As we all sit around waiting for the serving of sandwiches, pie and Baracklava at some point after 7 o'clock tonight in Iowa, it's important to note that only a very few Iowans take part in this bizarre folk ritual -- only 8% of Iowans and 12% of the state's registered voters will caucus tonight. Everybody else, including the traditional voter demographic of cranky old white people with nothing better to do, is avoiding the caucus and can't wait for the whole dumb thing to end, so The Blazing Saddle will just be frequented by locals again.
Somehow the inescapable campaigns for Thursday night's caucuses barely made it to the Redferns' trailer park in Val Vista, just 15 minutes south of downtown, not too far from the headquarters of Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama. It's the Other Iowa. The Iowa of the uninterested and disengaged, of people who won't bother to show up because they work nights or they're cynical or they simply don't care ....It's New Year's Eve, a little past 5 p.m., and the Redferns have just had some bread, shrimp cocktail and steak, grilled in George Foreman's Lean Mean Fat Reducing Machine. Now they sit at the dining table enjoying an after-dinner smoke -- "We're too old to stop," Jim says -- talking between slow drags of their USA Gold Ultra Light 100s. The 5 p.m. news is on the TV , but Jim turns it off when a Mitt Romney ad comes on.
The Redferns: They're just like you!
Not Everyone's Moved by the Caucus Spirit [Washington Post]
