Media coverage of the Iowa caucuses generally depicted the affair as an example of democracy at its finest. In fact, the 122,000 who attended the caucuses for Kerry, Edwards, Dean and Gephardt were fewer than the number attending in 1988, the last multi-candidate Democratic contest, between Gephardt, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and Paul Simon.
Terry Neal, online political columnist for washingtonpost.com, was one of the few commentators to puncture the pretense. He wrote January 20, after a week in Iowa: “For all the talk about how engaged people here are in the political process, you almost never meet a person outside of campaign events who professes much enthusiasm or interest in the process. To put this thing in perspective, no matter what the turnout is, it’ll be a pittance of the half-million registered Democrats in a state of nearly three million people. Given that, it’s a little astonishing how much media attention the results will get.”
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There was one more sidelight to the Iowa caucuses. Several hours before the caucuses began, a spokesman for Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who placed fifth in the contest with 2 percent of the vote, announced he had struck a deal with Senator Edwards for mutual support in those precincts where Edwards or Kucinich did not reach the 15 percent required to win a delegate.
The Kucinich spokesman said that all the other candidates had sought such an agreement. He did not explain why Kucinich, avowedly the most fervent opponent of the war, would reach a vote-swapping agreement with Edwards, who voted to authorize the war, except to say that Edwards had a “positive message” and that Kucinich “likes him a lot.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/iowa-j21.shtml
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