Black Box Report

Conventional wisdom says the importance of winning in places like New Hampshire and Iowa cannot be stressed enough, as these places represent the real America. According to Open Left, having the candidates come to the Iowa State Fair allows real citizens to peer into their souls.

Presidential candidates, especially the famous ones like Clinton, get very little exposure to real people in unscripted situations...
But in Iowa and New Hampshire, they have to do small-town parades and town meetings, and they have to show up at the Iowa state fair. They have to stand in line and talk to people who may not like them. They frequently have to answer uncomfortable questions. They have to get loose enough to act like a normal person, because if they are uncomfortable standing in line for their meat on a stick, it will show...
The culture and traditions in a rural state like Iowa strip away all the [BS] of being famous and rich and powerful, at least for awhile.

The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut agrees, and has a good time making fun of Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani - but especially Clinton - as they glad-handed their way through the Iowa fair:

Stylistically, though, Giuliani and Clinton share an uphill battle -- namely in convincing voters that they are normal people, rather than visiting members of the coastal elite with occasionally gruff manners and sharp partisan elbows. So during her midday visit, Clinton flipped pork patties. She stopped at a food stand and ordered ice cream on a stick, dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts.

"You're officially at the state fair -- you've got something on a stick," said a man behind her in line.

Politicians connecting with real people. Normal people. Because you just can't do that anywhere else.

Ahem...

I understand the inferiority complex from midwestern states tired of being referred to as "flyover country," and I agree that it's an insulting, unfair charachterization. But when did a couple of sparsely populated, homogeneous states with a grand total of 11 electoral votes become the standards for what constitutes "real, normal Americans," just because their primary or caucus is held before everyone else's? No disrespect to our rural brethren, but what does that make the millions and millions of Americans who live in and around cities? To turn the tables on the mid-western complaint; what are we, chopped liver? Matthew Yglesias responds to Mike Lux's post at Open Left (above):

I suppose these kind of weird quirks might seem folks and reassuring to you if you, like the majority of the population of Iowa and New Hampshire, are part of the tiny minority of Americans who live in lily white rural areas. I think it'd be fun to see my favorite presidential candidates swipe their MetroCards in the subway or wait on line (yes, on line, damit) for a knish at a hot dog stand.

That said, it's hard to see how any liberal can be happy, at the end of the day, with the distorting effect the disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire have on our politics. It's bad enough the way cities are disadvantaged by the structure of the constitution, that to also add on this additional extra-constitutional mechanism for further re-enforcing the existing biases of the system is insane.

During a recent roundtable on RNN's Real Politics Live, we talked about the march to make some states' primary dates even earlier. I suggested a rotating pool where every presidential election year, different states would get the privilege of helping to shape the field of candidates. An equitable system that would give different smaller states the opportunity to have candidates address their concerns, along with some of the larger states. New Yorkers and Californians are getting a bit tired of being the candidates' ATM's, only to see Iowa and NH make the all-important first cuts.

But back to the "real, normal Americans" meme, as advanced by Beltway-insider and member in good standing of the Punditocracy Anne Kornblut. Formerly of the NY Times and Boston Globe, Kornblut's no more in touch with rural, down-home salt-of-the-earth types than Fred Thompson and his rented red pickup truck and Bruno Magli shoes. Atrios offers this, and while it's not clear if he's referring to Kornblut specifically...if the shoe fits:

I don't actually mind the order of the primaries so much as I mind the way reporters tend to cover these places. They sort of do this weird "I'm a better anthropologist than the candidates are" fake schtick where they marvel at the ways of Real Americans in their native habitats, sneer at the candidates for failing to be one of the people, and then laugh at the rubes later in the hotel bar.

Maybe someone should get Ann Kornblut a corndog.