The 2008 Iowa Caucuses

Posted January 3, 2008

Click here for a narrated photo album of the trip.

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At Thanksgiving over turkey I realized that the 2008 Iowa caucuses were going to be such an incredible political showdown that I had to go out and see it for myself.

Both parties are hosting their most open Presidential primaries in memory — no incumbents are running from either party. Both have surfaced strong fields with odd and colorful candidates. In both parties, candidates have emerged from single digit oblivion to at least momentary seriousness. Front runners in both parties have faltered: Romney to the improbable Mike Huckabee, Clinton and Edwards to Barack Obama. This street fight was going to be intense and best seen up close.

The caucuses conveniently end before school starts up again so I pitched the JamKid, who at 15 is old enough and smart enough to care a bit about these things. We bought cheap tickets to Kansas City, rented an SUV, and headed north through ice and snow to Iowa. A few hours later, we joined Barack Obama in a junior high gym in Des Moines.

We have now spent two days and three evenings in Iowa and we have
seen every major candidate up close. The JamKid has signatures on a
copy of the US Constitution from Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Mitt
Romney, and Chris Dodd. He has spoken to Bill and Chelsea Clinton,
Hillary, Huckabee, and Romney. We have seen candidates in small
restaurants, a town library, a frigid airport hanger, college lecture
halls, a swanky country club, campaign headquarters, and a supporter’s
house.

I am sure that other people thought of doing this, although I have not met any. Perhaps others knew just how cold it gets. At
a Romney event, I left my latte in the car figuring it might offend
Mormon sensibilities and found it frozen solid 90 minutes later (Romney
could have cared less. When a woman having
her picture taken with him suddenly realized she had a drink in her
had, he reassured her "it’s not illegal for you — just for me" — and
when he signed the JamKid’s constitution he took pains to avoid signing the 18th amendment).
That evening the thermometer hit 5 degrees and we attended an event
with Bill Clinton in Knoxville that was held in an unheated shed in the
corner of the local air field. Medics brought blankets for sobbing
children, but nobody left early.

Iowa is a small state with fewer than 3 million people living in
2,000 towns, 1700 precincts, and 99 counties served by 60 Wal Marts. It
holds a caucus not a primary. When you show up to a Democratic caucus,
you assemble with those who support your candidate or you stand with
undecided voters. There is a fair
amount of jousting to urge attendees to affiliate
or defect. At some point a count is made and those candidates that do
not have 15% of total attendees are declared not viable and disbanded.
Attendees may then re-affiliate with viable candidates. Once only viable candidates remain, the precinct allocates delegates and reports its totals. After nearly a year of campaigning, this becomes the first test of a Presidential candidate’s viability.

Democrats
and Republicans have fielded credible candidates this year in
Iowa. It seems likely that Democrat Iowans will tomorrow end the White
House dreams of three Senators and a Governor: Senators Joe Biden,
Chris Dodd, and (former Senator) John Edwards and Governor Bill
Richardson. These are exceptionally serious people who have moved their
families to Iowa, raised millions of dollars, opened dozens of offices,
and campaigned very hard for months. Their campaigns end tomorrow because a few Iowans will say so.

That 200,000 activists (perhaps 15% of Iowa’s registered voters) are able to thin the Presidential herd is of course, outrageous and undemocratic. I would end the practice tomorrow — and we would in many ways be poorer if I did.

The paradox noted by everyone who has been here is that the Iowa caucuses may not be democratic, but they serve a valuable purpose.
They force candidates to work in very small towns and in very intimate
small settings. Candidates need to make themselves available to
discussion and challenge with the same people repeatedly over a period
of many months. Raising money and running ads won’t get it done — this is pure retail politics.
You build supporters one at a time, you recruit and motivate a field
organization, you track activist supporters and hang on to them despite
highly competitive campaigning, and you get them to turn out for you on
election day. It is extraordinarily demanding work – candidates do 5-6 events each day and many visit all 99 counties in a state that to a Californian looks downright empty.

The Iowa Caucuses are always intense — but nothing like 2008. Four
years ago John Kerry reportedly had 20 paid staffers in Iowa. At the
moment, Hillary and Obama are each reported to have more than 400.
CNN reports that more than 5,000 people are volunteering to drive Clinton delegates to the polls. Mitt Romney has spent $17 million of his own money here plus that much
again from donors. Money is not the main determinant of success because media plays a relatively small role (indeed press
coverage of candidate media has been more important than the media
itself). The campaign is cacophonous and unrelenting; activists love it
but ordinary mortals are begging for relief.

What have I learned? My take goes something like this:

We are sending some talented guys home. Richardson,
Biden, and Dodd will finish tomorrow in that order and should.
Richardson is serious VP material, Biden would be a fine Secretary of
State, and Dodd was probably meant to be an outstanding US Senator. Any of these guys would have been a better nominee than John Kerry and any of them would have beat George Bush, so from one perspective the average level in the race is going up.

Biden’s
campaign seemed disorganized (lousy advance and event staff: the audio
didn’t work, but it didn’t matter since few people showed up anyway.
His staff did not sign people in and even the rock music was tepid).
Biden himself is brevity-challenged, but many of us with Irish DNA know
the problem. He made wonderful use of his family, including his 90
year old mom and an older brother who did not hesitate to shout out
"thank you, Senator" when the answers had gone on too long. Biden is a chronic name-dropper, which
is probably an occupational hazard if you chair Foreign Affairs, but
having the cell phones of world leaders is really less important than
having something to say to them.

We did not see Richardson — could not make the maps overlap. Chris Dodd is the second finest Senator from Connecticut
but was frankly out of his league. His staff were pitiful (would not
walk two doors down to invite Japan’s leading TV network to the event)
and the campaign theme music was lame (if you want Van Morrison, go
with You’ll Come Running to Me, not Wild Night is Calling. We also know that it’s a John Mellencamp
song and that he is headlining for Edwards tonight. Sheesh.)

Dodd is a great guy, carries a nontrivial Firefighters endorsement,
filibustered a couple weeks ago to prevent the telcos from being
indemnified for releasing phone records — but is not someone with a differentiated message or a unique ability to deliver it. His
candidacy is DOA and it is fine with me if Iowa breaks him the news. He
moved his wife and young kids to Iowa and has been living on a bus for
months, so he can return home knowing that he gave it a good try.

Barack Obama has a real shot at the Presidency.
I arrived thinking that this was incredibly exciting and I leave
thinking it as well. But Bill Clinton is right, even if he is in no
position to say so: Obama is a roll of the dice.
Barack has never experienced the full Republican attack machine
(Hillary says she is the only one who can claim that. I beg to differ:
ask John McCain).

Obama
is Harvard Law smart and he has the evangelist’s gift of pulling hope
out of a crowd’s soul, holding it up as his own deepest aspiration, and
catalyzing people to action. His style is serious; he is alternately professor and preacher. He is an orator — and most politicians are not. That’s the exciting part.

He appears very well organized from his field team to his website.
His venues are well-chosen and packed. His volunteers are meticulous
about getting people to sign commitment cards, which are the currency
of these events (the cards of course, get you in a caucus database and
ensure that your phone will not stop ringing with earnest reminders of
the blessed event). Obama’s events are well staged. The audio works,
the rock music is loud and well chosen (OK, in a race against Hillary, I would have added "Devil with a Blue Dress On" to the play list to see if anyone got the joke, but they didn’t ask me).

I like Obama, as any reader of this blog knows. I have also surfaced
concerns about his tactical mistakes and about screwups and missed
opportunities here, here and here.

I leave Iowa however, with grave reservations about his
understanding of national security issues and his ability and
willingness to lead an intelligent fight against militant Islamic
jihad. Democrats need to recognize that this is a huge issue, even if George Bush thinks so too.

At at time when the US military is gaining enormous ground on al
Qaeda in Iraq, I’d like to hear Obama say "We will fight al Qaeda and
their cronies anywhere and in any country — either with our allies or
without them. Furthermore, I will do my level best to find and kill
Osama Bin Laden". Otherwise, this is a very odd time to be electing a national security novice with dovish instincts.

Hilary Clinton is a much better political leader than I gave her credit for. She knows how things get done in government and strikes me as easily the best prepared
candidate. Her personal biography, separate from her husband’s, is
impressive, as is the passion of people who know her well. In a race
featuring six US senators, ten senators have endorsed Hillary; no other
Senator has the support of more than two (Senators do not endorse
quickly or easily, especially in primaries). I remain deeply
ambiguous about the Clinton legacy and hostile to the notion of
Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. But she is far more knowledgeable,
practical, and trustworthy on national security, she has a highly
practical energy agenda, and I’d bet she gets health care right this time, even
if her personal hubris was a larger factor last time than either she or
her husband publicly acknowledge. She would be an immeasurably stronger
candidate than John Kerry or Al Gore. Pity she is a Clinton (although
Bill is doing a phenomenal job campaigning for her in Iowa. It was for
him that we braved three hours on a bitter cold airfield).

John Edwards is a useful menace. Edwards is the macho populist in the race. He gives a very passionate, effective stump speech promising to rip into big corporations and
assuring his listeners that "you cannot ‘nice’ these guys into
submission". There is truth to this — but a guy who wants to
stand his ground instead of finding common ground will get nothing done. For this reason, Obama and probably Clinton are gonna crush him. Credit Edwards with making poverty a campaign issue — even if a multi-millionaire hedge fund advisor is not the ideal messenger. In his soul, John Edwards looks to me like a trial lawyer who loves to fight for the little guy against the big guys. There is a place for trial
lawyers like that (although I wish they would support Republicans, not
just Democrats) and John Edwards should become one of them again. Edwards needs a strong showing in Iowa or he is finished.

Mitt Romney is a great man who has is turning out to be a terrible candidate. I
was never highly likely to support Romney, but he came to the campaign
with huge assets: an attractive family, including a father who was
also a famous CEO and also a Republican governor of a blue state. Mitt
had turned around Bain and the Salt Lake City Olympics — a stunning story. He
has earned the fierce loyalty of
his people and repaid it many times. As a Republican, he brought universal health
care to Massachusetts! He never needed more than that to run on
competence, competence, competence — which in today’s Republican Party
is differentiation enough.

Instead, Mitt has flipped, trimmed, and pandered. He tacked hard right on social issues to try to win social conservatives. He altered longstanding positions on abortion, immigration, and gun control in order to play hard for the right wing vote of a right wing Iowa party. Voters smelled a rat. They knew that this is s not who Mitt Romney is and it’s not who George
Romney was. Conservatives who are evangelicals or social conservatives
looked around and spotted one of their own in Mike Huckabee — who, as
Bill Clinton points out with some pride, is an Arkansas good ol’ boy who
can tell a joke and a story — a skill that does not seem to
come easily to a Mormon from Michigan.

At a John McCain pre-caucus meeting tonight, I realized
why McCain spent today doing four events in New Hampshire before coming to
Iowa: Mike Huckabee is doing McCain’s job for him in Iowa. With
the evolution-denying Huckabee siphoning off Romney’s support, McCain
(who is dead in Iowa anyway because he opposes ethanol subsidies and
doesn’t think shipping 12 million illegals home is such a practical
idea) is free to work New Hampshire, where conservatives apparently
walk upright.

Mike Huckabee is a charming idiot who is helping McCain. He is a friendly fool who makes George Bush look like a genius. We
joined his New Year’s Eve party at a Des Moines country club. The
hairsprayed ladies, home-schoolers, and corn-fed gents in cheap ties were wrestling with a slight problem: their candidate had clearly lost his marbles that day.
A few hours earlier Huckabee had held a press conference announcing
that he was pulling off the air an ad he had spent the previous day
shooting. When he announced this, the press literally broke out
laughing at him. He then showed them the ads, which were, of course,
posted on You-Tube within minutes. This from a guy whose response to
the Bhutto assassination was to call for the sealing of the US border
with Mexico. My former union, the Machinists, has endorsed the Huckster because they, like him, are an enchilada short of a combination plate. Huckabee will be revealed as a lightweight who can tell a joke, play bass guitar, and lose 75 lbs but not get nominated. If he is giving Romney trouble in Iowa — and he is — Romney has nobody to blame but himself.

The Republicans could do worse than run John McCain. McCain
is arguably the toughest and greatest person running. He is usually
honest to a fault: on ethanol, on immigration, and on Iraq. Joe
Lieberman has endorsed him for President — and I take that fairly
seriously. But McCain is surrounding himself with religious ranters.
Tonight he was introduced first by an honorable group of veterans
including some who had been POWs with him. Then they trotted out Sam Brownback,
the Kansas senator who only recently ended his own presidential
ambitions. Brownback gave the standard right to life, overturn Roe v
Wade, and give us back our Supreme Court pitch to an entirely
uninterested audience. He clearly should have endorsed Huckabee and
wandered Iowa preaching to those who have already suffered from a bit
too much preaching. If McCain comes in third in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire, as seems possible tonight, he is in the game for real.