While there is reason to gripe that Iowa and New Hampshire — primarily white and non-urban states — get the first two Democratic presidential contests, the unmistakable benefit of this arrangement is the intimacy those states provide and the access they afford to ordinary voters to ask questions of candidates.
As you watch the town halls (God bless C-Span), you may be struck by how succinct and meaty voters' questions are. They don't ask horse-race questions (what's your path to the nomination?), nor do they raise whatever mini-non-scandal of the day absorbs cable TV news. (In this regard, TV interviewers could learn something about asking short, specific and policy-based questions.