Iowa Caucuses Archives - Public Seminar

Past Present

The 2020 Iowa Caucuses

Past Present Podcast, Episode 215

February 11, 2020 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The 2020 Iowa caucus was a logistical disaster. Natalia cited this POLITICO piece about longer standing concerns about Iowa. Neil wrote about Pete Buttigieg’s historic showing in Iowa in his column for The Week. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia discussed the Amazon ...

The App That Ate the Iowa Caucuses

As we head into the New Hampshire primary, politics – and political media – need a reboot

February 4, 2020 • by Claire Potter

One thing that was clear is that our system for broadcasting elections needs overhauling. Election night shows are over-reliant on provided endless amounts of trivial information, in the name of context, that actually distracts audiences from taking in, or thinking about, the bigger picture. In fact, the MSNBC team seemed desperate to persuade us ...

Andrew Yang’s Unexpected Appeal

As we approach the Iowa Caucuses, it’s useful to remember that Democratic politics is about reinventing government — and it always has been

January 31, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Andrew Yang fits nowhere in this framework, but he does point to what all these Democratic candidates have in common: to one degree or another, they all believe that politics is a conversation about how, not whether, democratic government will be renewed. For the limits of this idea, see an essay by Ian Zuckerman ...