caucus race

caucus race

1. Any event or activity that requires a great amount of time, energy, and commitment, but which is or is considered to be ultimately futile or arbitrary. A reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which everyone in the Caucus race runs around in a circle and then suddenly wins a prize—thus serving no real purpose at all. We were all told that the essay had to cover everything we had learned during the course. But in the end, it was just a caucus race because it didn't even affect our final grade.
2. An event, system, or activity that benefits all parties involved. Also a reference to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Fair trade competition between our countries will establish itself as a caucus race, as the increased commerce will help bolster both countries' economies.
3. A political competition between members of the same party, as for the candidacy to run in an election or a position within the party's infrastructure. Primarily heard in US, South Africa. The caucus race before the election highlighted the candidates' fundamental differences.
See also: race
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • a losing game
  • move (the) deckchairs on the Titanic
  • rearrange (the) deckchairs on the Titanic
  • rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic
  • shift (the) deckchairs on the Titanic
  • rearrange
  • be like rearranging (the) deckchairs on the Titanic
  • deckchairs
  • losing battle, (to fight) a
  • a losing battle
References in periodicals archive
As Elena Ferrante wrote for The Guardian in June, let's recognize that we each represent "privileges of chance" and that "the caucus race that Alice encounters in Wonderland" in which "nobody loses, everybody wins" is our best hope.
I WORK, THEREFORE I AM
In illustrating the Caucus race, and Alice's interactions with the Caterpillar and the mother pigeon, Tenniel and Carroll suggest that the Darwinian model threatens the human identity by placing it in a precarious position within food chains and changing evolutionary patterns.
Immediately following this is the Caucus race, and Tenniel and Carroll provide several illustrations for this scene, each emphasising Alice's unstable human identity and raising questions about natural selection.
"And what is the use of a book ... without pictures or conversations?": the text-illustration dynamic in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(p.11) Another such deviation from real world schema occurs when she meets a talking mouse in Chapter III: A Caucus race and a long tale.
The Caucus race' is a perfect deviation from the normal schema of our real world.
Schema Disruption and Identity in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in the Wonderland
Among specific topics are a seahorse for all races, our unusual unity, the dodo in the Caucus race, non-overlapping magisterial, and the triumph of root-heads.
Leonardo's mountain of clams and the diet of worms; essays on natural history. (reprint, 1998)
Liverpool Theatre School student Jamie Barwood has been brought in as choreographer, creating a dance number that tells the Caucus race episode, during which Alice runs an absurd race against a flock of birds of all shapes and sizes.
Off the Ground follows Alice straight down the rabbit hole; LDP arts edited by Laura Davis
Apart from grinning cats, murderous queens and mad hatters, she also meets a baby that turns into a pig, a couple of twins who can't stop arguing and a mouse and a dodo who insists that she take part in a Caucus race.
And if you don't know what a Caucus race is then you might want to think about joining what is being promised is an evening of absolute nonsense with Off The Ground''s latest production.
Preview; ALICE IN WONDERLAND Birkenhead Park
So they followed a dream of jobs and wealth down a rabbit hole, encountered multiple sets of locked legislative doors, and finally found themselves in a kind of caucus race, circling the track and one another with no clear purpose or winner.
Useless shuffle; Down the legislative rabbit hole
Gordon Brown is obviously Wonderland's Caucus Race.
Jackson 5
In next year's A-level caucus race, the pass rate must be 100% at least.
They said what? coffee break
Layla Dawson has heroically dived headfirst into the filthy maelstrom to find herself surrounded by creatures at least as bizarre as those encountered by Alice in the Caucus Race, but they are, for the most part, a great deal more nasty and less endearing than Lewis Carroll's characters.
Red dawn
Stratford District Council chairman John Winterburn has organised a caucus race in aid of his two charities, Temple Grafton Church roof and the Leprosy Mission.
Triathalon inspired by the dodo
He said he got the idea from the dodo's caucus race in the children's book.
Race straight from a fairy tale