Claire McCaskill Rips Iowa Caucus Over Dysfunctional Rules, Billing The Iowa Tradition As ‘Excluding’ Voters

Former senator turned MSNBC political pundit Claire McCaskill took aim at the formatting and procedural semantics of the Iowa caucus Monday night over the way they exclude voters from making their voices heard, blasting the exclusion of voters as something Republicans want not Democrats.

McCaskill argued that Elizabeth Warren’s plan of free child care during the caucus does not go far enough. The former Missouri senator suggested that Iowans should have the opportunity to vote in a primary ahead of time.

“Well, you know, people have gone home rather than participate. Obviously, they said all the Biden people have gone home, or Buttigieg had gone home. And the irony is that they changed the rule this year so that if your group was viable, you couldn’t move from that group,” McCaskill stated on the semantics of the Iowa Caucus.

“So you’re incentivized to scoot,” MSNBC’s host Rachel Maddow stated.

McCaskill then laid into the procedural protocols that caucus-goers have to follow while later asking, “why we don’t let everybody vote?”

“And the reason it did that is because it would take less time. Well, don’t know about that. It seems like we’re still here, and we have nothing. So I’m not sure that worked. And it seems weird to me that this kind of horse-trading is going on, you know, I don’t know. I guess I just don’t get it. I don’t get why we don’t let everybody vote. Everybody have a chance to vote. Every vote count. So you don’t have — I saw that little girl on that mom’s shoulder. I don’t know if you noticed her. It’s a grandmother and me. The little girl looked like how many how maybe we’ll feel in another two or three hours. She was worn out. She had been there for hours. It was just — I don’t know. I get the Townhall thing. I get the democracy,” McCaskill continued.

Maddow then responded to McCaskill voicing her approval for the caucus process, adding, “And you talked to Iowa voters about this. They don’t want a primary. They want to keep doing hit the way.”

McCaskill then took issue with how the Iowa caucus has excluded people, asking, “Did they know how many people are getting excluded?”

The former senator then aimed at the way the caucuses limit participation, stating that its what Democrats yell at Republicans over.

“I know I got somebody from the Warren campaign reached out to me and said well, she was providing free child care. That’s not the point. You ought to be able to vote absentee. You ought to be able to vote for two or three weeks. We ought to make it as easy as possible. This is what we yell at the Republicans about, right, that they try to make it harder for us to vote. It seems like this is make it kind of hard,” McCaskill continues on the struggles associated with caucusing.

Maddow responded in defense of the caucus and the tradition in which Iowa caucus-goers hold dear.

“It’s a different thing. I hear you in terms of who gets in the room to ultimately make these decisions. But it’s also sort of treasured tradition for a reason. And the people who do it are very protective of it. And I feel like coming in from outside to say no, you to do this like everybody else, your traditions don’t work here anymore. It’s a hard thing to insist on from outside,” Maddow concluded.

Watch above, via MSNBC.

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