Insight from our Iowa 2020 Caucus Tour
Some say Iowa is too white and too rural to deserve the sway it holds in determining the course of the presidential elections. Maybe so, but this rural state has a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff
It’s just gone 7.30 pm and Rachel, the woman sitting next to me is tearing up. We are in a non-descript school hall in West Des Moines Precinct 313 watching the caucus in full flow. She’s crying not because the caucus looks chaotic, which it does, but because it is so impressive. Just under 200 people are packed into a room debating why they should support x or y candidate as the next President of the United States. Men, women, the young and old, some of whom have just been appointed on the spot, are speaking to the crowd in turn. When they talk it is not from a rehearsed sheet but from their hearts, saying in their own words why they think their candidate is best placed to run. A lot of these people know each other, they live streets apart, and they all believe they can have a say in shaping their nation’s future. This is democracy in action and Rachel is right, it is deeply moving.
Just a few hours later all of that effort seemed to be falling apart as deadline after deadline went by and still no results from the vote were published. As the night progressed the caucuses and Iowa’s claim to its first-in-the-nation primary status appeared to be in tatters.
Much has been written since about the Democratic Party’s mishandling of the electoral process (*see below), but despite all of that there are reasons why the “hawkeye” state should go through this bizarre and arcane process. If the Democrats are to win the White House they’ll need to win back the independent voters as well as some of the blue collar workers who voted for Trump in such large numbers last time. Iowa has plenty of them.
From our point of view, just in terms of seeing the voters and candidates in action there really is no better place. In six short days we managed to see nearly all of the major campaigns, get out on a farm, meet voters from a wide range of backgrounds, and see a cross section of media both national and local — we even made it into the pages of Vogue magazine.
Donald Trump appeared to agree with our analysis. Never one to miss an opportunity he flew in to Des Moines the Thursday before the caucuses, just as the world’s media descended on Iowa for the final week of campaigning. It was coincidentally our first night of the tour.
The event was a brilliant illustration of the huge mountain the Democrats have to climb if they are to win the presidency. Over 7000 supporters packed into the Knapp Center stadium at Drake University to watch President Trump. It was by far the biggest rally in the state. He spoke for over an hour and a half, reading in part from teleprompters but for the most part ad-libbing. “You’re going to have to get bigger tractors and a hell of a lot more land,” he told a largely rural audience to huge cheers. It didn’t matter that Iowa’s farming sector has been hard hit by trade wars with China and is in long-term decline. He knew how to play the crowd and could do no wrong. The Daily Mail’s Henry Deedes, who was also in the audience, compared it to a get-rich-quick convention. It also had the flavour of an evangelical rally. The evening even started with a prayer session with a female Hispanic lay preacher praising God for gift they had been given; Trump!
Polls show that Iowan Democrats are aware of the threat; finding a candidate that can beat Donald Trump has been their first priority this past year. As we all know Bernie entered the campaign as the favourite. Former vice-president Biden pitched himself as the only person capable of beating Trump. Local TV stations were peppered with ads showing Biden in full presidential mode. But Iowans, it seems, didn’t agree.
The caucus process is a ruthless one — and woe betide any candidate who relies on name recognition and TV advertising. For at least a year the best organised candidates have been traipsing across the state not only to make themselves familiar with the voters but also to put a good ground operation in place — and that means in every single community across the entire state, in all of Iowa’s 1681 precincts.
For each precinct you need a “captain” who knows the local community in each of them. It was very telling that in the precinct we witnessed, Bernie Sander’s captain didn’t know the local community. Bernie’s supporters were also young. When it came to the crucial second round of votes in which you need to convince others to join your side, they didn’t know how to interact with people — consequently they failed to get enough votes to qualify for a delegate. And in such a tight race that could make all the difference.
From Des Moines we travelled north west to Storm Lake in one of the most rural and conservative areas of the state. Here to their credit we found Bernie’s team had sent out Spanish speakers, some driving from as far away as Philadelphia to canvass among the town’s Hispanic population many of whom work in the local meatpacking industry. We heard how Pete Buttigieg had travelled out here months ago holding face-to-face meetings in diners and people’s homes, and Elisabeth Warren likewise. By and large we found both Sander’s and Warren’s messages were seen as too left of centre. That wasn’t a surprise in this more rural area but that didn’t mean they were going for Biden. Many older voters specifically said they preferred Buttigieg because he was younger.
Driving back through the frozen landscape from Storm Lake we stopped at Tom Thumb’s, a well-known diner just outside Fort Dodge. It was packed with Sunday church-goers grabbing mammoth sized breakfasts. No matter what you ordered it seemed to come with a large glazed bun all served by a smiling and enthusiastic young waitress.
“Who do you think is going to win?” one of our group asked.
“Oh, I don’t follow the superbowl!” came the reply.
Fickle as it seems the very first thing voters seem to ask themselves is “Does this person look like a president?” Policy considerations seem to come second place. At Essman research, our expert for the tour, Democratic consultant and political strategist, Bradley Knott, showed us videos of a group of undecided voters selected to assess the candidates over a six month period. Warren had “Jazz hands.” Biden appeared “Sleepy” (Trump’s pneumonic seems to have stuck). Mayor Pete “it’s not even a grown up name.”
In Des Moines that rang true on the last day before the caucuses as we were able to see the candidates close up for ourselves, first attending a Buttigieg rally and then Biden, one after the other.
“Mayor Pete,” was dressed in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and spoke in almost Obama-like tones. He seemed relaxed and took random questions from the audience. He was quick and confident with his replies. Biden, dressed in a blazer, but no tie, looked tired and appeared to forget names. He referred to bits of paper, which he scrambled for mid-sentence on a lectern.
Looking back now over the week and as the results of the caucuses finally come through Iowa does seem to have done its job. There is roughly a 60:40 split between the centrist and progressive candidates. Bernie Sanders arguably holds poll position with the largest number of actual voters. But Buttigieg has got credit for running a campaign that went beyond the metropolitan areas where most liberal voters are based. He has shown he can win in more conservative areas as well as the cities. Biden just didn’t have the ground operation in place to win the votes. Ads alone were not enough. (The same rules may not apply later in the campaign though — something Bloomberg is clearly banking on).
Between now and Super Tuesday on March 3rd Buttigieg and Bernie will be the front-runners, with Biden banking on a revival in South Carolina. Once Bloomberg enters the race in earnest, the race could be even tighter.
Early next month Bob Paduchik, a much feared Republican strategist who is on Trump’s campaign team for 2020 will be joining us at our Experts Weekend in London on (6–8 March) Bob will be speaking openly about why it’s so hard to crack the president’s support.
Whoever wins the Democratic nomination we’ll be there to follow their progress in the last week of the election, 28 October — 4 November, 2020. We were there to see Obama re-elected in 2012 and then Trump in 2016. We’ll be there again in November. Will it be four more years?
*The debacle over the Democratic Party’s handling of the election has compounded long-standing feelings that Iowa is too white and too rural to merit being first. Iowa’s role is to catapult candidates that might not otherwise make it (think Jimmy Carter, and possibly Barack Obama) and winnows out others that don’t have good enough campaigns on the ground (think Joe Biden this time around — read on for more on that). Why should a state that is so unrepresentative have such a disproportionate impact on who becomes president?
