AMES, Iowa—This is what you do on the morning of the day before the Caucasians come to caucus in Iowa. You flip on CSPAN, and you are magically transported to the Steamfitters Local 33 in Des Moines, where some extremely patient officials of the state Democratic Party were explaining to the assembled how the Democratic side of Monday night's caucuses will work. This did not go entirely well.
"First time volunteer, so I guess I got a question," one gentleman asked. "If we have 30 people who come to the caucuses who are illegal aliens, how is their influence taken out of the totals?"
"Again, people have to fill out the form to register to vote to participate," replied Josie Bradley, the caucus director of the Iowa Democratic Party. "We don't ask for that ID. If people ask for the form and they're not who they say they are, then that's voter fraud, so that's how we guarantee that."
"If their influence on the caucus is not removed, they just get in trouble later, but their influence is still there on who the candidate will be," the gentleman said.
"Again," said Bradley. "We don't ID." Whereupon, unsatisfied that his vote might not be diluted by 30 Hondurans smuggled into the country, the gentleman left.
I'm not sure what the problem is here. The Democratic caucus procedure is so ridiculously arcane and complicated that I, who speaks excellent English, can't pretend to fully understand it. Somebody fresh off the truck who speaks only Spanish wouldn't be able to last 15 minutes, let alone stay long enough to rig the thing. And speaking of aliens …
"I assume most of you are not space aliens," said astronaut Mark Kelly, who'd come along to Ames with his wife, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, to stump with Hillary Rodham Clinton. "As for the rest of you, I come in peace."
It was an emotional rally at which HRC spoke out for gun safety legislation, but not until Giffords struggled to the microphone and said, in the slow, oddly sing-song voice that years of therapy and her own courage have given to her, "I'm here to talk to you about Hillary Clinton," Giffords said, as more than a few people in the house teared up. In the White House, she will stand up against the gun lobby. Talking does not come easy to me but, come January, I want to say these two words, 'Madam President.'"
And, for a while, HRC rose to the fervor around her, especially when she landed on the Iowa House for its latest experiment in expanding Second Amendment freedoms, this time among the state's elementary schoolers.
"Your House of Representatives, with all the other issues facing Iowans, and all the decisions that are hanging in the balance, especially what I think is a very ill-advised decision to privatize your Medicaid system, what is one of their highest priorities? Lowering the age from 14, to let more children be able legally to have guns.
"What kind of debate is that? As I traveled around Iowa the last few months, I have heard about and read about what happens when children, young children, toddlers, kids in elementary school, find that loaded gun in the closet, or under the bed. I've heard the stories. I've read the news reports about the ones that are killed, or that injure themselves and others.
"What is wrong with us? We continue to ignore the toll this is taking on our children and our country!"
She had thoroughly connected with her audience, and her outrage was authentic and it went through the crowd like an electric charge. And it was only halfway through her speech. Pretty soon, we were back in the laundry list and the emotion in the room leaked out as though someone had drained all the oxygen. My lord, this woman can lose a room.
That's going to be the difference on Monday, I'm thinking.
Can she hold a room? Will enough of her people willingly put themselves through the preposterous Democratic primary process, standing in Mabel's kitchen while the Sanders people stand in the den, and the O'Malley person is sneaking around, looking for the liquor cabinet? The only thing alien about this system is the system itself. It was not designed by a higher intelligence, that's for damn sure.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
