According to a giant nationwide poll conducted by Survey USA, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would beat John McCain in a general election but only Obama would win Iowa. The poll consisted of separate statewide polls that gave Obama a win based on a strong performance west of the Mississippi River while Clinton’s win was based on strength in winning big states like Pennsylvania and Florida despite losing some of the smaller states that the poll thought Obama could win.
However, in Iowa, the poll shows Obama trouncing McCain by 50-41 while Clinton loses 46-41. Obama outperforms Clinton in almost every category in Iowa, save Hispanic voters, and even wins traditionally Republican Northwest Iowa. In fact, the poll shows Obama not just winning Northwest Iowa but winning North Dakota and turning Iowa’s western neighbors, South Dakota and Nebraska into swing states.
Now, this is just a poll taken 8 months before a general election and there still is a lot of campaigning to be done and any general election numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt. But what the poll clearly shows is that Barack Obama has a distinct strength in the Great Plains, putting states into play for the Democrats that, with the exception of 1964, have been consistently Republican since the end of the New Deal. And this Great Plains region includes Western Iowa.
If this poll holds up, it seems clear that with Barack Obama and Tom Harkin on the ticket, Iowa Democrats have the potential to have an better year than 2006 and stand a decent chance at picking up the 4th Congressional District seat. This is not to say that Hillary as the nominee would be a disaster. But, in Iowa, the numbers seem to indicate that Obama has the best coattails for congressional and legislative candidates and the chance to even realign Iowa politics by weakening the Republican hold on Western Iowa.
While Christopher Rants proclaimed that Iowa House Republicans will regain their majority as the party of health care and education, the two leading staffers at the Republican Party of Iowa were fired by new Chairman Stu Iverson. While Iowa Republicans had a mixed record in 2004 and a colossal collapse in 2006, it doesn’t help to be starting from scratch nine months before the election. Rants can talk about how vulnerable Eric Palmer or Elesha Gayman are until he turns blue in the face but if there is no party infrastructure behind their challengers, he’ll still be talking about how Palmer and Gayman are vulnerable incumbents in 2010. The Republicans do not have the necessary campaign infrastructure and if their message is to run against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton on health care, they’re not going to have much luck with that either.
Iowa State Representative McKinley Bailey announced his endorsement of Joe Biden today. Bailey is a first term State Representative and was widely courted by Presidential campaigns because of his service in Iraq in the 82nd Airborne Division. Biden has picked up endorsements from a number of Iowa legislators as part of his campaign’s increased focus on the caucuses. Bailey is also a member of a prominent political family in Hamilton County. However, his father, Hamilton County Supervisor Doug Bailey has not just endorsed Obama, but is a member of Obama’s statewide leadership team.
It’s also interesting to note that Hillary Clinton announced her retirement savings plan in the Bailey family’s hometown of Webster City. It seems the Clinton campaign may be using the split between father and son to scoop up support in North Central Iowa.
However, regardless of what the Clinton campaign does, it appears that Thanksgiving and Christmas may be interesting in the Bailey family. While many Iowa families may go to the caucus together, it does necessarily mean that they support the same candidate when they get to their caucus location.
Hillary Clinton held a event this afternoon in a coffeeshop in Newton. It was a small event, maybe 80 people were there. Christine Vilsack spoke briefly and introduced the senator, stating that she supports Clinton because her extensive experience will allow her to get results in Washington.
Clinton herself spoke for a half hour. She called for universal health care and attacked insurance company bureacracies for making it hard for ordinary Iowans to receive inexpensive medical treatment. Also, she spoke in favor of college education being more accessible and inexpensive for everyone. There was a lot of applause for that. However, when she voiced her support for a women’s right to choose, there was a mixed response from the crowd.
She spoke out against the corruption by lobbyists and large corporations in Washington, asking for a return to honesty in the political arena. The crowd seemed to find this message quite appealing.
She gave the most attention to the subject of Iraq, when she stated that the U.S. had helped Iraqis and given Iraqis the chance to form a stable government in their country, but that it was time to take the troops out and let the Iraqis form a stable government for themselves. She did not outline a plan for withdrawal. However, when she next brought up Iran, she spoke out against the lack of diplomatic talks with Iran by the U.S. and asked for “diplomatic solutions” to the nuclear issue.
At the end, Clinton graciously thanked the crowd and asked for support. She took only a few questions. One man asked how much Senators earn a month. She fielded it fluidly, giving her guess in the six-figure range and taking it as an opportunity to claim that she had not voted for any pay increases in Congress. The next question came from a woman from Progress Industries, asking for Clinton’s support for people with disabilities in the workplace. She championed Tom Harkin as the leader of rights for people with disabilities in Congress, but did not go into much detail about her own position. The last question was hard to near and not repeated, but her response was to speak against the Bush administration for bypassing the UN before the invasion of Iraq.
She ended the event by mingling with the crowd and answering a few questions individually.
There is an issue in the news right now that is of greatest interest to Iowans. I’m not taking about frontloading the primary schedule, but rather the exponentially increasing role of the internet in campaigns. While it remains to be seen what impact it will have had when this process culminates on January 14, 2008, we have already seen the effect it can have for a candidate. Many have credited YouTube for handing Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) and the Democrats the senate majority, thanks to a video featuring now former Senator George Allen calling a Webb staffer a “macaca.” Facebook and MySpace have also thrown their names into the political arena. While this may get many more people involved in the caucuses, it is increasingly difficult for the rest of us to process such a large volume of information and take the time to make sense of it for ourselves.
A prime example of this is a video entitled “Vote Different.” Posted on YouTube two weeks ago, it has been viewed over 919,000 times. It is a testament to the power of such ad campaigns on the internet. If you haven’t seen it, watch it for yourself.
Upon first glance, you should notice a few things. First is that it is a clever mashup of the famous 1984 Super Bowl ad introducing Apple Macintosh to the computer world. Secondly, it appears to be obvious that it is from the Obama campaign. This is a view that many major sources of news media have advanced. It’s a fair statement. The woman with the hammer has the symbol of Obama’s campaign on her shirt, and at the end of the ad is Obama’s web address.
But something just doesn’t seem right. Why would that particular sound bite be chose? There must be something that gets their message across more efficiently. They show Hillary’s explicit attempt to come across as a regular person, having a “conversation” with each of us individually. Now watch the original. The Macintosh ad speaks of “one people, one will, one resolve, one cause,” and “a garden of pure ideology where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory thoughts,” all coming from a voice that is meant to sound evil. It completely contradicts with Hillary’s explicit statement that “we all need to be part of the discussion,” and “I don’t want people who agree with me.” Themes such as unity, and “one people” are actually coming from the Obama campaign. Also notice the change in contrast between the two, as Hillary is bright white, as opposed to the dark room. The image of the “big brother” is dark, and blends with the dark wall, with a lighter room.
Now consider that the video was posted by someone with the username “ParkRidge47.” It is significant in that Senator Clinton was born in Park Ridge in 1947. It was also posted with the text: “Make up your own mind. Decide for yourself who should be our next president,” very much in line with the Hillary sound bite. So let’s say this actually is from the Clinton campaign. Could the message be that she is trying to create an exchange of ideas to make everyone better off, thus distancing herself from the image of politics that she is associated (i.e. a war of the partisans or even a politics as a competitive sport in which the American people are spectators)?
In the original commercial, the power comes from the irony of the hammer hitting the screen just as the “big brother” says “we will prevail.” In the mashup, the hammer hits Hillary as she says “I want to keep this conversation going until November, 2008.” Also notice that the woman with the Obama symbol is now wearing an ipod, symbolizing that she refuses to take part in Hillary’s conversation, and is then actually stops it suggesting that Obama is the one who wants to end her conversation. As for the reason why 2008 won’t be like “1984,” that is the year that Walter Mondale, running as an unabashed liberal, lost forty-nine of the fifty states in the general election. This suggests that having Hillary on the Democratic ticket would result in a different outcome this time around. This message is made clearer by having Obama associated with the black screen, while Hillary is associated with white.
Both sides have denied responsibility for the mashup, and I personally don’t subscribe to either view. We just don’t know, and can’t say for sure where this ad came from. My point is that not everything will be as it appears this campaign season. We must all take a closer look at everything we see and form our own opinions. It’s not an easy job, but it is our responsibility to do so.
After the Edwards campaign released its list of “senior Iowa staff” the other day, I thought it might be prudent to discuss how each campaign’s staff is shaping up. Their differing approaches are interesting, at least, and they could make a difference by the time the caucuses come around next January.
First up, the Obama campaign has been doing quite a bit of hiring over the last month. All of their key positions (regional field director, state field director, state director, and deputy state director) are filled, and they are hiring on new field organizers every week. Some have compared Obama’s staff to Howard Dean’s from four years ago, because it seems to include an unusual number of ideologically motivated young people, many of whom have never worked a caucus before. Their typical field organizer offer, which is the lowest of the candidates reviewed here, is $2,000 per month. Because Senator Obama is so magnetic, they are having no trouble filling positions, but the low salary may not be enough to entice experienced operatives.
Next, the Edwards campaign has staffed all or most of its key positions as well, and has begun hiring field organizers. In contrast to Obama’s staff, most of Edwards’s staff so far have Iowa political experience, and many have also worked with state director Jennifer O’Malley or state field director Jackie Lee before. General impressions from folks seem to be that the Edwards staff has things together, that their hiring process is quicker and perhaps more organized than Obama’s, and that they already have a more specific plan in place. Their typical field organizer offer seems to be $2,500 per month.
And finally, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been a bit slower to announce their hiring decisions here, but those whom they have hired have impressive resumes. Staffers who may not have significant Iowa experience but who have significant experience elsewhere are taking positions on the Clinton campaign that are well below where the staffers might be in most campaign hierarchies. Clinton is paying field organizers about $2,750 per month — the most of any candidate — although from what we know here, many positions have not been filled.
Beyond these “big three” campaigns, none of the others have hired (or begun to hire) a full staff here. Dodd, Richardson, and Biden all have a few folks on the ground here, but not enough to get a general impression yet.
How the staffing differences will affect the caucuses, nobody knows, but past caucuses have proven that staff strength can be a major factor in the final delegate counts. Without a sound field strategy in place, a campaign cannot win Iowa, and that takes a good staff.
I know, I live in Iowa, so a defense of the caucuses that comes from me is just going to seem like I’m greedy. I should say that before I moved to Iowa for college four years ago, I shared the opinion that the importance of the caucuses is unjustifiable, and that a national primary would be more democratic. Then I experienced the caucuses (in 2004), and I changed my mind.
Over on MyDD, desmoinesdem published the second part of her diary series, “How the Iowa caucuses work.” She echoes concerns that we brought up here about inequalities in the caucus system based on delegate assignment, demonstrating that it takes more caucus-goers to elect a delegate in precincts with higher concentrations of activist Democrats who have free evenings than in precincts with lower concentrations of said activists. (E.g., it took about 70 caucus-goers to elect one delegate in the Poweshiek County, where I caucused in 2004, while in less-Democratic and less-populous Fremont County, it only took 22 caucus-goers to elect one delegate.)
The conclusion of all of this? The caucus system (according to our own Geraldine) “favors the old over the young, the rural over the urban, Western Iowa over Eastern Iowa.”
Why is this wrong? Well, while the caucus system seems to create inequalities on the surface, it can compensate for deeper inequalities. Many have complained, here and elsewhere, that the Iowa Caucuses are unfair to families with young children, workers who have evening shifts, handicapped persons, and, generally, people with busy schedules, because it requires them to take several hours out of a weekday night to argue with their neighbors about politics. Not everyone can do that, and it’s understandable.
That is why precincts are assigned delegates before caucus night: if a disproportionate number of Democrats in X precinct have to work the night shift or have young children (or even if there’s a blizzard), the system currently in place ensures that their precinct will still be important. And precincts are the smallest geographic unit our election officials recognize for general elections, so it is assumed that others in your precinct likely represent similar interests to yours. Think of it as a much more geographically specific version of the electoral college. (Maybe you have your problems with that system, too, but at least this caucus math has a constitutional precedent.)
Aside from that, though, here’s a question nobody has asked: what is the harm in giving Iowa’s downtrodden rural hamlets and agricultural areas a little attention from the rest of the country every four years? It isn’t like John Edwards is going to spend the last week before the caucuses camped out in Keokuk and Grundy Counties just because each caucus-goer is worth more there. At the end of the day, Keokuk and Grundy still represent a tiny fraction of the total delegates needed to win, and putting on events and doing GOTV work is easier and far more efficient in urban areas like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
While disparities in caucus-goer to delegate ratios from county to county may seem a little alarming, the truth is that urban areas are still immensely important, and that a candidate can win the caucuses without putting practically any resources into the less populous half of Iowa’s 99 counties. A campaign will hire more than 10 full-time field organizers for Polk County before they will hire a single full-time organizer for Grundy County. And most importantly, I don’t know a single Iowa Democrat who will argue that Polk County (Des Moines area) Democrats don’t have enough influence on state politics, the state party, or the caucuses.
I hope this will be the start of a series of posts written here as a defense of the Iowa Caucuses. Toward that end, I’m looking for more arguments to respond to. So, dear readers, please participate: What arguments against the Iowa Caucuses do you find most compelling?
John Edwards recently sent out the first mailing of the 2008 primary season to 70,000 Iowans. The mailing includes a detailed description of his health care plan and a DVD (found here) that describes the plan. The video is quite effective though it’s unclear how many of the 70,000 people who received it will actually watch it. However, it is a clear sign of how serious Edwards takes Iowa and also of the emphasis that he is placing on health care. It also gives away his campaign strategy.
Edwards’ focus on health care makes Iraq a secondary issue for him. Although he voted for the Iraq War in 2002, he has since made a very public mea culpa and has been forgiven by anti-war left (as Ed Fallon’s endorsement of Edwards shows). This enables him to dodge the debate over Iraq, which will be the most divisive part of the campaign. From this, one can surmise the Edwards’ road map to the nomination. The second tier candidates (Biden, Dodd and Richardson) are running on experience, specifically that they have the experience to help avoid further American embarrassment in the Middle East and one of Barack Obama’s major selling points was that he was against the Iraq War from the beginning. And we all know how Hillary Clinton voted on Iraq. They will all tear each other apart while Edwards can avoid the entire mess. Edwards then sails through the early primary states as the field narrows. Once it becomes a two-man race, he takes on the wounded survivor of the Hillary-Barack fight over Iraq on February 5th. He defeats his badly bruised opponent and becomes the nominee.
With l’affaire Geffen and Artur Davis’s comments in Selma, Clinton and Obama seem to be doing all they can make this scenario possible. However, with Edwards tipping his hand, both Clinton and Obama still have time to change gears before Edwards successfully takes advantage of the media obsession with them so that he can become the nominee.
Last month, Hillary Clinton made a widely publicized visit to Iowa to kick off her Presidential campaign. However, since then, she has not been in Iowa at all and has no announced plans to visit again anytime in the future. She still has only assembled a barebones Iowa staff (though there is speculation she will inherit former Vilsack staffers). It seems very peculiar for such a major candidate to have such a minimal presence in Iowa compared to her competitors. Although the Clinton campaign is clearly focused on fundraising right now, it still seems to unwise to lay low in Iowa when John Edwards and Barack Obama have been visiting the state weekly.
With Tom Vilsack dropping out, one question is what happens to the large organization of staffers that he built in Iowa? There are a lot of experienced Iowa field operatives who are now unemployed. Hotline hints at a possible answer, noting that many of Vilsack’s top level staffers have strong ties to Hillary Clinton. Clinton still has only hired a barebones Iowa staff and the ties between Vilsack and Clinton are close enough that there was some speculation that Vilsack’s candidacy was merely a Clinton stalking horse. It would seem a good match that many former Vilsack staffers would migrate to Clinton’s campaign. Tom Vilsack had a strong Iowa field operation, Hillary Clinton needs one. As high level ex-Vilsack staffers move over, they’ll bring some lower level field operatives with them. It would give Clinton a head start for building the strong ground game needed to win the caucuses and help her grab a healthy chunk of Tom Vilsack’s 1,159 committed supporters.
