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    Show Up, Iowans!

    Posted Wednesday, January 02, 2008 1:11 PM | By Emily Bazelon
    With all due respect to Slate's cover pieces today, and Jodi Kantor's piece in the NYT, I am not moved by all the violin playing for poor disenfranchised Iowa voters. Yes, the caucus set-up stinks if you can't get out of working the evening shift or are out of state or too sick to get out of bed. But come on, the rest of you people, go caucus! I know it means leaving your house on a cold evening, and that it can take a couple of hours for Democrats. But the campaigns are offering food, babysitting, and snow shoveling for your driveways. They've spent tens of millions of dollars courting you—as much as $150 per caucus-goer on ads for Democrats and $105 for Republicans—and now the whole country is waiting to see which suitor you'll pick. All of this rebounds to your state's benefit. And yet the last time both parties held caucuses, in 2000, all you could manage was a measly 6 percent turnout of eligible voters?!? Come on, folks, if you deserve to go first because of your great civic tradition, then get out there and show us you've got one. Especially if you live in Eldora, the precinct I'm planning to cover Thursday night.
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