A Caucus Race
"What I was going to say," said the Dodo in an offended tone, "was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.""What is a Caucus-race?" said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.
"Why," said the Dodo, "the best way to explain it is to do it."
-Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Today it starts, the true kickoff to the 2008 presidential campaign: the Iowa Caucus. (For news and information regarding the Iowa Caucus, check out the Des Moines Register caucus section, Iowa Caucus 2008, and IowaCaucus.com. And for an overview on caucuses in general, check out this Wikipedia entry.)
To gauge the impact of the Iowa Caucus, check out this breakdown of past results from the Des Moines Register, which shows that a win tonight and a strong second place finish bodes well for those who end up in front. Now is the time to ask the candidates who come through your part of the country what they plan to do in terms of student loans. Do they care about those of us who are struggling to pay our loans under the yoke of usurious interest rates, or do they only care about future students? Are they for the citizen borrowers, or the corporate lenders? What are their stances on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, and will that reauthorization provide students and borrowers with much-needed relief?
Remember this quote from Sam Seaborn on the West Wing:
I worked in a State Assembly race in Manhattan in a district where Democrats outnumbered Republicans 16 to 1. But everywhere we went, there'd be one lone poster of a right-wing nutbar who wanted to to eliminate the income tax. And he was holding up signs and canvassing everywhere and bugging the local reporters until we had to comment on it. So I introduced myself to his campaign manager, and I said, "What are you doing? Your candidate doesn't have a chance and neither do your issues." He said, "This is what I believe. And no candidate gets to run in my district without speaking to my issue."
Make the candidates speak to your issue any way you can this year.