A Caucus By Any Other Name...

...probably wouldn't smell just as sweet. Sorry. Half the fun in going to a caucus is the fact that, yes, you get to stick it to someone by crowing that you're going to an event actually called a caucus. But, of course, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The prestigious research journal Wikipedia defines "Caucus" as "a meeting of supporters or members of a political party or movement" (can you tell we chose not to scrimp on our research budget?). But how did a word that describes such a normal everyday event come to be formed with such an irregular affinity for vowels and the letter "c"? While dark voodoo conjuring is definitely one of the Top 3 possible reasons why this might be, the actual root of the word allegedly derives itself from the dark witchcraft of the Algonquin Indians (just kidding!, I'm sure the witchcraft they practiced was perfectly on the up and up)(kidding again!, the term "Algonquin" wasn't even created until the 1930's when Dorthy Parker needed a new word to describe getting totally sloshed in a hotel restaurant bar before noon). Actually, the term "caucus" is believed to literally mean a gathering of ruling tribal chiefs.

But why listen to me, when you can hear it straight from this guy:



THE David Yepsen. Political consultant extraordinaire.

According to Yepsen (who once won second place in a jaw slackness contest), the Iowa caucus didn't become the hootenanny we love and appreciate today until 1972, when George McGovern was able to use a surprising win there to slingshot himself to the head of the candidate pack (this is much like the slingshot effect that the USS Enterprise used in Star Trek 4 to go back and forth through time)(but with a lot less whales). Since '72, the Iowa caucus has become THE definitive battleground for political hopefuls everywhere. Case in point, for the '88 election, the combined on-the-ground time in Iowa for all the candidates prior to the caucus tallied roughly 1000 days. It's foolish to even write it, but yes sir, that's a heck of a lot of days. And I shudder to think how many of those 1000 days were spent kissing babies (mainly for photo-op moments)(of course).

In the end, while I'm not sure what exact branches of science and mathematics Yepsen used to come up with these statistics, I know for a fact he's at least got a PhD in Jaw-ology, and that, my friends, is a satisfying credential enough for even the harshest of critics.

-Christopher Czyz, Assistant Director