Revolution in Iowa
Click here for a narrated photo album of the trip.
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Where but America can a politician with no obvious advantages apart from being well-organized, energetic, thoughtful, and eloquent go from unknown to political powerhouse in a few short years?
A race with more than a dozen candidates is now focused on Barack Obama and John McCain – one of the youngest presidential candidates in US history vs. one of the oldest. Like a talented running back, Barack Obama has twisted clear of his opposition and now has a clear path to the White House. He has ample time to fumble or get caught from behind — but he is quick, increasingly sure of his moves and unlikely to drop the ball.
How did this happen? Having noted three months ago here that the race was HIllary Clinton’s to lose, I had to go to Iowa to see exactly how she was managing to lose it. What I saw was as close to a revolution as you get in American politics.
Barack Obama is the real deal. He is a driven and experienced organizer, an inspired speaker, and a massively successful fundraiser. He is attracting first rate talent to his campaign and rallying young people and first time voters in record numbers. Like all candidates, he will surely be bloodied and bowed by opponents and by events. He will make mistakes. But if he takes New Hampshire on Tuesday — and I am betting he will — he will very likely become the next President of the United States.
How is this possible? Remember, eight years ago, Obama was so little known that he could not get a floor pass for the Democratic Convention. Four years ago he introduced himself to the party with one of the best speeches ever given at a Democratic convention.
In the late sixties, following the corruption of the Watergate
scandal, American political parties reformed the traditional party
boss-dominated process of selecting delegates to presidential
nominating conventions. Since that time, by accident more than design, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries have become both incubator and abattoir of American political ambitions.
In the Iowa caucuses insurgents are born and established politicians either fly or die. The
caucuses are to the Presidency what the Scholastic Aptitude Test is to
college admissions: much easier to critique than to replace as a device
for separating the weak from the strong. (Actually, better
approaches are not hard to come by, just hard to implement. Rotating
the first primary among the two of the ten smallest states and staging the
remaining primaries with largest states last would be a huge
improvement. But the US Constitution makes no mention of political
parties, so there is no federal authority to govern such matters. It is up to the states – and New Hampshire has passed a state law declaring that it will always hold the first primary).
The first person to recognize the importance of early primaries was
a southern governor whose national name recognition was less than two
percent. Not only did experts give Jimmy Carter little chance of
winning in 1972, but when Carter told his own family of his intention
to run for President, his mother famously asked him, "President of
what?"
Carter won the Iowa caucus and used the momentum to win the New
Hampshire primary. He pioneered the approach used by every modern
presidential insurgent. John Kerry, a better-known Senator, won both
Iowa and New Hampshire in 2004 against the heavily favored Howard Dean.
Dean’s speech at the conclusion of the Iowa caucus was the unhinged “Dean
scream” that ended his Presidential campaign.
The Iowa caucuses end most Presidential dreams – especially those by
experienced Senators. Since Carter took advantage of the
nominating rules in 1972, current or recent US Senators have run for
President 66 times (my count excludes Senators who had become Vice
Presidents and those who ran as “favorite sons” — i.e., as a convention tactic). The
number who have been nominated? One, John Kerry. Number elected? Zero.
The US Senate is where Presidential aspirations go to die; the snowy fields of Iowa is where they often draw their final
breath. People with twenty plus years of distinguished Senate service often
figure that they are qualified to be President. Often they are smart
enough about the issues and have built the right relationships – but
they have also picked up some deadly habits. They require three
sentences to say what their listeners communicate in one. They talk
about legislation, not issues. They cite accomplishments that sound
hopelessly technical (“..and as one of thirty-three co-sponsors of the
Save American Agricultural Act, I fought for Iowa farmers when my
colleagues were silent. That’s the kind of leadership I will bring
to……). Voters are rarely impressed.
2008 will break this losing streak: both parties are likely to nominate Senators. But
Barack, like Hillary, is a short termer who ran for the Senate in order to
run for the Presidency. Neither appear to aspire to a long Senate
career. And McCain, if he is smart, will run as a war hero, not a Senator. At his headquarters, he was introduced by Vietnam vets whose stories of McCain’s heroism made men weep. But McCain then wheeled out a trio of right-wing Senators to sing his praises and the room immediately became restless. He should leave his Senate colleagues in the audience.
The 2008 Iowa caucuses will be remembered as especially brutal,
mainly because the remaining states have crowded their primaries ever
closer to Iowa’s. As of sunset on January 3, six serious Democrats and six
Republicans were competing to lead the free
world. Democrats surfaced a remarkably strong field, even if five of the six are or were Senators: Joe Biden, Hillary
Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson.
Republicans offered up Rudy Guiliani (who essentially skipped Iowa),
Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson. This is not a fired up bunch, mainly because Republicans can count. They know that since World
War II, any party that serves eight years gets replaced. The only
exception was Bush I, who followed Reagan.
By midnight however, the world had changed. Twelve candidates are
down to five – and three of them are in serious trouble. The remaining seven are either dead or mortally
wounded. Casualties include:
John Edwards, who came in second in Iowa four years ago, did worse this time. In 02 he earned 32% in a four way race. This time he earned 30% of a three-way race. He will not recover. Like NY Governor Elliot Spitzer,
Edwards has decided to play th self-righteous macho populist blasting "greedy corporations" and "the rich" for causing all of the world’s unpleasantness. He is learning the hard way that a confrontational, prosecutorial
demeanor may win passion points but it does not win elections. Voters know that cartoons cannot govern. Edwards is unlikely to win in New Hampshire against Obama, so he
will go into in his home state of South Carolina competing against
Clinton – one of the best names in the state — and a black rock star.
Knowing this, this donors – even labor donors – will demur. Edwards will not
have the money he needs to continue an expensive and compressed primary
schedule through this month. His political career ended last night,
even though his supporters dream otherwise.
Mitt Romney. Dead man walking. His main accomplishment may be to have forced
the party establishment to turn to John McCain. His strategy assumed a
huge win in Iowa. He spent $40-$50 million dollars in the state and
twisted his political positions to accommodate Western Iowa’s
conservative evangelical Christians. But these folks voted for one of
their own – a man who campaigned thematically not programmatically and
whose victory speech last night could have been given by Barack Obama.
Romney is not loved in New Hampshire, which shares media markets with
Massachusetts, so Romney bleeds until Michigan – his home state and the
place where folks over 50 remember his Dad, as a popular governor and
CEO of American Motors (and a man not given to pretending he is
something he is not). Anything but a powerful victory in Michigan means
Romney is done. End of the road for a good man who ran a terrible race.
The demise of Mitt Romney illustrates an interesting phenomenon: successful business people often discover their blind spots when they
seek public office. Romney is in the tradition of businesspeople who
become governors in order to run for President: Virginia’s Mark Warner
and (perhaps) George W. Bush are two others. Businesspeople tend to be
problem-solvers. The best of them articulate their values and
convictions to inspire employees and customers – think of Steve Jobs.
Many have deep technical knowledge about their business – think Bill
Gates at Microsoft or Eric Schmidt at Google.
But politics is more
than problem-solving, as Hillary Clinton is learning. Voters want to
know about your program, but in this election they clearly also want to
know about you – your character, your vision, your general view of the
world. Voters want to know your plans, but in Iowa especially, they
seem to want to know what sort of person you are so they can measure
how you are likely to respond to the inevitable crises that come with the
office.
Mike Huckabee. Dead man flying. The Huckster is a
charming man and a brilliant communicator but he has nothing to
communicate. There is not the slightest chance that Republicans will
nominate another fevered theocrat, however much I might relish the
campaign against one. Iowa Republicans are Jesus freaks – and I did
not say Christians. Huckabee ran fifth among non-evangelicals: his
candidacy is dead and gone to whatever little heaven or hell awaits departed campaigns.
Bill Richardson, Ron Paul, and Fred Thompson are also among the
walking zombies. They will stagger into New Hampshire but will finish
campaigning by the end of this month – and in most cases, well before.
Of these, Richardson is easily the greatest loss. He is an
extraordinary guy, having served as Governor of New
Mexico, Clinton’s Energy Secretary, and US Ambassador to the United
Nations. (Bill Clinton all but created Bill Richardson, appointing him to the UN
twice and to Energy once. This makes rumors that Richadson will endorse
Obama all the more galling to the Clintonistas).
Ron Paul is a Republican Texas Congressman who we visited yesterday
at a Des Moines deli. The man is shriveled, sullen, and appears
to be slightly demented. He is the darling of Internet libertarians – a large and
generous constituency, as it turns out. He has almost no field
organization and sports an aggressively sullen campaign demeanor. We
had Paul to ourselves — it was clear that he had managed to spend several
weeks walking around Iowa in the snow without leaving footprints.
Chris Dodd and Joe Biden are not waiting for New Hampshire: both men
closed down their campaigns last night. The Iowa Democratic Caucus
enforces a 15% viability threshold: if you do not
receive 15% of the votes in any precinct-level caucus, your voters are
told to go find another candidate or to vote undecided. In Precinct 87,
which we visited as observers, neither Dodd, nor Biden, nor Richardson
achieved viability so even though 40 or so voters, a few tearfully
passionate, turned out for these candidates, Precinct 87
reported zero support for any of them.
Joe Biden closed down his third and probably final run for President
with little to show for it. Chris Dodd spent $12 million in Iowa and
put his kids in Des Moines schools only to wind up above an upscale
Italian restaurant consoling his deservedly dispirited staff because
his final tally in Iowa was zero. He did not survive the viability
threshold in even one of Iowa’s 1,784 precincts. Failed campaigns are
as sad as winning ones are thrilling – and in Iowa there are always a
lot of sad ones.
Republican Duncan Hunter and Dems Mike Gravel and
Dennis Kucinich don’t count. They were too weak and frankly too weird
from the start to be politically relevant. Iowa efficiently dispatches
cranks of this sort. Ron Paul would be in this group but for his Internet support.
It is interesting to rate the major candidates on three factors:
their ability to describe their vision of politics, their ability to
outline compelling political plans, and their ability to execute a complex campaign.
A
compelling vision of politics, especially one that connects with the
life story of the candidate, mattered enormously in this election.
Mike Huckabee is brilliant at this, as is Barack Obama. John Edwards’ ability to bare
his soul is a trademark honed before countless juries. Romney struggles
stiffly to understand what the problem is here. McCain is lousy at this but he gets
a pass because he is a war hero.
Plans obviously matter. All Democrats have plans — typically endlessly complex, expensive, and tailored o stimulate the erogenous zones of key constituencies. Edwards gives out
an 80 page pamphlet full of bullet points. Clinton is nothing but
plans. She tends to fall into her husband’s trademark rapid-fire
recitation of wonkish ideas. Obama has them and can stick to the bullet
points, which do not vary a lot from other Democrat plans — especially if you consider that Congress gets to play with these plans too. Romney has
plans, although they evolve a great deal. McCain has plans because all
Senators have plans. Only Huckabee has no plans – he is literally doing
a wonk rodeo to try to round up some Christian experts to tell him what
he thinks. I cannot wait to see this guy in a debate.
Execution is where the top guns excel: Romney, McCain, Clinton, and
Obama have all raised real money. All have top-notch field
organizations. All can do highly credible media.
Final score out of three:
- Huckabee 1
- Romney 1.5
- Edwards 2
- Clinton 2.5
- Obama a perfect 3.
I’m not sure about
McCain because I have seen too little of his operation. Note however
that the Intertrade (a market in political futures) currently gives
Obama a two-thirds chance of becoming the nominee, Clinton a one-third
chance, and everyone else effectively no chance. For Republicans, it is
McCain 75%, Romney 25%, others zero…
We decided to observe the caucus at precinct 87 in Iowa, mainly
because it was near our hotel. It turns out that the Iowa caucus, like
caucus systems everywhere, are designed for inside party activists –
normal folks need not apply. The process was chaotic, needlessly
time-consuming, and run by the same precinct apparatchiks that had
controlled affairs in this south Des Moines precinct for twenty years.
It was democratic only in a town hall, 19th century sort of way: your
vote is not secret; pressure to defect is continuous; open debate at
the polling place is encouraged and rewarded, and anybody can arrive, register, and vote — which opens the process to all kinds of abuse.
Last night, many, perhaps most, attendees had never attended a
caucus. Obama’s affinity group was young, fired up, and diverse;
Hillary’s was older, more experienced, and slightly amazed at the Obama turnout,. There
was no obvious tilt by women towards Hilary (indeed Obama polled better
among women age 18-59 than Hillary and one of his better buttons declares "Hot Chicks Dig Obama"). At our
caucus, Hillary and Obama started with a similar number of voters, but
supporters of nonviable candidates moved to the Obama group (amid
raucous cheers) in larger numbers. Hillary is a candidate with strong
positives and strong negatives – she has more trouble than Obama
competing for swing voters.
21st century technology intruded on this 19th century
process: we knew the results while the voting was still underway. It
became much easier to recruit Obama supporters after about 7:30, when
the networks called the election for him. Thanks to the magic of
Blackberries and cell phones, dozens of people knew immediately. Once
we fired up a PC, we could look at detailed projections while our
caucus voting was still underway (we could very likely have found
projections for our own caucus still in process if 87 was one of the
precincts that the networks polled. Because the networks did entrance
polling, not exit polling and because caucuses, unlike polling places,
have no closing time, the networks ignored their normal restrictions on
reporting while voting is still in process.
If everything had worked smoothly, caucuses would have convened at
6:30, shut their doors and counted total attendees at 7:00 sharp as
ours did, conducted a 30 minute scrum during which everybody could try
to persuade everybody else to join their group, blow a whistle after 30
minutes, run a tally to eliminate non-viable groups, then conduct
another 30 minute scrum before taking a final tally. A small and
efficiently run caucus might get that all done by 8:00pm. Ours was
chaotic, in part because it was 50% larger than any ever held. It ran
until after 9:30.
We left and waited for Obama at a fired up victory bash, swaying to
loud rock music and a kid’s drum band that marched straight through the
mob. We looked up to see Hillary giving her speech. We could not hear
her words over the din, but the visuals told the tale. We saw a
tight-lipped Bill Clinton, a symbol of 1992 and clearly not happy with
third place in what could become a referendum on his legacy. We saw
Madeleine Albright, a symbol of 1997 and a botched Rwanda policy. We
saw AFSCME signs everywhere – a symbol of interest group and identity
politics. It looked old and it was old. It looked like the past and it
looked like business as usual – it did not look like change.
Within minutes I was listening to a breathtaking, pitch-perfect
speech – a fine mix of inspiring oratory and programmatic thinking. Watch it below. I
was looking at a beautiful family and picturing them in the White
House. I felt better about my country than I had felt in a very long
time.
I generally react badly to being manhandled, but when two Secret
Service agents suddenly frisked me from behind, I actually smiled and
thanked them before I leaned forward, shook Michelle and Obama’s hands and exchanged
a few words of congratulations. I looked at the Jamkid who was all eyes and realized that I had been exactly his age when a Palestinian with a pistol murdered my first political hero not far from my house at a rally just like this one. Bobby Kennedy was celebrating his victory in the California primary.
January 3 was an amazing day to be in Des Moines. A black guy who
not long ago was a complete unknown had just crushed Hillary Clinton
and John Edwards in the Iowa caucuses. He had just given a remarkable,
memorable speech to the nation and to New Hampshire, where he was bound
with an outstanding, well-financed, and battle-tested organization. In
American politics it simply does not get any better than this – and I
was enjoying it with my 15 year old son, who had quickly become both
conversant and very engaged in a few days of meetings with Presidential
candidates..
Obama could blow it. But as of now, he has his
opponents in a box and the Clinton and Edwards campaigns both know it. They do
not have an answer to Barack Obama – and they are not going to find a
lot of Democrats who want to stop this guy.
Hillary, a talented woman, has earned her positives as well as her nontrivial negatives, now
either holds on to win New Hampshire and delivers “comeback kid — the sequel” or she presides over the collapse of one of the
mightiest political legacies in America.
I don’t think she can pull it
off – and as much as I respect her talents, a large part of me doesn’t
want her to. The nomination and the election, which so recently was
Hilary Clinton’s to lose, is slipping rapidly from her grasp.
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Click here for a narrated photo album of the trip.
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