It has been hard to read the US papers in the last few days without sensing a little frustration with the state of Iowa. Perhaps the caucuses are too soon after New Year. Perhaps it is the plummeting temperatures. Perhaps - as Conor Clarke suggests on Comment is free - caucusing does not meet many of the usual criteria for democratic process.
Here are a few more: the Washington Post's Dana Milbank pointing out the political spectacle of "Iowa" happens largely without Iowans, or at least Iowans behaving as they usually would ("Everyone wants to picture us as an episode of 'Hee Haw,' sitting at the counter in the diner or out in the cornfield," says one bar manager); the Los Angeles Times finds a waiter who, like the vast majority of Iowans, will not be committing several hours tomorrow night to the caucuses. He has to work. (Both stories may also suggest to you a significant amount of journalistic meeting of fabled "real Iowans" happens in restaurants and bars.)
Christopher Hitchens is meanwhile angry at the inducement-heavy "Tammany tactics" of the campaigns. For example, deploying teenage babysitters to free up time-pressed parents of voting age.
In perhaps the cruelest blow, Politico's Roger Simon asks why Hillary Clinton did not take the advice of a campaign manager who suggested she skip Iowa altogether - and devalue the importance of what was her weakest state. In the pages of the Washington Times, Iowans fight back to insist their first in the nation role is deserved.
It is left to CNN to scutinise the weather, and the impact it is having on its camera people, equipment and host. Yes, it's cold out there.
