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January 19, 2005
Do the Iowa Caucuses Prevent Moderate Candidates from Being Nominated?
By Alan Abramowitz
Peter Beinart in his recent Washington Post op-ed blames the Iowa caucuses for the Democrats' failure to nominate more moderate, security-conscious candidates in recent years. But while Iowa's Democratic caucus-goers are clearly not representative of the overall Democratic electorate, they have not been particularly friendly to left-wing candidates. In 1976, southern moderate Jimmy Carter's victory over several northern liberals in the Iowa caucuses helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination. Four years later, Ted Kennedy's attempt to challenge Carter from the left failed badly in Iowa. In 1988, Missouri moderate Dick Gephardt finished first in Iowa and in 2000, Al Gore easily dispatched Bill Bradley. Finally, Howard Dean's collapse in Iowa in 2004 was due in no small part to widespread concern among Democratic caucus-goers that Dean's strident anti-Bush and anti-war rhetoric would make him unelectable in November.
The fact is, the presidential candidates nominated by the Democratic Party in recent years, including John Kerry in 2004, have accurately reflected the liberal views of rank-and-file Democratic voters across the nation. If California, New York, or Illinois had held their primaries before Iowa held its caucuses in 2004, it is very unlikely that Joe Lieberman or another centrist candidate would have had a better chance of winning the Democratic nomination.
Posted by Ruy Teixeira at 11:18 PM | link
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