Corn farmers from Iowa. Where they hold the first caucus of the interminable election season.
No American politician or political party can afford to offend corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline is only 10% corn.
No American politician or political party can afford to offend corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline is only 10% corn.
What caused that?
Or do the US subsidies on corn make it cost effective for Canadians to burn ethanol? If so, where’s my cheap E85? I’d run it in my old Corolla and see what happens.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-can...
Go ahead: your old Corolla will become a dead Corolla.
https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-ethanol-in...
Money and corruption to be more precise.
Iowa no longer first; Democrats reorder the presidential primary calendar for 2024
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2022/1...
I think that has more to do with getting away from Iowa and New Hampshire since those states have shown a surprising level of support for candidates outside of the preferred establishment picks.
On the other hand if a primary chooses a candidate that ultimately produces a winner in the general election, they probably should go first the next time. Iowa didn't vote for Bill Clinton in 1992. But as it was for Biden, it was after Iowa where Clinton got momentum (in Clinton's case Georgia). [2]
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/05/biden-campaign-staf...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Democratic_Party_presiden...
It wasn’t because they care about offending farmers or removing ethanol subsidies, it was so that Biden can lock down some early primary wins in 2024 with States with a higher percentage of black voters.
The volume for 2024 is also so low compared to 2020 so I don't think you can use the current 2024 predictions as evidence.
[1]: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3698/Who-will-win-t...
I’ve clarified the grandparent: I was referring to the nominating contest (the aggregate of primary elections and caucuses that are addressed by the schedule change being discussed), not the general election.
him saying they're doing it to lock in Biden (their mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really different from saying they're doing it to lock in their mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early primaries in future elections to avoid the kind of "self destructive" internecine primary battles with fringe candidates like Bernie Sanders--yes, he was very popular, but his views are to one side of the Democratic party which is to one side of the Republican party which makes his views part of the fringe in the uniform tapestry of views--which have taken place for many years.
Not saying it's right or wrong, just saying GP's analysis holds together as part of the larger analysis everybody here seems to be basing their thinking on.
Yes, it is.
Because it refers to specific geographic strengths that Biden had as a candidate, not strengths that are uniformly typical of establishment-preferred Democratic candidates.
(Now if, instead of referring to Biden’s particular and unique strengths that correlate with the change, they had said that it was to lock in estanlishment candidates by moving some larger, more expensive states to campaign in forward, and that that establishment support was more key in campaigning in those states – a weak but at least superficially plausible argument – that would be different. But “states with a higner percentage of black voters” are…a different thing.
South Carolina Democrats, black and white, are much more toward the center of the overall electorate, which is where the national campaigns shift their focus after running left and right in their respective D and R primaries. It is not Biden's specific strength that matters, because it was also the reason "Super Tuesday" was created many years ago to benefit the establishment candidate (Walter Mondale at the time)* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Tuesday#1984:_Beginnings...
And black voters are (or have been) reliably Democrat, which benefits all Democrat candidates, not particular to do with Biden (or Bill Clinton) though they did enjoy outsized black support. Saying the first primary is being moved "to make the electorate look like America" is designed to shut up the Left, who would scream bloody murder if they said "putting this state first is an establishment move because SC is not so left wing" It takes an "establishment move" to change the primaries because the state parties have to change it in the local places with cooperation or opposition from the other party in those states.
* a much younger Biden was a candidate back then too but when, as an English coalminer's great-grandson, Biden's support was centered in the UK so nobody in the US was doing him huge political favors)**
**this is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Biden plagiarizing Niel Kinnock's speech which knocked him out of the 1992 race https://archive.ph/idkaA
Biden is unlikely to face a primary challenge if he runs. Bernie already said he won't. https://www.axios.com/2022/06/14/bernie-sanders-2024-primary...
Don't forget that the 2020 Iowa caucus was a complete mess, totally botched, and the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party had to resign soon afterward.
E.G. 5 Primary waves (Tuesdays/weeks/months) sorted by the 10 states with the least population to the most population.
Why? It's a better rough approximation for a representative sample over an increasingly large window of voters than the current process, and still keeps any benefit of ramping up from smaller to larger populations to narrow overall selection in the field. Plus the algorithm is so simple that it can be outlined in a sentence.
Assuming parties could pick the primary border, I think it’d be most advantageous to pick the States sorted by the absolute value of the win/loss percentage for a given state. That way highly contested States get an earlier say in the process and presumably a candidate that is more favorable in those markets comes out ahead earlier in the process.
I think an established rotation would be better, and at least a medium sized state rotating in the "first wave".
It is not true that “every other country” has parties select their presidential (or nearest equivalent, whether as head of state or head of government, other countries frequently divorcing those roles) candidate by simultaneous national elections. Sometimes, they don’t even (in a legal sense) choose a candidate at all, though the party may have its own process of deciding and announcing who its members responsible for the leadership election (e.g., MPs in Westminster-style system) will vote for should they secure the necessary majority to decide the outcome on their own.
In fact, I couldn’t off the top of my head name even a single country that uses a national simultaneous primary to select party nominees for election head of government or head of state, can you?
It was payback to Jim Clyburn for the stunt he pulled in 2020 re: Bernie.
It's really just more mundane: BigAg is powerful and our representatives take their money.
The one thing the Iowa caucus did was make it easier for grassroots candidates. If they hadn't bungled the caucus so badly in 2020 for example, Pete Buttigieg would have had a better shot at it like Obama in '08 (he won the caucus, but we didn't find out for weeks!).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...
If we didn't subsidize food, we'd be importing a lot of food. In the event of war, famine, plague, etc, we don't want to be without a supply of food, fuel and now electronics.
Really fun to pull into a gas station and accidentally fill your tank with gas it can't handle.
Which other crops have sufficient margin given commodity prices?
Can solar and goats and wind and IDK algae+co2 make up the difference?
Is solar laser weeding a more sustainable approach?
What rotations improve the compost and soil situation?
Can row covers etc be made from corn; from cellulose and what other sustainable inputs (ideally that are waste outputs)?
Compostable thermoformable biopolymers for food packaging
FWIU transparent wood "windows" are made out of treated cellulose? How do they compare with glass and plastic in terms of transparency for full spectrum UV for e.g. plant growth, sanitization, and vitamin D?
> Is solar laser weeding a more sustainable approach?
From "Solar-Powered Plant Protection Equipment: Perspective and Prospects" (2022) https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/7379 :
>> The unmanned system (robot) is well suited for weeding operations, and it helps to minimize the required workforce and herbicide usage while weeding. Two solar-powered weeders, EcoRobot and AVO robot models, are developed by Ecorobotix, Switzerland (Figure 2). These models work more effectively in row crops based on the detection of weeds (>85%), and a herbicides is applied precisely on the weeds to destroy them. The solar power used in EcoRobot and AVO models is 380 W and 1150 W, respectively, and they have a working time of 8 and 12 h once fully charged by solar panels [64].
> What rotations improve the compost and soil situation?
Crop rotation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation
The market price is destabilized and undercut by government subsidies who put most farmers in the unenviable position of taking corporate welfare in order to make a living.
If the government got out of the business of picking winners and losers, and deciding who to rain money on and who to starve, the corn would be more expensive and sugar cane would be cheaper.