Why ...... Iowa?

It's that time of the year when all the presidential candidates from both parties line up to impress their party men from this little midwest state, all because it hosts the first caucus. you'll see candidates lining up at diners with million dollar smiles, shake hands with farmers and do whatever they have to get the vote on.

The earlier states that host primaries are always known to have swayed the rest of the country. Think of how different things would have been if Howard dean were president. Although he was clearly the right candidate the last time around, he went crashing down once iowa trashed him. Not than John Kerry was any bad, but he clearly wasn't as good as Dean. What made the difference in that case? Iowa.

But Why iowa? Come on... the state is not even representative of the whole country, being 92% white, 3%black, 3%hispanic,1.5% asian... Iowa represents a slice of america from some time in the long past.

It's true that the caucus system of voting is unique, atleast the democratic party's version, and makes for good tradition. But should tradition be adopted at the cost of common sense?

Why can't the entire country have all the caucuses or primaries done with in a single day. That would prevent states like iowa from having that unnecessary influence and level the playing field for everyone.

Now that's unlikely to happen. There may be an advantage for some players with having this farmland state going first, so they won't go along quoting tradition as the reason.

Just as why it's likely to be a long time before the elections move from a tuesday to a weekend, when the country can vote all at once, the tradition of this little state dominating the presidential election will continue for a long time to come. So will the farm subsidies that give the world a reason to doubt america's commitment to free trade.