I got 5 hours of sleep, but managed to write this last night for Beyond Chron.
Barack Obama's victory in the Iowa caucus last night sent a powerful message of change - as a record turnout (especially among young voters) picked him the winner with 38% of the total vote. John Edwards, who likewise ran a populist campaign that emphasized change, came in second place with 30%. When asked what was the most important factor in a candidate, voters picked "change" over "experience" by a 51-20 margin - giving Hillary Clinton's establishment campaign a humiliating 3rd place finish at 29%. Obama defied expectations by even beating Clinton among women and registered Democrats, which questions her viability as a candidate. But while Obama's insurgent campaign has crystallized the message of change, the dirty little secret in presidential primaries is that the establishment always wins. As the fight moves to New Hampshire and other states, Obama's campaign will have to defy historical precedent to dethrone the Clinton dynasty. I believe he can prevail, but it will be a different story for Mike Huckabee - who won last night's Republican caucus.
With only a few hours left to go until Iowa, we asked our Des Moines host of Drinking Liberally, the incomparable Amanda Mittlestadt, who she was supporting tonight. Given the nature of the Iowa caucus, this sometimes requires a second choice, and that was what she gave us: first round Dodd, second round Edwards. Both being a shift from her prior support of Richardson.
What drives someone so closely following and heavily involved in the caucus to make a late-in-the-game switch? Funnily enough, it ended up that the social aspect of politics - the aspect which Drinking Liberally focuses on - played a substantive role in the decision. While Amanda is wonky and politically savvy enough to have strong policy-influenced reasons to support Dodd, she needed a final push to make her decision:
You get a sense for the reasons people attend events...the Dodd people had a genuine interest in getting to know us and just hanging out. They didn't come wearing campaign buttons or stickers - they just needed a release from the toils of campaign work, and that echoed in Dodd's personality when I met him. So, like Dodd, his campaign staffers just seemed more genuine..[Not] only do meeting the candidates influence people, but how their staffers interact with people - and how they interact with you if you volunteer - can also play a big part.
And with that, we say goodbye to our pre-Iowa election commentary. But before closing the door on our Hawkeye State musings, a look at some of the best Drinking Liberally Iowa stories of yestermonth:
Candidates, Constituents, Caffeine. What happens when Chris Dodd meets with a bunch of coffee-addled comic book geeks. Plus - a guy dressing up as Wonder Woman.
I've been going back and forth all day about whether to put down some predictions for tomorrow's caucus. Not that I'm afraid I'll be wrong. I freely admit I'm no more savvy about these things than most Americans. In fact, if I get anything higher than maybe a 40-50% success rate, I'll count myself a genius.
Still, making predictions like this treats politics like a game. As some have said, "Politics is not a fucking sports match." This election is very important, Bush has really set our country back, and we should take all of this seriously.
However, seeing as Iowa news is going to dominate the political world for at least one more day and there is nothing I can do about it, making real discussion of other issues fairly useless, here goes with some predictions:
Democrats
I think Barack Obama will win the Iowa caucus tomorrow. His latest poll numbers, from the Des Moines Register (which was most accurate last cycle), puts him at 32% to Clinton's 25% and Edwards' 24%. On top of that, Obama has momentum, where Clinton seems to be losing steam. People like to pick a winner, and momentum drives media coverage. So momentum is important. On top of that, the weather is supposed to be clear and cold, which supposedly favors the youth.
I don't think Obama will win by a landslide, however. A caucus goers 2nd choice will come into play heavily, with 19% of poll respondents either uncommitted or backing a 2nd tier candidate. I can easily see Joe Biden's 4% siding with Clinton as a 2nd, and while I feel most Richardson, Kucinich, or Dodd supporters will not end up in the Clinton camp, it's hard to tell whether they favor Edwards or Obama. I'd expect Hillary to finish with a strong 2nd based on her name recognition and inevitability narrative, which means Iowa won't put her out of the race.
I think John Edwards will be right on Hillary's heels as well, especially if he gets a boost with his recent stand on Iraq, meaning that I expect a tight three way race going into New Hampshire.
In the 2nd tier, I personally think Chris Dodd will come in with more support than his 1-2% polling numbers show.
Republicans
Huckabee is going to win this one. He's got momentum (that's important, remember?) and his softer, more values based rhetoric seems to resonate with Iowans. I think McCain will pull an upset as well and come in 2nd. Romney has been slipping badly these days, and McCain again seems like a more honest politician and someone Iowans are more likely to support. I'd predict Romney will get a close 3rd.
In the 2nd tier, Giuliani will finish poorly, but that's been expected. So will Thompson. Though he's polling at 9% now, Ron Paul may break double digits, but only if he has enough concentrated support. If he doesn't get to a level of viability in most districts, it's going to be an uphill battle.
---------------------------
Those are my predictions. Seems like I line up with Chris Bower's numbers for the Democrats at least. Still, I'm almost certain to be wrong. And the future of our country doesn't rest on the outcome of this or any other horse race. Still, why not, right?
Every New Year's Day, political pundits make predictions for what lies ahead in the next 12 months - and 2008 is no exception. But with the top 3 Democrats running neck-and-neck in Iowa, the only certainty is that the outcome tomorrow will be very close -- and nobody is bold enough to predict what will happen. I am ready, however, to say that Barack Obama will finish first, making him the front-runner for the presidential nomination. While various polls make the result just about anybody's guess, the Des Moines Register's final poll (which accurately predicted the outcome four years ago) has him ahead by seven points. Obama got a further boost yesterday when Dennis Kucinich formally asked his supporters to pick him as their second choice, and Joe Biden hinted that he might do the same. Pundits have long said that Obama would benefit the most from a very high turnout - and with the race so close, the field campaign so intense and the outcome so critical, voters will be coming out in droves.
I'm created a small website/widget that does the math for an Iowa precinct caucus, in case you're curious to play with the numbers. It's up at http://caucusmath.com. You can play with the numbers to your heart's delight, and see how this mildly crazy system works. When we get results next Thursday, they'll be delegate counts, not raw votes, so understanding how they relate to each other is instructive.
Various candidates (Obama I'm sure, and likely others) have put calculators up as part of their sites for training caucus-goers, but they're all Flash and part of their sites, so not easily accessible (or friendly for supporters of other candidates).
desmoinesdem has a great series of diaries at MyDD about how the caucuses work, especially in the larger context, but I wasn't able to find a good, fast, web-accessible calculator to play with the numbers.
If you work for Hillary Clinton and your candidate's ahead in the polls, your job is to avoid unpleasant surprises - even if it means planting questions in the audience. Last week, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old college student, attended a campaign event in Iowa - where a Hillary staffer asked if she wanted to ask a question. When Muriel told them what question she wanted to ask, they said "no" and gave her a typed query - one that would not make news, and allow Clinton to repeat her campaign talking points. I got to ask Hillary a tough question at the Yearly Kos Convention in August - but Clinton has done her best to avoid such unscripted moments, as her "inevitable" nomination rolls along. After Muriel got some media attention, the Hillary camp asked her to stop talking to the press. Kind of reminds me how two Clinton staffers confronted me after my exchange with the Senator. Hillary's campaign is running a tight ship, but planting questions to control the message speaks volumes about a candidate we simply can't trust.
Before getting into the heart of my report on the presidential race based on my trip home, I wanted to take note of the fun piece on the Iowa Labor Day festivities (a parade and rally) in Des Moines this week from desmoinesdem on MyDD.com. As the person who used to carry the Iowa AFL-CIO banner in the Labor Day parade there, I can tell you desmoinesdem gets the feel and spirit of the event very well. And- surprise, surprise!- the candidates who came out were talking populist talk to a bunch of Iowa labor folks. I hope those sentiments aren't just reserved for Labor Day.
The one thing in that post I take some issue with was this couple of sentences about Leonard Boswell:
Boswell's voting record has disappointed me many times, and the gang at Open Left recently named him as one of the "Bush dogs" progressives need to challenge.
I do sense, though, that support for Boswell is rock-solid among the rank and file Democrats in our district who are not active in the environmental movement or the blogging world. Leonard was in his element yesterday. Given that Iowa is likely to lose one of its five Congressional districts after the 2010 census, I think it makes no sense to spend our energy on a primary challenge to Boswell. He is likely to retire before the 2012 election.
Leonard is a good campaigner, and labor folks are likely to be friendly to any Democratic incumbent who shows up and says hello, but given his record on trade and other economic issues, there is no great love for Leonard Boswell among the labor folks that I know there. I don't think that they would be ready to bolt for a primary challenger, because labor tends to be reluctant to oppose Democratic incumbents, but there's also no enthusiasm.
The heart of my Notes on the Iowa Caucuses column today is based on reflections from my trip home.
I got a glimpse into why Hillary Clinton is dominating the Democratic primary race so far, but also why there is still an opening for either Obama or Edwards to win this thing.
The part of the Midwest my family is in is an interesting corner of the political map, because it's in an Iowa media market but not in Iowa itself, so they see a lot about presidential politics on the news but are not getting actively courted themselves. My side of the family is in Lincoln, NE and my wife's on a farm about four miles south of the Iowa border in extreme northwest Missouri. Both are in the Omaha/Council Bluffs media market which covers a big swath of south and central western Iowa, as well as eastern Nebraska and northwest Missouri.
I always ask a lot of questions of friends, family and even just folks I see around town at cafes and gas stations (especially in rural MO and IA, where everybody chats naturally with everybody else about anything that comes to mind). There were several things I was struck by:
1. The overwhelming sentiment among everyone I talked to, outside of the couple of hard-core Limbaugh fans in the family, was strong unhappiness with Bush. I asked my Republican father-in-law, who has voted for two Democratic presidential candidates in his life (Harry Truman in 1948 and Bill Clinton in 1992), how the folks in northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa that he knew felt about Bush, and he said that hardly anybody he talked to liked him anymore, that they were anxious for his term of office to be over (keep in mind that this is an overwhelmingly Republican part of the country). And among the Democrats I talked to, the first thing out of just everybody's mouths when I asked about politics was, "well, all I care about is electing somebody who can win because this country can't afford another president as bad as Bush." That winnability thing Chris wrote about here is going to be a major factor in the Democratic primary contest, just like it was in 2004.
2. The lack of commitment among Democrats was another thing that struck me. The Democrats I talked to, outside of a very feminist niece who was strongly for Hillary, were still wide open. Again, the overwhelming sentiment was that they wanted someone who could win, but didn't have strong opinions one way or another about the candidates. A few people (even a couple of the rural Republicans I talked to) mentioned liking Edwards stands on issues a lot, but something about him personally seemed to be holding them back (which corresponds to a lot of activist Dems around the country I talked to as well).
3. The last time I was back was last Christmas, and I had been struck by how genuinely interested people were in Obama back then. In fact, when I would go around and ask people who they were leaning toward in a Democratic primary, Obama was winning by a lot over Clinton, maybe two to one (and no one else was even on anyone's radar screen). Now, the situation is very different. Obama's support has fallen dramatically, with most of the folks who had been for him now either neutral or even leaning toward Clinton. When I would ask why, the answer I got time after time was the same: before he had seemed really different from politics as usual, now he seems like just another politician. I think the Obama campaign has really made a mistake in running a cautious, business as usual campaign.
The other thing that seems to be happening is a gradual warming towards Clinton. The feelings about her since she's been on the campaign trail and in debates are definitely better than they were before the race. I think people had an image in their minds from the national media about who Hillary was that wasn't good, but having seen a lot more of her lately, they are liking her better than they thought they would.
4. The opening for Edwards, Obama and maybe even Richardson- beyond the fact that things are still wide open- is still in the populist outsider approach. The defensive lobbyist answer at YearlyKos had penetrated even to very low information, non-activist folks I talked to. One person I talked to, a classic low information independent, who doesn't read newspapers or look at the internet much at all, said out of the blue one day, "boy, Hillary sure messed up on that lobbyist thing, didn't she?" People desperately want a change from the status quo D.C. insiderism and if they decide Hillary Clinton is not the one to bring it, they may just decide to go someplace else.
The impression I came away from this admittedly unscientific set of conversations is that Obama is in some trouble, and Clinton is running a very strong campaign, but this thing is still totally wide open. Folks in general are looking for change, and Democrats are desperate for someone who can win, but the path to the nomination isn't clear for anyone.
"So during her midday visit, Clinton flipped pork patties. She stopped at a food stand and ordered ice cream on a stick, dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts. 'You're officially at the state fair- you've got something on a stick,' said a man behind her in line."-Anne Kornblut, Washington Post
I was going to write something more serious and thoughtful today- really, I was. But the news reports from the Iowa fair are just compelling me to write about the rituals of Iowa campaigning. I have to admit, being a Midwesterner through and through, that I love this part of presidential campaigns. And I actually think this stuff is important.
Presidential candidates, especially the famous ones like Clinton, get very little exposure to real people in unscripted situations. Most of the time they are being shuttled with their entourage from fundraiser to fundraiser, from meetings with big media reporters to meetings with influential elites. They do debate prep and debates, give very serious speeches at Georgetown and the Kennedy School and the Council on Foreign Relations. And they do press conferences- lots and lots of press conferences, carefully staged and managed by advance teams with years of experience in getting just the right pictures for the camera. Once the early state contests are over, they get even further removed from real people in the real world.
But in Iowa and New Hampshire, they have to do small-town parades and town meetings, and they have to show up at the Iowa state fair. They have to stand in line and talk to people who may not like them. They frequently have to answer uncomfortable questions. They have to get loose enough to act like a normal person, because if they are uncomfortable standing in line for their meat on a stick, it will show. If you are a phony, it will usually show (unless you are really, really skilled at being a phony, like, say, George W. Bush), which is why a lot of big-name politicians have spent a lot of money in Iowa and still come up empty.
The culture and traditions in a rural state like Iowa strip away all the bullshit of being famous and rich and powerful, at least for awhile. Of course, all the rituals get comical at times, too. I will never forget the day in 1987 when I opened up my Des Moines Register to a big front-page picture of Jesse Jackson milking a cow. The looks on both Jackson's face, and the cow's, were truly hysterical. But beyond the ritual and the silliness that sometimes come in these campaigns, the genuine interaction with regular folks is great for these candidates.
It's the job of the progressive movement to make sure that we don't squander the opportunity these genuine moments of human interaction in Iowa and New Hampshire. Every time candidates get questions from folks in these situations, they ought to hear tough questions about the war and health care and trade policy and public financing. If that happens day-in and day-out on the Iowa and New Hampshire campaign trail, then the symbolic populism of going to the Iowa state fair may turn into something a lot more real to the candidates.
When caucus results don't wind up very much like pre-Iowa caucus polls, a lot of non-Iowans get confused about that. There's an easy two-word answer: precinct captains.
The final results in Iowa are influenced more by precinct captains than by the quality of TV ads, the amount of mail caucus attendees receive, the number of turnout calls caucus attendees receive from paid phone banks in D.C. or even volunteer phone bankers in the campaigns central HQ in Des Moines. Precinct captains are the heart and soul of the Iowa precinct caucuses.
The reason why these captains are so important is the nature of those caucus meetings themselves. The participants don't drop by a polling place whenever it's convenient throughout the day to do a quick secret ballot that lasts a few short minutes. Caucuses are a two-hour long, highly social, highly interactive process, one that gets played out in public in front of your neighbors. Taking two hours out of your day at an exact-assigned time takes a pre-arranged juggling of your normal schedule, dealing with your kids and other family members, maybe taking time off from work or leaving early. Once you get there at all, it's a process where you have to make decisions as to where to stand, where to move to if your first choice doesn't get 15%, whether to run for delegate, and who else to support for the other delegate slots your candidate has allocated to his campaign.
Without strong precinct captains, a campaign in this environment is screwed. The precinct captain's job responsibilities include:
-Getting all known supporters in the precinct to show up on the night of the caucus
-Getting there early and making sure your supporters are greeted and accounted for when they first come in
-Making sure that when the time comes to caucus for candidates, that your people aren't being talked into going to another camp because a friend is over there, or that you aren't missing people who are going to the bathroom or out smoking
-Once your viability is determined (you have to get 15%), you have to start working all the unviable candidates' groups, and all the folks who went to the undecided corner in round one. (That process, by the way, is very political, because everybody in those not-viable groups is being courted by all the viable campaigns. You have to be good, and agile, at cutting deals with the people who want to be elected as a delegate to county convention, and you have to be really persuasive, more persuasive than every other campaign's precinct captains).
In a race with 8 candidates, plus the undecided option, there are going to be a lot of folks who will have to make a second choice, so your precinct captain has to be good at wheeling and dealing, cutting deals and persuasion. If that captain is inexperienced, or just not very good, the other campaigns will pick up a lot of votes.
Everybody talks about the surge that Kerry and Edwards had at the end in January 2004, and it's true that they both got hot at the end while Dean was taking on a little water. But both the Kerry and Edwards campaigns had brilliant Iowa organizers (Michael Whouley and John Norris for Kerry, and John Lapp for Edwards) whose leaders understood the importance of precinct captains, and their network of captains was just deeper, stronger and more experienced than Dean's. It made a huge difference at the end.
I'm not sure yet who the precinct captain factor will benefit the most this time around. Edwards has a built-in network from last time, and that's a big advantage, but both Clinton and Obama have deep, smart teams who understand how the caucuses work extremely well, and are building strong cadres of precinct captains.
One final note: one thing I do know is that the Iowa caucus system is great for both the state Democratic Party, and for making the party more progressive. Having well-trained, savvy precinct captains in 2,500 Iowa precincts has made the Iowa party consistently one of the strongest (much of the time the strongest) in the country for at least a quarter century. And it helps progressive because it's hard to recruit good precinct captains if you aren't pretty damned progressive on the issues as a candidate. The Iowa caucuses have done-in a ton of conservative Democrats since 1984, including John Glenn, Ernest Hollings, Reuben Askew, Bruce Babbitt, Al Gore (circa 1988, when he was the most conservative candidate in the race) and Joe Lieberman.
I'd love to know what the Iowans, and those with Iowa caucus experience, who are reading this think is going on in terms of precinct captain recruitment. And I'd love to know in general how people think the dynamics of this race will affect the recruitment of these captains. Post in the comments below, and if you're on the ground in Iowa, send me an e-mail at openleft at gmail dot com.
This is my first in a series of posts on the Iowa caucuses that I'm going to keep going through caucus day (January 14, 2008). -Mike
I was glad to see the other day that the Washington Post, in their in-depth Iowa caucus coverage, is going to be dropping by the Waveland Café in Des Moines periodically to report on how Iowans are viewing the caucuses. I don't think they'll get much useful information about anything important related to caucus trends, but it is one of the greatest breakfast places I've ever been to, a classic greasy spoon. So, at the very least, their reporters will at least get a good meal out of it.
The thing I want to focus on today is the Obama rural strategy. A recent analysis of Iowa campaign field offices showed Obama holding a big lead in the number of field offices in the state, a remarkable 28. The next most were Edwards at 15, Clinton with 12 and Richardson with 11. Iowa has 99 counties, and many of the counties have less than 10,000 residents and are heavily Republican, so 28 offices means a lot of investment in rural field organizing.
Part of what's remarkable about this is the raw number- no campaign has ever had that many offices, this early, in Iowa before (to give you some historical context, when I was running Paul Simon's field operations 20 years ago, we had 15 offices just one month out from the caucuses). But I think what's more interesting is the implications it has for Obama's strategy. For an African-American man who had represented an Illinois State Senate district from inner-city Chicago to be staking so many resources on doing well in rural Iowa is a noteworthy phenomenon all by itself, but beyond that, the strategic implications are fascinating.
I noticed early on that Obama was spending a lot of time very early in his travel to Iowa in rural parts of the state, and the number of field offices deepens my interest in what's going on.
Here are some thoughts:
1. Hillary is not popular among rural voters generally, and their neighbors' attitudes carry over to rural Dems looking for a general election winner. Obama's team probably assumes he can take advantage of that.
2. Obama's surprising success in appealing to rural Illinois in his senate primary victory in 2004 no doubt gives his team a lot of confidence that he can appeal in small-town Iowa.
3. I'm guessing his team assumed early on that Obama's "can't we all just get along" message would play among community-minded rural voters. What I think they are finding, though, is that rural voters are more angry and populist right now than "we can work it out" in nature. I think that's one reason you see Obama moving toward more populist rhetoric, per Matt Stoller's post here.
I'd love to know what others of you see in terms of this strategy, and especially if our Iowa readers have ideas about it.
Having been an Iowa resident for almost a decade, and involved in presidential politics for a quarter century now, I have a fair number of friends in Iowa involved in one way or another in the IA caucuses, either as campaign staffers, volunteer organizers for one campaign or another, or committed Dems planning to attend the caucuses who haven't yet signed with anyone (a lot of those). So I decided to do weekly posts on the first-in-then-nation caucuses so that I can pass along what I am hearing about the campaigns and give my perspectives on what the smartest and stupidest strategies are in IA among the presidential campaigns.
If you are living in Iowa, please send me your thoughts and stories regarding the state of play as things move forward to
openleft at gmail dot com
I'd love to hear your on-the-ground perspective.
To read the last piece I wrote that focused on IA, a few weeks back (originally in the Huffington Post), you can check it out here.
STATE BLOGS
