Opinion: Iowa caucuses move to Saturday in ‘10, likely ‘12; Good seats available

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Anyone who’s anyone who likes endless talking will want to mark their January 2010 calendars now: And book a ticket on the train.

The Iowa caucuses, those clumsy, endless exercises in evening democracy while the farmfields sleep every other January, have been moved. They will no longer be on a weekday evening with everyone having to get up early in a few hours for work in offices, factories or livestock barns.

Now, both party’s caucuses will be on a Saturday --1 p.m. Central time Jan. 23. So the Hawkeyes football season will be over. Might cut into a basketball or hockey game, but Iowa isn’t Indiana or Minnesota.

The scheduling switcheroo is a bipartisan experiment in buzz generation on what are normally off-year snoozefests, with the thinking being the real caucuses in January of 2012 will also be on the weekend if things turn out successfully.

Both years’ attention is likely to focus more on Republicans, who will have to come up with a challenger for incumbent Democrat Gov. Chet Culver next year. And in 2012 they’ll have to do the same thing for the GOP presidential ticket, since everyone assumes aging Joe Biden will bump what’s-his-name out of the way for top spot on the Democrat ticket.

Just kidding. What’s-his-name will be doing the bumping.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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