there is an obstacle to voting. So I already do not love the caucuses, a system that requires people to be available for an extended period of time on a weeknight, something that I have discovered, as a parent, is literally impossible. Candidly, I do not think that, in order to express a preference about who gets to be the next president, you should have to load up a sled behind a team of huskies, wrap yourself in approximately 48 layers of insulation, announce, “I am just going outside and may be some time,” and find a babysitter on a Monday night. Hell of a way to choose a president!
No. This is far too cold for Hell.
