If we react too badly to the Iowa caucus results fiasco, we'll end up handing our democracy to billionaires

Michael Bloomberg was the only winner here, and we have to take a minute to consider what that really means

Caucuses are messy, as Iowa just proved. We still don’t know who won last night’s Democratic caucus, and both pundits and party officials are understandably apoplectic. “If you want to be first, get it right,” MSNBC presenter Chris Matthews said last night, speaking for millions of Americans who are rightly dismayed at this hot mess in the Hawkeye State. Others predicted this would be the last Iowa caucus, or at least the last first one.

There is a lot to criticize about caucuses generally, and Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status in particular. As Ella Nilsen wrote at Vox, “access to the caucuses has long been a problem in Iowa, and not just for those with disabilities.” Parents with children (especially infants or toddlers), people who work during caucus hours, the elderly, or even people with anxiety disorders can find the process daunting and inaccessible. Compound this with Iowa’s demographics — which do not reflect the country writ large, and certainly do not reflect the base of the Democratic Party — and it’s entirely reasonable, following last night’s fiasco, to question whether the Iowa caucus should be granted the primacy it is.

However, there’s another side to this coin, one that goes to the heart of American democracy but is often overlooked. Rewarding hard work and old-fashioned retail politics over flashy ads and tinned soundbites, caucuses are an important buttress against big money in politics and the increasing gulf between candidates and voters. In all their infuriating madness, caucuses are, as Ben Gran wrote last month for Paste Magazine, “democracy in its purest form.”

Building support in Iowa — or any caucus state — isn’t about holding big rallies, giving great speeches, or raising the most money. It’s about ground game. It’s about shaking hands at county fairs, kissing babies at greasy diners, and holding town halls in big cities and small towns. Essentially, it’s old-fashioned retail politics, the kind usually reserved for local and state races and rarely seen on the national stage. Indeed, that kind of one-on-one voter/candidate interaction is vital to building a base of supporters who will then convince others to vote for you.

Herein lies the magic of the caucuses. It isn’t enough to convince people to vote for you — you must convince people to stump for you, to have conversations with other voters about why you are the best candidate. You can’t win a caucus if your supporters aren’t passionate enough to convince others whose first choice isn’t viable to then caucus for you. It engages folks in the political process in a way that simply ticking a box on a ballot cannot and places them right at the heart of the election. Caucuses are about real people having real conversations, convincing their neighbors right up until the final vote is counted.

That’s exactly why caucuses serve as a bulwark against billionaire candidates buying their way into office. Donald Trump lost Iowa in 2016 because, by his own admission, he failed to have an adequate “ground game” there. He learned the hard way that money can’t buy you a caucus victory because the very nature of caucuses — real people engaging in real conversations — is, if not immune to the corrupting influence of big money, then inoculated against its reliance on grassroots support. Michael Bloomberg — who is using his own money to campaign in Super Tuesday states — skipped Iowa altogether, spending his billions campaigning elsewhere.

You can hardly blame him. If you want to buy your way into the White House, it makes sense to skip Iowa. Voters there take their role as the first to vote for president extremely seriously, and while money can buy you a great deal of things in American politics, it can’t buy you enthusiastic grassroots support. Trump failed in the 2016 caucus because he didn’t understand this and Obama succeeded in the 2008 caucus because he did. It’s not enough to outspend your opponent or appear on more TV shows. You have to do the work. You have to build an organic movement powered by real people, not K Street lobbyists and career political operatives. You have to convince people to believe in you so much that they not only vote for you but that they’re willing to spend hours convincing their friends to vote for you, too.

That is, to quote something Rachel Maddow said last night, “the romance of the caucuses.” We abolish them at our own peril. It’s not a perfect system, and Iowa isn’t the perfect state to kick off our presidential elections. There’s a conversation to be had about that, for sure. Yet for all its faults, the Iowa caucus is still a shining example of American democracy at its best.