• by January 20, 2004

CAUCUSED OUT - If Monday night's coverage of the Iowa Caucus was a look at what the networks plan for the rest of Election 2004, then they might want to rethink their plans. The pack mentality and spin cycle penetrated the caucus and made it from a laboratory of democracy into, well, a sideshow. Might have something to do with the obsessive need to turn it into a horse race, even though Iowa has traditionally not meant much in the grand scheme.

A CIRCUS, EVEN WITHOUT THE MEDIA - Not that the caucuses that the Riff saw Monday night didn't have their sideshow aspects, particularly the one on C-SPAN. That caucus had all the elements of a boisterous, stereotypical New England Town Meeting, without the accents and it wasn't as well organized. But C-SPAN, which does a better job than all the others put together when it comes to telling the whole story (even if you can't get it in three minutes), has had the lock on political reality TV for quite some time. C-SPAN followed the anarchy of the first part of the caucus, as organizers tried (some in vain) to get at least the minimum number of supporters for their candidates to bag a delegate or two in the Iowa Democratic convention.

IN AND OUT - In most elections, even primaries, TV depends on so-called exit polls that take voters' temperatures after they leave the polling places. The networks take exit polls and returns from states where the polls close early, and "project" a winner. This has caused endless problems, between 2000's media debacle and a presidential election where a winner was called before all the states - most notably California - had finished voting. But now, because the voters stay in the caucus until everything's done, exit polling is useless. So the networks did "entrance polling." While it was surprisingly accurate this time around, it also highlights a disturbing trend: journalists, like politicians, don't seem to want to wait for the results to come in.

THE ANSWER IS YES - For weeks, Fox News Channel and MSNBC have been running items about the Democratic campaign with the tag line, "Can Dean Be Stopped?" Riff understands where Fox News Channel's coming from, but what's MSNBC's excuse?

GOODBYE, IOWA - Now that the caucuses are over, we won't have to hear about Iowa again for another four years. With all due respect to the Hawkeye State, there isn't much that goes on in Iowa. Next stop on the quadrennial tour of the states: New Hampshire. Wake Riff up when we get to Hawaii.