Barbara Trish: Inside the Bubble

Transcript

Marshall Poe:

Welcome to the New Books Network.

Hello everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network and you're listening to an episode in the Grinnell College authors and artist podcast series. I'm very happy today to say that we have Barbara Trish on the show. We'll be talking about her book Inside the Bubble: Campaigns, Caucuses, and the Future of the Presidential Nomination Process. It's out from Rutledge in 2022. Barbara, welcome to the show.

Barbara Trish:

Thanks. Nice to talk to you, Marshall.

Marshall Poe:

Absolutely. Maybe you could begin the interview by just telling us a little bit about yourself.

Barbara Trish:

Well, I'm a Midwesterner kind of have ... Oh, good, good. It should work out well then. I came to Grinnell in 1990. It was my first full-time job in academia. I'm a political scientist. At Grinnell, I teach in the political science department, and now I direct, as well direct the Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations, and Human Rights.

Back when I came to Grinnell, 30 plus years ago, my husband and I came, we had met in a political science course, a graduate course at Grinnell political party or at Ohio State, sorry, political parties. But we came to Grinnell with a nine-day-old child and dove in. Over the last 30 years, we have four children now, all grown, and have really had a great life at Grinnell College and in Iowa.

It's been a life that's kind of intersected with politics in a lot of different ways. I mean, beyond the fact that I study politics. My husband worked as a public radio reporter and entered the political sphere for while. I mean, he's done stuff in politics. Our grown kids have worked in politics. I mean, it's hard to be in Iowa and not just in nomination politics, presidential nomination politics.

But at least up until recently in national politics more generally, it's been hard to be in Iowa and tune out politics. I've seen a lot of stuff has come together that underscores our political lives or my political life.

Marshall Poe:

I remember very well, I went to Grinnell from 1980 to '84 and then I left and wandered the earth and then I came back as a professor at the University of Iowa in 2007. I felt that political, the Iowa political list very well, because I remember being in line for coffee or something and right in front of me was John Edwards. I don't know if anybody remembers John Edwards. But all the presidential candidates were in Iowa City to meet and greet. I was like, "Wow. There's John Edwards."

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. I mean the cool thing is ... I mean, maybe people know, maybe they don't know that Grinnell is about 60 miles from Iowa City and it's a small place. Iowa City is one of the bigger places in the state. But they come to Grinnell, too. I mean, can't flip presidential candidates are here on an ongoing basis when the cycle is full gear.

Marshall Poe:

I remember Ted Kennedy came. I got to hear Ted Kennedy talk. That was cool. Yeah. You're right. We'll talk about this, how Iowa has this outsized and according to some people unfair role in American political life. One thing though, since we are doing this podcast for Grinnell College, I noticed that your book is dedicated to two people. What is John Kessel whom I don't know, and the other is DA Smith, that's Don Smith, right?

Barbara Trish:

That's right.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Don Smith was one of my mentors when I was at Grinnell and a great fellow.

Barbara Trish:

He still is a great fellow. I've had the luxury of having a lot of contact with him over the years for most of my time in this house that I'm sitting in right now. He was my neighbor. Wouldn't surprise you, I think, that Don would just stop by on if not a nightly basis on close to a nightly basis and sit around and talk about everything, politics, British history, film, whatever, talk me all one of his favorite topics. Now, I still see him a lot. I talked to him and saw him yesterday.

Marshall Poe:

That's great. No. He taught a class on the enlightenment with two other professors that really changed the course of my intellectual life. I think about that class a lot. Just a hat tip to Don. Hi, Don, if you're listening to this. All right. Let's get right to the book. Why did you write Inside the Bubble and what were you hoping to accomplish with it?

Barbara Trish:

Well, I mean, I guess I wrote it to get out things that I had been thinking about for a long time. The ideas that were percolating, things that I had written in conference papers, but had never really pulled together, or a thread that wove through a lot of what I was doing. The thread was basically whatever systematic analysis is out there in political science.

At some level, there are people who are calling the shots working in that world and we know pretty little about them. I mean, we know a lot about, say, candidates and elected officials. But we know a lot less about, say, staff, congressional staff. We know pretty little about campaign staff. I was particularly interested in the people who aren't prominent, the people whose names you would not recognize in campaigns, but they really do the heavy lifting of democracy.

I don't think it's too much to say that. I mean, these are the people who at least given the way that campaigns and parties are run in the US now and have been for some time. These are the people who do all the work and they get very little credit. They get very little pay. They get very little credit. Then I think importantly, their people who if they stay in the world, will head off many into really important ... I mean these are important positions, but to head off into more prominent positions and be visible in politics.

I thought it made sense to learn about them, what their experiences are, their roles and campaigns. I mean, I'm interested in them, too, because I'm a teacher and I work with around students many of whom are interested in politics. I'm getting into that world. These are the jobs that they're going to be moving into. As a parent of at least one kid and family members who've gone into this world, I felt a real, I don't know, passion I guess, like a parent would, and what are my kids getting into? What are they experiencing on the job?

That's a long way of saying I've been interested in it for a long time. I just had the chance to sit down and write about it with my husband, my co-author.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Good answer. I had a lot of questions prepared about the history of presidential primaries and how it came to be the case that Iowa assumes such a large role in these things. But I think I want to set that aside because you can just go to Wikipedia and read that.

Barbara Trish:

That's right. Right.

Marshall Poe:

I think most of the people who listen to this understand that Iowa is first and it has this strange caucus. I don't know if it's strange, might not be the right word. It has this caucus system, which is peculiar, is that the right word for it?

Barbara Trish:

Strange might even be better.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. At some point in 1968, I think it was, or maybe '76, it gained it outsized role and according to some people unfair role. I want to get to what I would think of as the anthropological part of your book, because the book is really an ethnography of these staffs. I thought one interesting thing we could do is try to trace somebody from the point at which they decide to do this through the campaign, then to the end when their candidate loses, because usually they do.

How do they recruit people to be on these staffs? What is their demographic profile? Who are they?

Barbara Trish:

Well, I mean, it probably varies a little bit. But that is the mechanism by which they recruit them. But by and large, they're after young people. A lot of people who are just out, they go after people who are just out of college, or I should say people who are just leaving college will try to get into the campaign. I'm not so much sure that it's them recruiting as people recruiting themselves are putting themselves out there.

That's where the campaigns, that's the demographic for the campaigns for the entry-level jobs. The ones that we focus on, and I think the vast majority of the positions out there that these young people occupy in campaign politics, and not just Iowa caucus politics, but modern campaign politics in the US for the two parties, I should say, the vast majority of these are, I mean, organizers or field organizers.

It's a term that's ... It's a position that's been around for a long time. What they do has changed. But these are the people with the, kind of to use a more modern term, the direct voter contact. They're the people who interact with voters or likely caucusgoers. In some cases, try to persuade them. But more often than not are trying to get them to volunteer for the campaign and then ultimately getting them and getting them to get other people to the caucuses or to the polls.

These are the organizers. In the old world, 10 years ago, they used to be called almost exclusively field organizers. Now, they're more often just called organizers. In the field term, I think connotes the idea that back then, maybe it's more like 20 years ago, it was very much an in-person, in the field, or on the phone or at the door enterprise. But now there's a little bit of a digital component, too, as well. I think that's why sometimes they leave the field out of there. That's the reason.

But more often than not, these are folks who are going to be placed, deployed to a local area, whether it's a big town or a small town, but they're on the ground.

Marshall Poe:

I like the word deployed.

Barbara Trish:

Deployed. Yeah. I mean, usually that term doesn't come up immediately that's you're hired to be in Iowa, but you get deployed to another place once Iowa is done. Anyway, that's the bulk of the people also. One of the people that we highlight in the book is a regional organizing director. He supervised a number of organizers. I think those jobs are populated by people. That's not a job that you would generally take for a first job in campaign politics.

That's one you'll get if you were an organizer. In another campaign ... Or maybe you were an organizer in a particular cycle and you got bumped up to that in the cycle. Just a sidebar here, in the book, we write about a number of these people. We use pseudonyms for the organizers, only because ... I mean, we don't have to. But it seemed like the right thing to do to protect their identity a little bit because this is our first job.

It's not that ... I mean, these are real people. I mean when I think about them, I think about them as using their real name. I get a little mixed up when I look at the pseudonyms. It's not that people can identify these people. I mean, people who are involved in Iowa politics and in many cases would know who these people are by just what they hear about them.

You could probably piece it together with data that are available out in the real world, the historical record, the official documents and such. But we wanted to protect their identity. But getting to this regional person who I'd like to talk more about, if you want to hear about him, we use his real name.

Marshall Poe:

Let me just take a step back. I'm imagining an NBN listener, 20 years old, they're in college, maybe they listen some NBN interviews and they want to volunteer, if they go online and fill out a form, or is there an application process or ...

Barbara Trish:

Well, first, I don't think they want to volunteer. I think they want to paid job.

Marshall Poe:

Paid job. Okay. Let's say they want a paid job.

Barbara Trish:

Right. You mean you can poke around online, get on. If you pull up a candidate's website for example, you're probably not going to get ... You're going to get the public-facing website. You're not going to get to volunteer for the campaign. But there are all sorts of email groups out, talk to someone, call up a local party or probably a state party and say, "Hey, I'd like to work for this candidate." Maybe direct message someone or get on social media.

I mean there are ways to do it. There is an application process. I think down the road, someone is in the mix for a campaign job. They're going to ask you to formally apply at some point. But you just get in any way that you possibly can.

Marshall Poe:

I'm trying to think after they accept, let's say you go through the entire process and they love you and they say, "Okay. We're going to hire you." Two questions, what are they paid? Same question, is there training? I'm thinking of like camps. Do they send you to campaign field worker's camp?

Barbara Trish:

In Iowa? First question, about what do they pay? It's changed over time. They don't pay a lot and they don't pay a lot. Or when you think about the fact that you're signing on for a campaign and you don't know how long the campaign is going to last, I mean, it might be two months, it might be a year. You might convert it to a yearly wage, but you may not be getting that down the road.

But I think that this cycle and the pay was better this cycle. If you were one of these field organizers and you were fortunate enough to work for an entire year, you'd probably get 30,000, that'd be the gross pay. There are benefits. This is something that's gotten better as well. Insurance, though most of these folks, I mean, if they're lucky enough to be on their parents' insurance will probably opt to do that.

Probably be encouraged to do it. But will opt to do it, because these jobs can go away in a flash. Your insurance will go away in three weeks or something if the campaign folds. There's insurance. There's an employee handbook ultimately that will lay out the benefits. I should say that a new development for the 2020 cycle is that most of the campaigns were unionized. It's signed, collective bargaining agreements.

But anyway, that's the pay. In terms of the training, what generally happens is that they send you to ... I mean if we're talking Iowa or whatever venue it is that you're sending folks to work on the ground, you would send them to the state. One of the first things that they would do, that is within the first maybe two or three days, would have some onboarding with the campaign.

Usually, for instance, Iowa, Des Moines is the state capital and most of the campaigns are headquartered in Des Moines, it would usually be in Des Moines. The onboarding or the training I think is really ongoing over the entire career or the entire time in the state. What you'd tell the person or what you'd work with the person at the start on is just how to get started, how to settle in, I mean, I get the sense that these onboarding sessions are a lot bringing people into the culture of the campaign because that's going to be so important for them.

But as they go on over the course of the campaign and need new skills, use new technology, they're trained on an ongoing basis. Often asked to actually drive to wherever these things happen. But a lot of it happens remotely as well.

Marshall Poe:

What do they do in terms of ... I suppose it varies depending on where they are in the election. But what does their day-to-day work looked like?

Barbara Trish:

Well, yeah, you're absolutely right. It varies. But I think one model of a day that would come up very often is that they would probably ... They don't start really early. I mean, probably 10:00 or so. But they're expected to work quite late. They'd probably get up in the morning. They might have some calls. There are set calls every week.

But I guess their days are really ... Their weeks are really focused on a set of goals that have been established for them by ... or at least conveyed to them by the next person up in the chain of the organization. These goals are often articulated in terms of quantifiable actions that they will have had to accomplish.

Marshall Poe:

KPIs, key performance indicators.

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. Yeah.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah.

Barbara Trish:

I'm fascinated by ... I mean, this is not certainly ... obviously not unique to campaigns. But I mean there does seem to be a premium placed on actions and activities that can be tracked to the exclusion of other things that might be sensible things to do. I mean, to put something concrete on this, their goals are probably goals for voter contact.

I mean, how many calls will you make over the course of a week? How many contacts will you make at the door, outdoor knocking or out canvasing? Typically what happens is that ... This is no surprise. The goals start out quite reasonable and achievable and then you give the person a little bit of confidence and then the goals ramp up really quickly to a point that when I hear about how many calls they're expected to make or people to talk to, it's like there's no way anyone in the world can do that.

The idea is that what they're going to be doing is enlisting this or building a volunteer core who will help them out. If you have a good crew of volunteers, then you take on a little bit of supervisory role and you make them do the contact, the voter contact.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. This was the interesting part to me because it has that kind of Huckleberry Finn quality. They actually go and try to get other people to do the work for free.

Barbara Trish:

Right. Right. Right. I mean, that's been going on for centuries. But the Obama campaign in 2008 really optimized the way to do that by ... They had a campaign model, a field model that placed a premium on having ... Well, they called it a snowflake model. I mean, you have the staff member who's paid, an accountee, for example, who enlists volunteers in neighborhoods, like a neighborhood captain.

These volunteers are not paid and then those captains enlist other volunteers. There are different layers of volunteers.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. I'm thinking of an organizational chart. Actually, I'm thinking of the mafia organizational chart, but that's different. Is this a way for someone to start a political career? Is that the ambition that people have or they ... I mean, I'm wondering why someone would do this other than a great devotion to the candidate and American democracy.

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. It's a mix of things that motivate people. Yeah. I mean, in some are really drawn into candidates. I suspect more often than not, they know they want to get into the world, this world, and then they pick a candidate who is a good fit with them or who seems that candidate might be going someplace. But yeah, I guess with qualifications, it's a good way to get into this world.

If you're a person who can tolerate a lot of risk and uncertainty ... This is something that really, really concerns me. It's hard to be in this world. It's hard to enter this world if you have other responsibilities. I mean, you have to send money to a family or if you're taking care of kids or taking care of someone else, it's really hard to get into it. I think that's a bias or a problem in this.

Marshall Poe:

It's a barrier. Yeah. It is definitely a barrier. I mean, if you have to hold down a 9:00 to 5:00 to support your grandma, you're not going to be doing this job.

Barbara Trish:

Right. Right.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Yeah.

Barbara Trish:

But if you imagine a life for yourself and campaign politics, this is a good stent to start with. I mean, I suspect that many ... I think people are reluctant to say this. But they think like, "I want to become important politically, powerful politically." Some may, in fact, do it. It's a tough thing to do. I mean, you get winnowed. I mean, you have a lot of people in these worlds. There are very few staff positions, appointed positions that would come even working with a successful candidate.

But the thing is there're not a lot of other paths into it as well. It's not like you're going to have a lateral path into that. This is probably the prominent route.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. This is an unfair question. But can you think of any politicians that started down here as the foot workers for campaigns?

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. I mean ...

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. It's an unfair question because I think there are such people.

Barbara Trish:

Right. Maybe by the end of our talk ...

Marshall Poe:

Okay. That's fine. Yeah. I'm sure that there are such people that are now governors and senators who did start in this way. You talk about something called the caucus bubble. Let's return to Iowa here. What is the caucus bubble?

Barbara Trish:

Well, it's a metaphor.

Marshall Poe:

Yes.

Barbara Trish:

I think it's a great metaphor. I have to credit Daniel Schlozman of Johns Hopkins, who was an anonymous reviewer at the time, anonymous reviewer of the book who came up with this idea. But it captures a number of different dynamics in caucus politics. One, I mean, it's the caucuses are this rarefied world. It's a bubble in which candidates and campaigns and activists and staff exist.

I mean, as you mentioned, it has way too much importance. I mean, gets way too much attention. It's a bubble in that sense. But there's also a sense in which it's a bubble, in the housing bubble, something that can crash any day. Really, the history of the caucuses in the modern era, and by modern era, I mean, after 1968, because there were major reforms in the Democratic Presidential nomination process after 1968. That spilled over into Iowa's importance.

But in almost every election cycle since then, during which Iowa had been important in the past, talk about, "Oh, it's not going to last," or "Iowa's going to lose its first in the nation position or something's going to change." It's ongoing right now. It's never really abated. But it came up in a huge way after 2016 where especially the Bernie Sanders folks were very unhappy with caucus politics. There's a lot to criticize in caucus politics.

It's come up in a huge way after 2020 with the debacle of counting. In Iowa, we never really got a count until about a month after the caucuses. There's ongoing concern that things might crash. But it's a useful metaphor as well, when you think about sometimes people enter and leave the bubble. That's the caucus bubble.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things about the caucuses, which I find interesting, and again I participated it in one once, is how it tries to balance deliberation and democracy, these two things. It's pretty deliberative, weirdly deliberative and it's democratic, but not.

Barbara Trish:

Well, I mean, first on the democratic side, you're right. It is kind of and kind of not. I mean, you get people, you think of a New England town meeting if that's the model of democracy involving deliberation, too. But getting people together and engaging them in politics. Yeah. The caucuses are like that, except for it's a very, very small percentage of Iowans who participate or Democrats or Republicans who participate in.

In terms of turnout, it's terribly undemocratic. The rules are such that ... I mean, they make sense in terms of party politics if you're thinking about a big party organization. But there're really arcane rules and there are rules that don't always allow for ... I mean, if democracy is about giving voice to everyone, they don't allow for that voice for everyone.

The deliberation part is ... this may have changed a little bit since the caucuses that you were at. But what's happened over time, and this is something that Don Smith, Professor Smith talks a lot about, in fact, he mentioned it yesterday, that the size of the caucuses ... I mean despite the fact that few people participate have gotten so big.

By so big, I mean something if you're in a big caucus in Grinnell, which is actually a big caucus for various reasons. But you might have 800, 1,000 people there. I mean, you can't have deliberation with that many people. There's not even the deliberation that you would expect.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. That's exactly right. I went to one in Iowa City that probably had ... There were probably 400 people in the room. There was some chatting and they encouraged us to go talk to one another, the different candidates and so on and so forth. But I honestly don't know if anybody's mind was changed during that process. That would be my guess. Yeah.

Barbara Trish:

Right. I mean there's just a lot of chaos. I mean, personally ... I mean, as a professional, I love to go and observe as a party person. I hate to be involved in caucuses.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Do the Democrats do it differently than the Republicans?

Barbara Trish:

They do.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah.

Barbara Trish:

I mean, they do in a big way, I guess. First, I wouldn't say it's largely the same. They're meetings at the same time. It used to be in the same location, really not the same room. But before the caucus, some caucuses got really big. You might have the Democrats and Republicans meeting in a school. One would be in the library and the other would be in the cafeteria or something like that.

The big difference though, between the way that the parties set up is that historically Republican, and still today, Republicans have taken a presidential preference poll at the caucus. I mean, they let people vote, cast a vote, a straw poll. That becomes the result that the party releases about the caucuses.

Democrats have at least until 2020 in which they had a version of that. But Democrats have never done anything like that. They go through an elaborate process of dividing physically into groups.

Marshall Poe:

I remember this.

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. Then it becomes very complicated in terms of how many delegates each group gets. Yeah. That's a big difference. I think that has made the Democratic caucuses seem more opaque to people than the Republican caucuses.

Marshall Poe:

That's interesting. I was very interested to find out that the ... I hadn't recalled this. Well, let me ask a few questions. One is why did it take four weeks to report the results of the 2020 Democratic Caucus?

Barbara Trish:

Well, it's complicated. I mean, lots of things contributed to that problem. One was that there were changes to the rules for 2020. I mean, apropos of what you had just asked about, the Democrats adopted rules that allowed people to express their preference before they got into groups. They broke into groups. There was something more akin to an actual vote. I mean, they were careful not to use the language "vote" for complicated reasons, but something more akin to a vote. Then they went through the usual caucus process.

Bottom line is though, that in relaying the results of this to the state, there was a lot more information to relay. I think someone said like 36 different figures that at the end of the caucus, a local ... the precinct chair would have to send to the state. Previously they did this by telephone. Of course, that's problematic because phone lines get jammed and things like that. This time they had an app.

Marshall Poe:

Had an app?

Barbara Trish:

Right. Had an app to do it.

Marshall Poe:

Very modern, an app.

Barbara Trish:

Very modern. It was developed for this purpose. It looks it was developed and maybe not tested as thoroughly as it should be. Maybe not the volunteers who are running the caucuses, perhaps not trained as well as they should be. They had the option to phone in the results again. But it all started going downhill when they couldn't relay the results to the state party.

Things had looked like they had gone very well until then. There was also a story that in terms of the phone lines, that maybe Republicans had gotten wind of the phone line that was being used the secondary path and had sent that out and then had enlisted others to call in and make it even harder to get through, things like that.

This is caucus night when you would usually have some results. The next four weeks were just a series of trying to figure out what the real count is. It's hard. In 2020, there was for the first time a real paper trail because they were preference cards, maybe a four by six inch preference card that each caucus attendee was given. That was the first time that ever happened.

There would be this paper trail of people, of the votes of people, which is really a good thing and turns out to have been a good thing because they could ultimately get use those. I mean good thing, bad thing, and bad thing in the sense that it revealed a lot of irregularities in the process as well. But even the process of getting the cards, let's say, there are approximately 1,700 caucuses in the state, many of which are in different venues, and then however many people are at the caucus.

The process of physically getting those cards to the state party is, no. I mean, this would a problem in any state.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah.

Barbara Trish:

Lots of thing.

Marshall Poe:

Iowa in February, it's cold and there's probably ...

Barbara Trish:

That's right. Right.

Marshall Poe:

... snow and it's disaster. Yeah. That's right. Let me ask this question. Americans expect Iowa to do this job and that is winnow. I don't know how many candidates there were in 2020. But it was like 20 or something.

Barbara Trish:

Or even more. Yeah.

Marshall Poe:

There were a lot of candidates. Did Iowa do its job in 2020?

Barbara Trish:

I mean, I think it did, actually. I say that realizing that doesn't make sense because the results weren't even out.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. That's why I'm asking. I don't know. Yeah.

Barbara Trish:

For another week. I mean it winnowed candidates before the caucuses themselves. I mean, there were a number of candidates which with who withdrew over the course of the fall, fall of 2019. In that sense it did. I think Iowa Democrats knew or knew shortly after caucus night that it looked like Buttigieg and Sanders were one-two in the caucuses.

Biden ultimately would come in forth. But Biden didn't do very well. People tried to game those likely results. But I think ultimately, I mean, I don't think anyone pulled out immediately after the caucuses. That's what usually happens. But that probably factored into decisions for candidates to withdraw after New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina.

But the complicating thing this year, when I'm thinking about your question is that there's a lot of winnowing that happened because of the pandemic as well. Because basically at the pandemic, the coronavirus that we were ... the language we were using at the time enters the US psyche and public health world early 2020 in January of 2020. But it's sort of a blip. It's all in China at that point.

Even on February 3rd, which is when the caucus night, was February 3rd, there's not much concern about COVID. But then it ramps up a little bit during that timeframe of the second, third and fourth events. But it really ramps up. That's when the candidates start thinking, "We've got a public health crisis. We can't contribute to it by prolonging this campaign."

Public health crisis and also Democrats were always concerned about needing to unseed the president. I think that's when they started rethinking how long they should stay in the race. Yes. Iowa helped winnow.

Marshall Poe:

Good. It's crystal ball time. What is the future of the Iowa caucuses? You mentioned ... I do like this metaphor bubble because it's not predetermined. It is not written in the stars that Iowa will play this weird role. What's going to happen?

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. It has a giant target. Iowa has a giant target on it, but it has before as well. But the most recent, or the previous chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, really didn't like the caucuses. I mean, there's been a push from the National Party to have all nominating events be primaries and have no caucuses. It looks like Nevada, the other prominent caucus in the mix, caucus state in the mix might go with a primary as well.

There's a lot of reason to think that things might change. People in Iowa, I mean Democrats in Iowa are divided on the caucuses. I mean, some Don Smith think that it's a model that we should stick with and find appropriate ways to adjust and others think, it just doesn't make sense. There're going to be a lot of discussions.

I think that the Democratic National Committee, in its winter meetings, it's the rules and bylaws committee of the DNC that actually makes the calls on this or recommends this to the DNC. They're going to be meeting soon. They're probably going to be addressing it, the Iowa representatives on that. I'm not sure how they're going to fall, whether they're going to push forward or not. Okay. That's rules-wise. There's going to be a discussion.

If I were a betting person, gosh, it's hard to change things. I mean, they're going to have to come up with another plan that's agreeable to not only ... Well, the national Democrats, the state Democrats, but in a weird way, Iowa Republicans have a role in this Democratic, capital the Democratic discussion as well. Because I don't think there's any reason to think that the Iowa Republicans are going to give up on their caucuses. The caucuses themselves are written into the Iowa caucuses are written into statute.

Marshall Poe:

They know that. Oh.

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. I mean, it's this weird thing like state law mandates that we have caucuses.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah.

Barbara Trish:

It would be a violation of state law. The other thing is, even if they changed the rules in a way that made it look like Iowa was going to be less prominent, it's always hard to know how reform is going to play out. But if candidates kept coming to the state and the media kept coming to the state, then maybe it would remain prominent.

The final thing I want to say about this though is that we are in 2022 we're talking about a 2024 contest. It's not clear who will put their hat in the ring, but we have Democrats have an incumbent president. There's always less motivation to change things, even though Biden did very poorly in Iowa, but less motivation to change things when you control the White House. I don't know.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. I don't know. Nobody knows. But I can tell you my own personal feeling about it was I found it very ... What is the right word for this? Encouraging, because of the deliberative aspect. You don't usually get a chance to talk to people about politics whom you want to talk to. It matters because you're about to do something consequential. Usually just go into a voting boot. You vote, you're done.

This is an important moment when you have to explain yourself to other people why you're doing it, and people on your own side. This deliberative part, I'm afraid we don't have enough of anymore.

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. Right. Good point. That's a big plus of the caucuses if you can actually get deliberation going. At the same time, I mean, one of the major criticisms of the caucuses is that they're inaccessible. I mean, they're ...

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. They're not Democratic. Well, that's just it. I mean, you got to be honest. They're not particularly Democratic in the sense of giving everybody a voice. No.

Barbara Trish:

Well, I mean, yeah, someone who's working at caucus time there's a no way.

Marshall Poe:

Right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. But nonetheless, I'd like to find a way to preserve that deliberative part and make it more Democratic. How you do that? I don't know if you can do that. It's interesting.

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that we learned from 2020 when the pandemic hit is that backs against the wall, campaigns and parties can change and use technology effectively to do things. Maybe there's a technological fit fix to that.

Marshall Poe:

Yeah. Massive zoom meetings. That's what Americans want.

Barbara Trish:

Exactly.

Marshall Poe:

Well, thank you very much for being on the show, Barb. We have a traditional final question on the New Books Network. That is, what are you working on now?

Barbara Trish:

I'm working on two things. One is a paper for a conference in the spring on the caucuses, I'm writing it. My coauthor is a student Matley, senior. We carved out a really narrow question, in the weeds question. It's a footnote in the book actually.

Marshall Poe:

That's kind.

Barbara Trish:

Yeah. Without going into detail, it's about proportional rules or how proportionality plays out in the caucuses. I think what these changes that the Democrats in Iowa adopted for 2020, the kind of a recorded vote for each person, that wasn't the only thing. But it's given us data that we hadn't previously had. We can do some simulations of outcomes under different settings.

It's basically, it carves out a focus on proportionality, simulates outcomes of spoiler alert, that results probably aren't going to be that much different. But when results or contests are highly contested, when margins are small, small changes could have a real impact. I think the other thing is ... I know I'm being real abstract here. Not because it's not interesting, but it's just too much in the weeds to talk about much.

The other important thing is it hopefully will illuminate why campaigns or the incentives campaigns face when they're choosing where to deploy resources. That's the first concrete thing. Then the second thing is a longer term project dealing with political work, trying to recapture this ethnographic stuff ...

Marshall Poe:

Ethnographic is the word.

Barbara Trish:

... on this book. I just love to talk to people about what they do for work, where they work. I mean, just superficial things and potentially important things as well. I'd like to have a broader swath of political people and try to make sense of the work that they do, and importantly, the mean of work of this political work in their lives.

I'm not the first person to do this Studs Terkel. I toss out his name with care because I don't think anyone ... I probably will work with my husband on this. We couldn't do what he did. But it's that idea of hearing people talk about work, political work. That's it

Marshall Poe:

Well, it sounds fascinating. If any of that comes to book, eventually you should write me and will interview you again about that.

Barbara Trish:

Great. Great.

Marshall Poe:

All right. Well, let me tell everybody, we've been talking to Barbara Trish today on the Grinnell College, authors and artist podcast. I'm Marshall Poe, the editor of the New Books Network, and I hope everybody has a great day. Thanks, Barbara.

Barbara Trish:

Thanks Marshall. Fun to talk to you.

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