IOWA STATE FAIR: IT HAS BECOME THE 1st POLITICAL TESTING GROUND

…Joe Biden meets some very young future voters at the Iowa State Fair 

Candidates for both parties have become famous for speeches on the Iowa Fair’s “SOAPBOX” stage.

Ah yes, we all can remember when in a 2012 Campaign Speech on the Iowa State Fair SOAPBOX stage, Republican Mitt Romney declared that, “Corporations were people!”.  That statement followed Romney around for the entire campaign to follow.  Then in the same GOP campaign, Carly Fiorina on the Iowa stage declared that “Everyone of us is gifted by God!”  And this year, Democratic Candidate, Andrew Yang called President Trump a “fat slob who cheats at golf.”  He then challenged Trump to compete in running a mile.  Yang also broke down in tears on the Iowa stage upon hearing from a young mother whose 4 year daughter was killed by a stray bullet.

As usual, this week Iowa is awash in presidential candidates and, if you like your politics deep-fried, this is the only place to be.  But it’s far too early to try to make sense of it all.  The Iowa State Fair, which opened on August 8^th , this venue will eventually draw nearly all of Democratic candidates.  They will all be testing their messages before the Iowa fairgoers.  They will also be exposed to Americans from around the country at the Des Moines Register’s famous SOAPBOX stage.  After giving their stump speeches, they will set off in search of more photo ops, lots of handshaking, and whatever fried food meets their tastes or their political needs.

On Friday night, Democrats in Clear Lake, just south of the Minnesota border, hosted more than 20 candidates at an event known as the Iowa Wing Ding, a speech-a-thon that some call “political speed dating”.  This because each candidate is only given five minutes to make their political point.

It was amazing that the event ended well ahead of schedule.  Most candidates were well-received by the audience, whose energy highlighted the intense, early interest in this 2020 presidential race.

But South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg did win the “Applause Meter Test” with a scorching speech that raised the decibel level there, in the middle of the country, where the room for the event is somehow called the “Surf Ballroom”.

The large group of candidates in Iowa over the past week has drawn people from all around the country.  Some have come out of a pure love of politics and just to watch. Others have come with a more serious purpose which is to seriously find the candidate they believe can defeat President Trump in 2020. Their sense of urgency about that mission this year was unmistakable.

Iowa’s position at the front of the nominating process has developed as the nation’s tradition, and it now is set by rules established by the Democratic and Republican national committees.  Its presidential caucuses kick off the primary caucus season and it acts as the great decider of which candidates will carry the torches.  Therefore, only a handful of this large and record field of candidates will survive the caucuses in February, but the final number for this year is far from understood today.

The caucuses are nearly five months away and, because there are so many candidates running, Democrats and political handicappers are trying to anticipate who those survivors will be.  Who will leave Iowa as a declared winner, or will there not be one?

Ann Selzer, who conducts the Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register and in this cycle and for CNN, has earned a reputation as the best pollster of Iowa politics.  From that experience, she offers two pieces of wisdom about the coming months of campaign in Iowa.  The first is never to disregard dark horse candidates.  “Anyone can come to Iowa and win,” she said during an interview in her West Des Moines office last week.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was at 3% in her first poll of the 2016 cycle and ended up on caucus night in a virtual tie with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.  This gave him momentum all the way to the 2016 Democratic National Convention.  Clinton’s team had claimed victory in Iowa without really knowing the final outcome, and there is still dispute about the results.

Selzer’s second observation is a variation of the first. “I have seen enough elections to know how fast things can change and how common it is for things to change when we’re in the field doing the final poll before the caucuses,” she said.

She keeps what she calls the “Register graph of Doom” for Howard Dean, the former Democratic governor of Vermont who, just a few weeks ahead of the caucuses, was the favorite to win the state. As Selzer was conducting the final survey, Iowa caucus-goers were suddenly shifting their allegiance. The graph charts a steady decline for Dean, from roughly tied for first to roughly tied for fourth.

Dean ended up third behind then-Sens. John Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.) and never recovered.  Kerry, who had been written off six weeks before the caucuses, went on to become the 2004 nominee.

Selzer saw something of the same thing in 2012 with former Republican senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), who was at 10% on the first day of polling (about double where he had been earlier), then climbed steadily until he was statistically tied with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Romney was declared the winner on caucus night in 2012.  A few weeks later, the state Republican Party, after some serous detective work, declared Santorum was the actual winner, but it was too late to make any real difference for his candidacy.  As we all know, Romney eventually became the GOP nominee.

However, next year’s caucuses will be conducted under a new set of rules designed to alleviate some of the criticisms of the process.  Historically the process has required participants to show up at a fixed time and for several hours on a winter’s night.  But this time the party will hold the regular, in-person caucuses as well as “virtual” caucuses ahead of caucus night.

These changes will open up the caucuses to more people, but they also mean that, instead of just one result being posted on selection night, the state party is likely to report the results with a series of numbers.  Unfortunately, this effort at more transparency could, and probably will, lead to multiple claims of success.

By various measures, former vice president Joe Biden is so far, the Democrats’ Summertime leader in Iowa. He’s ahead in the polls, and he’s the favorite in the unscientific but bazaar exercise at the state fair, TV station WHO has a contest called, “cast your kernel” in which citizens show their support by dropping a kernel of corn into a glass jar labeled with each candidate’s photo.

The most recent survey Selzer conducted was back in June, before either of the two debates, but she has info from the data collected at the time that offer some guidance about the shape of the contest here in Iowa.

First, is that the state’s Democratic electorate might not be quite as liberal as it has been characterized.  Another idea is that, while electability is prized over many issues by many voters here, integrity and intelligence rank as the two leading attributes for which voters are looking; “electability” is way down in fourth place.

The June Iowa Poll asked respondents to give their first choice for the nomination as well as their second choice.  It also asked people to say who else they might be actively considering. Selzer combined those responses into what she described as the candidates’ “footprint” in the state, which provides some idea of the top tier here.

Five candidates have a majority in that “footprint”: They are: Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) with a combined 61%;  Sanders with a combined 56%; and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Buttigieg each with a combined 52%.  That’s is way too close to call.

Biden’s comment in Iowa about Trump: “Americans have decided what Trump says is ‘hokum’ !”

But the past week’s activity moves the campaigns into the next  level of intensity.

In September, the candidates will return to Iowa for the annual “Democratic Steak Fry”.

In early November, they will gather again for the state party’s “FALL GALA”, an event that has on occasion proved to be consequential.

If anyone is looking for any real clarity or a moment when the race truly begins to come into focus, Selzer offered the following observation: “I don’t ever think anything is set. I will never say things have jelled.”

In other words, nothing is set until a nominee is chosen, and then the final focus is not known until that Tuesday in early November, 2020.

Copyright G. Ater 2019