What do Caucuse results really mean?

Caucuses are no way to choose a candidate
Flawed method produces lower turnout, allows for intimidation.
This year's presidential nominating caucuses have featured large numbers of voters coming together in crowded rooms, arguing vigorously for their presidential candidates and voting for their choices. On TV, the process looks like the very model of democracy.
Except that it's not.
Caucuses in Washington, Iowa and the more than a dozen other states that use this method are a flawed way to choose presidential candidates. They're run by the political parties, not state election agencies that typically oversee primary elections. And their purpose has always been more to help organize and strengthen the parties than to give as many voters as possible a fair way to pick candidates. Among the flaws with caucuses:
•Turnout is much lower at caucuses than at primaries. The caucuses in Washington state on Saturday drew fewer than 50,000 people. That's about 1.3% of the state's registered voters.
This isn't just a Washington phenomenon. In the more than 20 Super Tuesday contests, average turnout at caucuses was only about 6% of eligible voters, while primaries averaged about 29%, nearly five times as many, according to the U.S. Elections Project at George Mason University.
•Caucuses disenfranchise some voters. Attending a caucus can be prohibitively difficult. Caucuses are typically held for a limited time on a specific day ? an hour or two on a Thursday evening in Iowa, for example. Though some states make provisions for those who can't show up, caucuses usually exclude people who are working, out of town or serving in the military overseas. By contrast, primaries allow voting from early morning until the evening, and provide ample opportunities for absentee ballots.
•Caucuses violate the tradition of the secret ballot. Though some caucuses allow a private ballot, others require participants to publicly "vote" ? by standing in a designated part of the room in Iowa's caucuses, for example. For anyone worried about pressure or retribution from spouses, friends or colleagues ? or, more ominously, from bosses or government officials ? it's a significant disincentive. Former president Bill Clinton claimed he witnessed union officials pressuring workers before Nevada's caucuses last month, threatening to change their work schedules so they couldn't attend the caucuses unless they promised to vote for Barack Obama.
The disadvantages of caucuses are important not only for future presidential races, but also for this one. Democrats and Republicans each have three caucuses yet to come. Meanwhile, Democratic party officials are wondering whether to offer Michigan and Florida "do-overs" after both states held their primaries before party rules allowed, causing officials to disqualify their delegates. Those delegates now might be crucial to determining a Democratic nominee. Any redo should be fair to both candidates ? and accessible to large numbers of voters.
There's no reason Democrats and Republicans everywhere can't schedule party-building exercises around presidential nominating votes, but the caucuses shouldn't be the vote. There's a perfectly good alternative that maximizes the number of people who can attend, guarantees higher turnout and respects the tradition of the private ballot. It's called a primary.
Caucus states
•Alaska (D)
•Colorado (D, R)
•Hawaii (D, R)
•Idaho (D)
•Iowa (D, R)
•Kansas (D, R)
•Maine (D, R)
•Minnesota (D, R)
•Montana (R)
•Nebraska (D)
•Nevada (D, R)
•New Mexico (D)
•North Dakota (D, R)
•Washington (D, R)
•Wyoming (D, R)

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Paul Krugman.
The quote comes from "Nixonland," a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of "Before the Storm." As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred.
And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.
The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.
Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.
Why, then, is there so much venom out there?
I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.
What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of "Clinton rules" — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.
The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the "scandal" became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.
During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.
And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, "doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.
I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws.
For now, Clinton rules are working in Mr. Obama’s favor. But his supporters should not take comfort in that fact.
For one thing, Mrs. Clinton may yet be the nominee — and if Obama supporters care about anything beyond hero worship, they should want to see her win in November.
For another, if history is any guide, if Mr. Obama wins the nomination, he will quickly find himself being subjected to Clinton rules. Democrats always do.
But most of all, progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.
One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage.
I’d like to see more moments like that, perhaps starting with strong assurances from both Democratic candidates that they respect their opponents and would support them in the general election.
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Never should have reduced the voting age to 18!
As in other states, Obama's candidacy seems to have energised young voters more than Clinton's. On Saturday night, throngs of excited college-aged men and women paraded down Broad Street in Richmond en route to a massive Democratic rally at the Virginia Commonwealth University basketball arena.
Dancing alongside a drum corps, the youngsters sang out "O-O-O-Bama! Yes, we can!" while Clinton's older, more reserved supporters watched nervously, incapable of competing with the noise and enthusiasm.
Inside the arena, the two camps were about the same size, but Obama's supporters were far louder and more enthusiastic, chanting:"Yes, we can!" That's a refrain Obama adopted after his loss to Clinton in New Hampshire.
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From Helen Thomas dean of the Washington Press Corp.
The political face off between Clinton and Obama has been emotional, rhetorical and for a while looked like it would lead to a bitter split in the party.
And waiting in the wings is former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in case the Democrats decide on "none of the above."
Under ordinary circumstances, Clinton and Obama would be marching along together. But now, despite their new truce, they are pitted against one another in a competition to be the "first" to make it to the White House.
Obama represents "change," but what kind? He is eloquent and hopeful, but where is the substance? As they say, "Where's the beef?"