skip to main content

The Kitchen Table

Iowa caucas - please explain this process to me

18 years ago

Wow, at my age and education you would think I would get it. However, my focus was science, math and I never had an interest in ss (social studies, not stainless steel), and politics. Guess it is time for me to learn, duh!. Iowa people, please explain this process to me.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (17)

bestlawn
18 years ago
In the most pragmatic terms, you can say the Iowa Caucus is the forerunner for the national Presidential nomination. Both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions normally nominate the candidate to run for President whoever the Iowa Caucuses chose.

Just in case you want to know what that means, the candidates - Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hilary Clinton, Guiliana, and all the others - right now are not running for President. They are trying to earn the nomination of their respective parties. At the Democratic National Convention, the Democratic nominee will be elected and announced. And respectively, the same happens at the Republican National Convention. Then, those two accept the nomination and become the major Presidential contenders.

I'm not from Iowa, but did I help at all?
Chemocurl zn5b/6a Indiana
18 years ago
Ok...so another question then, while we are on the subject.

How or who then determines the running mate for vice president? Is it usually someone who has lost the nomination for the presidency, or someone else? I've been wondering particularly what the Demo ticket might look like...without mentioning any names.

Sue
Related Discussions
please explain MUMS to me
Q
Comments (3)
Hi, Growitnow! I planted mums for the first time last fall and have had only a couple come back this spring. I knew when I planted them that they may not come back. I had planted one in a large galvanized tub and it has hundreds of babies growing now. I'm in the process of repotting these and growing them into larger plants to transplant. I do know, from past experience with my mother, that to keep them bushy you need to pinch them back on a regular basis. I feel so blessed to have so many babies available!
...See More
Concert tickets-can someone please explain to me....
Q
Comments (15)
Hi Linda, I don't buy from stubhub but my coworker does, as well as ebay. She usually does that for sporting events since we both get all the emails when the concerts go on sale. I'll ask her if they are preselling. What I have read in my research is that they do in deed presale. Your question did send me on a mission because I didn't have the answer. Van Halen has no website to speak of and Live Nation and Ticket Master only list VIP packages for both our venues. They annouced the dates just recently and under my date of 04/10 it says TBD. Ticket master will list the shows once they have a date that the tickets will be in sale. It appears that they are releasing some VIP packages right now that will ship in April BUT Stub Hub shows specfic seats for each venue. It does not state when you would get you tickets so I clicked through the buy process a bit to see if there was a warning, but nothing obvious. To compare I clicked on NY which I know is on sale, and the stubhub website site shows as bold as can be "Electronic Delivery Available Immediately". Based on this, I still think I am right and they are not on sale yet. If you set up an account with ticketmaster, I bet you can score $49 seats when they are released. I'll check with my friend on Tues and I will let you know when they go on sale in FL.
...See More
Please explain the hole under my house
Q
Comments (19)
I grew up on a dairy farm in N.E.Ohio. We had a huge old farmhouse with 7BR and a #2 galvanized tub and chamber pots for a bathroom, + the little house out back...LOL The basement had a dirt floor and stone walls. There was two 4'x4'x25' bins, one along the east wall and the second running parallel with a 3' walkway where we stored 10tons of potatoes + pumpkins, squash, and apples. A row of 18 fifty gallon barrels filled with apple cider, which provided sweet cider for about 4 to 6 weeks, then hard cider for the men all winter & spring and apple vinegar for the canning season the next year. The south wall had shelves where we stored 2000 mason canning jars filled with every fruit and veggie imaginable + about 10 varieties of pickles and home canned pork sausage balls. Huge smoked hams (35-40lbs) hung on hooks from the ceiling along with sides of bacon and smoked sausages. Every morning when we finished milking the cows we would bring a 5gallon pail of fresh whole milk to the house (6-8% butterfat). AT the barn we had a small masonary building called the Milk house. In the milk house there was a pit 4' wide, 3'deep and 14' long with a pipe coming in from the spring on one end and a drain pipe on the opposite end. We stored up to 18 milk cans of milk in that pit overnite, then after the milking in the morning we hauled all the milk cans to a local dairy. We didn't have need of a butter churn because the dairy gave us 4lbs of butter every day free. (I used to love riding the truck to the dairy because we could sneak in the freezers and grab an ice cream bar..LOL) Twenty loaves of bread were baked every Thursday along with a couple pies and yeast dinner rolls. Until I was 13 years old we didn't even have a refrigerator and didn't see any need of getting one. Now the doomsday profits would tell you that all that fresh milk, smoked meats and non-refrigerated food will kill you, but I am 60yrs old and never even saw a doctor from the time i discharged out of the Air Force in 1972 until two months ago. My Grandfather was 68 when he passed away, worked the farm with horses every day, and he had never been to a doctor in his life. go figure!
...See More
Can someone please explain to me.....?
Q
Comments (23)
>For me however, given the choice in cabinetry, I'd go solid, so now I will tell you why. I like the feel of the heavier doors. A solid panel is also easier to repair if it gets damaged. I've seen some veneer panels completely blow out when hit hard enough. Plywood and veneer aren't the same thing, and both come in many thicknesses. I have no idea what you mean by "blow out", but properly glued veneer (or properly made plywood) will never delaminate. OTOH, only a fool would make guarantees about solid wood and warping and splitting on larger panels. Many companies, for that reason, will either not make the large doors without extra stiles or will not guarantee them. If you have a raised panel fridge door with just two panels, for instance, all the luck to you, but there's a reason that raised panel passageway doors are made with SMALL panels. >I've had several clients complain about the rattly sound when closing a door with a thin center panel (especially if the doors are large...tall 42" uppers and pantry doors are the worst). You don't think about that until you're using it everyday. You mean that the whole DOOR vibrates? Or that the panel vibrates in the door? With the second, it's more likely that solid panels will develop that problem over time, since they move more with the seasons. You can reverse-cove-shape a plywood panel, too, though the results wouldn't be as pretty on the backside, but I'd take that before having a *big* solid wood center panel. The LAST place you want big panels is with solid wood. (Unless, of course, you can magically keep the moisture and temperature exactly steady year-round--like you'd have to to keep paint from splitting where stiles join, as Woodmode mentioned.) It will warp very rapidly. You're courting disaster if you insist on it. If you have to have solid wood on big doors--if, for instance, you have the actual panel with a cove facing out--then you should keep the size of each panel to a reasonable dimension considering the dimensional stability of your chosen wood. That means raising the number of panels per door. >And finally, veneers can STAIN differently and AGE differently than solid wood. I've seen kitchens where the center veneer panel is slightly lighter in color that the solid wood frames. Now you're making no sense. A horizontal stile will look a different color from a vertical stile because of the direction of the wood grain. This is true with the vast majority of stain colors. Natural variation in the wood mean that panels and stiles will also look slightly different colors to a very careful eye. The BEST way to get panels to look the same, if you're not doing an almost opaque stain, is with veneers. (True veneers, not plywood.) The BEST way is to book match or slip match veneers. Without that, the best you can do is to do a "pleasing match" of solid woods--that is, select them to make sure they are all the same color. If some moron didn't do so, blaming the veneering process (or the fact that they used plywood) shows an astonishing lack of comprehension of what veneer/plywood is. If you like solid wood panels because you think they're more authentic, sure, whatever, I'll give it to you. If you like the idea of being able to put an enormous gouge in a piece of furniture and the color underneath being able to be stained to the same color, I'll agree but I'll think you're crazy since any sensible person would fill it, sand it, stain it, and make it disappear. But if you're pretending that, in performance, solid wood is superior for a flat panel application or if you're pretending that the most exquisite furniture made today isn't enormously dominated by rare and beautiful veneers...you're selling your clients a load of nonsense. The very best casework is made with a mixture of plywood, veneers, inlays, and solid wood--typically, in that order. The pieces that are worth more than my car ever was rarely have more than trace amounts of solid wood. Pretending that solid wood=high quality is dangerously deceptive. The stile-and-panel style door was originally developed because slabs of solid wood warp so dramatically. (Yes, solid-wood panels work--as long as you keep the doors within reasonable sizes ***for the material.*** Many people don't want that, though....) Historically...yes, Shakers wanted simpler designs. They couldn't change the existence of stiles-plus-panels because plywood technology didn't exist yet. The cove actually has a function in solid-panel doors, so they kept it and reversed it to make it seem less decorative. If Shaker villages were thriving today, they'd probably all have slab-style doors! :-) (Which aren't just slabs of playwood, BTW, but are built up--with plywood and solid wood, both--and usually have...yes, veneers, if they are any size at all. Those amazing zebrawood modernist design? All veneers!)
...See More
shequit
Original Author
18 years ago
Bestlawn - thank you. I am trying to understand more about politics - about time at my age - and you have given me a direction. I need basic explanation and what you said did help. We will talk more later.
bestlawn
18 years ago
Boy, this board wouldn't let me post again no matter what I did.

Sue, it isn't anyone inparticular, or at least it isn't supposed to be, but you know how we are. The Vice Prez nominee is elected in the same manner as the Prez nominee at a later date, but the Presidential nominee does have a say in who s/he prefers or who s/he thinks might be a good running mate. I cannot substantiate this, but I really think is often political pressure and not necessarily that the Presidential nominee really likes his running mate or that they are prior friends. At any rate, it is decided on and then the National Convention nominates him/her.

I am guessing at who you think the ticket might be, but I assure you it ain't gonna happen. LOL
Chemocurl zn5b/6a Indiana
18 years ago
Thanks bestlawn for the wonderful explanation.

LMAO...You only think you know what you think I'm thinking...and we'd probably just leave it at that...if'n ya know what I mean.

Sue
shequit
Original Author
18 years ago
bestlawn - thank you again. Why does the Iowa caucus most likely determines the candidates? Is it a stat thing, based on what? I can relate to that. I am a retired math teacher. Don't tell the nuns they did not inspire my politics.....
bestlawn
18 years ago
LOL Don't worry, isn't it great how we all have our preferences. I'm not so interested in politics either. What little understanding I do have was obtained as an older adult. The last couple elections, I quizzed my mother and my cousin til they were sick of me :)

Yes, I think it's a numbers thing, but I can't exactly explain that, mainly because it's soooo much and so many different political avenues in the electoral process. But, think of it as having a lot to do with Iowa having 100(?) (101?) counties = more electoral votes.
joyfulguy
18 years ago
And it takes millions to even think of trying to run.

That don't appear out of thin air.

o j
sandy_in_ia
18 years ago
This site gives you a bit more info/explanation.

Here is a link that might be useful: More info....
okwriter
18 years ago
I guess I'm a nerd. I don't understand all the particulars of the procees, but I find this election fascinating because of the number and variety of candidates in both parties.
maybee_gw
18 years ago
Iowa wants to be first...and has a hard time beating some of the other states back on that. I think, by coincidence, the ones who win in Iowa usually win the nomination....it is a strange thing because actually, there aren't really that many people who attend the caucuses....we went one year and I'll wager there were only about a dozen of us representing the Republican Party. We no longer go because of that (probably a mistake) and the fact that we then get myriads of calls during the year wanting us to do more and more. I'm tempted to go this year and speak out about the phone calls we get throughout the day and evening hours...the same thing over and over. I have caller ID on my computer but not my phone...it is almost to the harassment stage.
FlamingO in AR
18 years ago
We were wondering about this last night. I found a good explanation of the differences between a primary and a caucus on Wikipedia, about 1/3 of the way down the page where it says PROCESS.

After reading all this, I think I like the straight primary process better, but then I don't like big noisy groups of people. I can see where in the past, it would have been a big, fun meeting to go to.

Here is a link that might be useful: Good explanation
linda_in_iowa
18 years ago
I don't think the causus are a fair process. Only the able bodied who are willing to go out on a cold January night participate. Apparently, we will be standing the whole time. Everyone attending (from your precinct) knows who you are favoring. When I think about all the years my elderly mother in CA voted absentee in the primaries, she would not have been able to caucus.
Yesterday at a Red Hat luncheon when I spoke my mind about the unfairness of caucuses, most were very surprised that all states did not caucus. They just assumed all states caucused for primaries.
bestlawn
18 years ago
Linda, have you ever been a delegate?
bigfoot_liz
18 years ago
political analysts are saying the outcome of the IA caucus really has little bearing on the overall outcome because the voting demographics are so far skewed away from the rest of the US. IA has only 5% minorities and 32% rural population compare that to NY, FL IL and the results are never going to be the same. major issues in IA are pretty central to IA and have little to do with major issues in AZ, FL, CA & NY who carry large #'s of delegates.

BTW i am a political junkie, have been my whole life. grew up in politics with an uncle who was a US state rep then US senator, another uncle a state rep and the rest of our family deeply involved in democratic politics in chicago and NW IN. i LOVE election yrs LOL ~ liz
User
18 years ago
I love election years too and was happy the way it turned out tonight in one race.
Chemocurl zn5b/6a Indiana
18 years ago
ding, ding, ding. I finally have it all together. The link below made me understand. Some states hold caucuses and others hold primaries.

New Mexico has a Demo caucus in Feb, but the Republicans have a primary in June.

I'm still left wonder about Idaho, Nebraska, and Washington.
I see there is a caucus date for just one party (Democratic), but the primary date isn't listed as being for just the one other party.(Republican)
I'm left wondering if someone lacked paying attention to detail when they filled out the form...leaving assumptions for the 3 states listed above, or something.

Sue...confused as usual

Here is a link that might be useful: 2008 Presidential primary and caucus dates

Related Stories

COFFEE WITH AN ARCHITECT The Elements of Design Explained With Venn Diagrams

By Jody Brown Architecture, pllc

Design doesn't have to be hard to understand. It just needs the right presentation

HOUZZ TOURS Houzz Tour: Contemporary Country Charm in Iowa

By Becky Harris

Limited square footage is offset by flexible design, careful planning and an expansive outdoor landscape

CONTRACTOR TIPS Building Permits: The Submittal Process

By Matt Clawson

In part 2 of our series examining the building permit process, learn what to do and expect as you seek approval for your project

CONTRACTOR TIPS Building Permits: The Inspection Process

By Matt Clawson

In Part 5 of our series on home building permits, we explore typical inspection schedules for a variety of project types

HOME OFFICES Quiet, Please! How to Cut Noise Pollution at Home

By Christine Ciarmello

Leaf blowers, trucks or noisy neighbors driving you berserk? These sound-reduction strategies can help you hush things up

BATHROOM DESIGN Upload of the Day: A Mini Fridge in the Master Bathroom? Yes, Please!

By Mitchell Parker

Talk about convenience. Better yet, get it yourself after being inspired by this Texas bath

DECORATING GUIDES 10 Look-at-Me Ways to Show Off Your Collectibles

By Joanna Tovia

Give your prized objects center stage with a dramatic whole-wall display or a creative shelf arrangement

Houzz Call: Show Us Your Paint Makeovers

By Becky Harris

Let your newly repainted house or room do the "How d'ya like me now?" strut right here — it might just be featured in an upcoming ideabook

Sales Secrets for Interior Designers

By Becky Dietrich, Interior Designer

Pro to pro: Learn 3 proven techniques to please clients and increase revenues, developed by a designer with 40 years of success

UNIVERSAL DESIGN How to Light a Kitchen for Older Eyes and Better Beauty

By Sheridan Interiors, Kitchens and Baths

Include the right kinds of light in your kitchen's universal design plan to make it more workable and visually pleasing for all

Sponsored

More Discussions

eggs, glorious eggs

45

Grocery store games, burger meat for $3,99

38

I'll show you mine/you show me yours - M 8/24/26

19

Smile today - 8/24/26

6

Monday's Daily Quiz

7