Excerpt:

David Yepsen had a good article (yes, I just wrote that) last week about the future of the Iowa Caucuses.

Those rules fights will continue if Obama loses. Unlike Republicans, Democrats won’t decide their 2012 process at their convention. They’ll continue to discuss and haggle over it for months. But unlike the last rules fight, Iowa’s critics will have more ammunition to make the argument that the state’s leadoff position doesn’t work for the party, since, once again, it elevated a candidate too liberal or too bad at campaigning to win the general election.You can also bet that the Clintons will be out to torpedo Iowa’s caucuses. She would most likely be a candidate again in 2012. After her poor finish in Iowa and other caucus states, the Clintons became critics of caucus processes. You can look for them to side with the anti-Iowa and anti-caucus factions in those rules fights.

While all Americans have a lot at stake in this presidential election, Iowa also has its caucuses at stake.

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

Iowa Politics has a study posted about campaign ads so far this election cycle. The study shows that the most money on campaign ads was spent in Iowa with $43 million. 22,000 ads were played in the Des Moines costing $15 million alone.

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

After a lot of talk about Iowa and New Hampshire having too much impact and then questioning of the impact of the compacted schedule, the primary season seems to be working out pretty well.

Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics blog explains why this has been the best primary season ever.

I’d like to suggest an opposing view: this primary season has been remarkably successful at letting the public come to know the candidates and what they’re about. Why?

For one thing, there has been massive exposure to every significant candidate, thanks in part to the scattered primary schedule. There have been so many debates that a voter would have had to try hard not to at least read about them, let alone see them.

But the second reason is, I think, far more important. This year’s primary schedule has forced candidates to act a bit less like candidates and a bit more like managers — and, therefore, a bit more like an actual President.

Think about it. The schedule called for a dazzling array of primary variables: some were public caucuses and some were standard private votes; independents voted in some primaries and not in others; both parties held primaries on the same day in some states and on different days in others. And then there’s the intense clustering of many primaries in many states in a relatively short time.

So what have the candidates been forced to do? Strategize intensely, adapt to a slew of different circumstances and formats, and, most of all, figure out how best to allocate precious resources — money and time chief among them — in order to optimize their outcome.

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

Matthew Yglesias had an interesting post today that shows Mike Huckabee had a poor showing in Iowa counties with a high Catholic population.

Here are the maps…

Huckabee won the counties in blue, Romney won the counties in red.

The redder the counties, the more Catholics.

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

A week ago I wrote…

Iowa is supposed to put the candidates through the ringer, toss out the duds, and send the rest on to the other states.

and that is exactly what we did.

I know you’ve probably seen these, but here are Edwards and Obama’s speeches from Thursday night…

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

One of my favorite authors is Richard Florida, who wrote Rise of the Creative Class. Florida responded to something Chris Bowers wrote at Open Left and gave some interesting analysis of Obama winning the Iowa Caucuses..

Chris Bowers writes:

I’m looking over the 2008 and 2004 Iowa entrance polls right now. Four years ago, 79% of the Iowa electorate were Democrats. This year, 76% self-identified as Democrats. The huge turnout was just about as Democratic as the 2004 turnout. The new voters were Democrats, not independents. No real surprise in the core of Obama’s support. The younger a voter was, the more well-educated a voter was, the higher income a voter was, the more self-identified liberal a voter was, the more likely that voter was to support Obama. It is the same coalition for Obama that people have identified for months. Obama won on the back of the creative class vote.

I think Bowers is right about this. And it seems to me the 2008 election may well turn on class lines. I have long said the central animating issue in American politics is neither partisan polarization nor the culture wars but a festering class divide. Obama may appeal to progressive members of the creative class who swung Iowa, but can that group (roughly a third of the workforce) swing the general election his way. Seems to me there is an even larger group of working and service class people who are frightened, scared, anxious, angry and resentful about what is happening to “their” America. Critics of my own work have already attempted to reduce the creative class to “yuppies, sophistos, trendoids, and gays.” My hunch is these same types will be all too eager to hang the label “elitist” all over Obama, framing him as a Harvard educated, Washington insider surrounded by a gaggle of Hollywood glitterati backers and the same old liberal establishment economic advisers (think Robert Rubin and Larry Summers). If the Democrats (and the creative class) cannot figure a way out of this box - to articulate an inclusive agenda for the future which shows in plain and simple terms how working class and service class people can participate and prosper from the global creative economy, my assessment is that the electoral playing field will remain heavily tilted toward a reinvigorating Republican populism. Huckabee has the potential to tap into this zeitgeist in a way that could move far beyond the “Reagan democrats.” And Obama, despite his personal attractiveness and oratorical skills, runs the risk of being framed as another Gore or even Kerry. I’m just saying …

I wouldn’t give up on Obama being able to speak to the middle class. His first job out of college was working as a community organizer for factory workers after they lost their job. However, maybe an Obama/Edwards ticket would mesh this divide and unify the creative class and the working class behind a progressive agenda.

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

Thursday was my first time participating in the caucuses. I expected it to be a little crazy and it was even crazier than I had imagined. People were told to show up at 6:30 and the doors closed at 7. I arrived at 6 and the room at the Iowa Veterans Home was already crowded.

I signed in and then helped people who needed to change their party to Democrat or register to vote. I would say I collected well over 50 registration forms from people who are now new members of the Democratic party and this was just one of 8 precincts in Marshall County. This is great news for Democrats come November 2008.

People were all signed in by 7, the doors were shut, and people made their way to their preference groups. There were 22 delegates to be had in my precinct. The caucus chair gave the introductory speeches, read a couple letters, and announced there were 372 people in attendance and each candidate needed 56 people to be viable.

Here is a look at the results…

First Count
140 Obama
103 Clinton
55 Edwards
33 Richardson
23 Biden
4 Kucinich
1 Dodd
6 Uncommitted

A few minutes were given for the non-viable groups to move around. Edwards needed 2 people to become viable and they quickly grabbed 2 from the Biden group. Then 10 people from the Biden group moved to Richardson. 3 of the 4 Kucinich people went to Obama.

Second Count
144 Obama
103 Clinton
57 Edwards
43 Richardson
25 Uncommitted

Then the 30 minute period to realign began. I was in the Obama corner and my job was to be the persuader. I talked a girl, who was home from college. She was concerned about Obama’s stance on invading Pakistan to find Osama bin Laden. I was unsuccessful and I think she went to Edwards. There were two former Biden supporters that I tried to bring to Obama by saying that I group up in the house they live in. That personal connection didn’t work and they went to Clinton. I did have some success. I talked the one leftover Kucinich voter to come to Obama over Edwards by telling her a lot of the same things I wrote in my endorsement of Obama.

While this was going on the Richardson group was able to get 3 more people, but were still 10 people away from becoming viable. They tried to pull some people from Clinton and Obama, but no one would budge. Finally, after 20 minutes or so the Richardson group gave up the hope of becoming viable and their group dispersed. The Richardson supporters split pretty evenly between Edwards and Obama, with just a couple going to Clinton.

Finally the 30 minutes were up and the counting for the final numbers began. The Obama group counted 3 times because we had some people that had left over the realignment time. Someone said 4 people, who are residents of the Veterans Home, had to go take their medication and then couldn’t return. The final count numbers didn’t match to the total number people at the beginning, so other groups had this problem also.

Final Count
159 Obama
107 Clinton
77 Edwards
5 Uncommitted

Delegates Won
10 Obama
7 Clinton
5 Edwards

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

The surprise of the Iowa caucuses for many in the national media was Hillary Clinton coming in 3rd place. However, Iowans covering the caucuses weren’t as surprised for one simple reason: Clinton didn’t embrace retail politics.

Iowa is won through face to face interaction with the voters. A candidate must shake hands, hold babies, and, most importantly, answer people’s questions. Clinton rarely took questions at her events, and when she did there were planted questions by her own campaign and she accused legit questions as being plants from other campaigns.

Clinton’s campaign was cautious and the result was a campaign that seemed manufactured. John Deeth wrote that Clinton understood the surface, not the spirit, of the caucuses.

Clinton kept errors to a minimum but failed to capture the spontaneous spirit of the caucuses.

This left people asking how well do you really know Sen. Clinton? Last night showed that Iowans did not know Hillary Clinton very well.

This all played out last night with Clinton’s 3rd place finish, even thought it was by less than one percentage point. The national media finally observed Clinton’s manufactured politicking right before Clinton’s speech, where Andrea Mitchell observed…

This room was, until about five or six minutes ago, completely empty. This is a manufactured ‘celebration.’ It really felt more like a funeral as people started strolling in from upstairs where they had obviously been gathered. This is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen, a completely empty, dirge-like event.

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

Thought I’d give it a shot at predicting tonight’s caucus results.

I was getting the feeling last week that John Edwards was going to win, but the tide seems to be moving Obama’s way the past few days.

So here they are…

Democrats
1. Barack Obama 38%
2. John Edwards 30%
3. Hillary Clinton 20%
4. Bill Richardson 7%
5. Joe Biden 5%
6. Chris Dodd 0%

Republicans (note the percentages are purely a guess here since I haven’t paid as much attention to the latest pulls)
1. Mike Huckabee 34%
2. Mitt Romney 27%
3. John McCain 18%
4. Ron Paul 10%
5. Fred Thompson 8%
6. Rudy Giuliani 5%

I will be participating in my caucus here, so I won’t be blogging during the caucuses. I will have some posts later tonight and tomorrow about the process and to analyze the results.

Related Posts:

Excerpt:

MSNBC’s First Read reported something that I have been seeing on the ground all summer long…

Yesterday, we spent some time with the so-called second tier on the Dem side. The most striking thing: the crowd sizes. Biden and Richardson seem to get similar crowds as the GOP front-runners.

Marc Ambinder says Biden’s crowds have been impressive the past few days.

Some of the second tier candidates are beginning to draw large crowds, like Joe Biden, for whom 500 showed up in Des Moines, 300 in Mason City, and 250 in Dubuque. I doubt that Biden will finish in the top three, but he’s clearly got the deepest well of support among the second-tier Dems, and he’s a strong second choice candidate for many supporters of the top-tier Democrats.

Crowds like that mean one of two things: Iowans aren’t 100% certain on the rock star candidates and are still considering the second tier candidates or Iowa is definitely going to be a blue state come 2008.

Related Posts: