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This Day in Esoteric Political History

Carter Hacks Iowa (1976)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6982 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s January 31st. This day in 1976, Jimmy Carter is coming out of Iowa having rocketed to the top of the Democratic nomination field. This is in large part because he was the first to recognize the particular way in which the Iowa caucus system favored a certain kind of politics.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss why Carter was such a great fit for the Iowa style of campaign politics.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

0:07.0

My name is Jody Avergan.

0:10.0

This day in January 1976 it is the Iowa Caucasus the very first and the very cold

0:18.0

first step in the nomination process for president and in Iowa in 1976 a man by the name of Jimmy Carter has just

0:26.0

played the game perfectly. At this point sitting here where we are now we kind

0:30.4

of all understand that Iowa is a very interesting place and a very important place and

0:34.8

that the caucus system has its own strange rules and customs and that often the candidate who knows

0:39.3

how to work the system there is the one who can gain momentum and really launch themselves into the

0:44.4

conversation in an election year but in 1976 this was all relatively new and

0:49.2

Jimmy Carter really was the first one to figure out how to play this particular game in part because he'd

0:56.1

had a bit of a hand let's say in setting up the rules of that game something we'll kind of get into but

1:00.8

it's an interesting winkle but let's talk about Carter at the

1:04.1

76 caucuses and of course particularly interesting now because the

1:08.1

Democratic Party has said that it is done with Iowa in the dead of winter that

1:11.4

they'd rather be running around on the beaches of South

1:15.6

Carolina, which I think just from a glorious golden.

1:18.6

From a meteorological standpoint, I think makes total sense we can get into whether you know what it means for

1:24.8

electropolitics but yes I have had to drive around Iowa in the dead of winter and it's you know it's a thing but anyway here as always are Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

1:37.0

Hello Jody.

1:38.0

Hey there. And you know what? As I introduce, I should also plug. I have a new show coming out. It's called

1:44.5

Good Sport so we're gonna do a good sport week coming down the line but I need to be

1:50.7

better about starting to mention that I have a new eight-part show called Good Sport,

...

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