WMC News & Features

Many Tests Are Posed by the Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa caucuses on Thursday represent a roll of the dice for many Democratic progressive institutions, not the least Emily’s List and major labor unions.

Emily’s List spent more than $400,000 to devise a marketing tool to identify Iowa women sympathetic to Senator Hillary Clinton and found that most of them never had participated in a caucus. For months, the Clinton campaign has worked to educate these women about the intricacies of caucus procedures, attempting to shape them into confident, savvy participants.

Now the key test: will they show up Thursday night to take part in the caucuses, and will they stand firmly committed to Clinton? These women are likely to be among the 60 percent of newcomers to the caucuses. How they act will go far to dictate how Clinton fares against Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards.

In recent polls of probable caucus voters, including Monday’s Iowa Poll, which showed Obama moving ahead, Clinton had regained her edge with female caucus goers. She did much better than Obama with women 55 and older and pulled even with him for women between 35 and 54. Obama holds a commanding lead with voters younger than 35, including women, and many of these voters will also be newcomers to the caucuses.

The clout of national unions and their Iowa affiliates also will be tested Thursday. Iowa has many unionized workers, from machinists to meatpackers. Four years ago, the unions put major muscle behind then-Representative Dick Gephardt and were humbled when he came in third and dropped out of the presidential campaign.

This year, the unions have put in more than $3.5 million in independent expenditures for the Clinton and Edwards campaigns. Some unions have launched direct attacks on Obama and his health care proposal. But whether voters listen, and turn out for candidates backed by the unions, will be tested Thursday.

Unions also manage some of the major voter turnout drives. Clinton’s campaign volunteers will be standing by with drivers and even babysitters to make sure their targeted voters don’t face last-minute hurdles that might block their ability to spend the hours required at their local caucus.

Obama’s campaign relies far more heavily on integrating website technology with traditional get-out-the-vote efforts. He has connected with likely caucus voters through YouTube, Facebook and MySpace websites and many more.

Obama also had appealed to out-of-state students attending Iowa colleges and universities to come back early from their winter break to caucus for him. That could be tens of thousands of caucus voters—if it happens. A Democratic group, the Young Voter Political Action Committee, had offered transportation subsidies for out-of-state students, but as of last weekend only 75 had applied.

Most campuses are shuttered for the winter break. Grinnell College will open its gymnasium to about 100 students expected to return from other states for the caucuses. Obama is given high marks for a Kennedy-like charisma by many college students—but whether that is magnetic enough to shatter the traditional political apathy in this age group will be tested Thursday.

On the eve of the first vote of the 2008 presidential campaign, meanwhile, Obama had to guard against the resilience of Edwards, freeing Clinton to continue conversations with voters on her own terms.

Although the campaigns have spent record amounts in Iowa, there was little of the frenzied tone of 2004, when the polls and pundits alike predicted that Howard Dean would win the caucuses in a turnout that Dean’s campaign manager predicted would exceed 200,000. The pundits were wrong. Dean lost out to the more traditional Democratic contender John Kerry—and the caucus vote fell far short of predictions, as well, at 124,181 or 6 percent of Iowa voters.

This time around, key political actors made election-eve pitches. Long-shot presidential contender Representative Dennis Kucinich asked his Iowa supporters, if he didn’t get the required 15 percent support on the first ballot, to rally behind Obama. And Ralph Nader took out after Clinton as being “soft on corporate crime, fraud and abuse,” while urging votes for Edwards.

Thursday’s vote will show if Iowan activists are grateful to Nader for his advice or still blame him for his third-party presidential run in 2000 when progressives say he siphoned off enough liberal votes from Al Gore to give the election to George W. Bush.

Finally, longtime Democratic campaign manager John Sasso spoke up in defense of Clinton, calling her the “most electable and least vulnerable Democratic candidate to face the Republicans.” Without explicitly mentioning polls that show her negatives still stubbornly high, he said if she wins the nomination, it would transform her standing. “What was viewed by some as calculation becomes smartness, impersonalness becomes thoughtful deliberation.”

Also then, he predicted, voters of both parties will confront the “historic question: can a woman, this woman, be elected president?” Sasso managed Geraldine Ferraro’s campaign for vice president in 1984. He recalled that huge crowds turned out to support her, “eager to be part of history in the making. By campaign’s end, two things seemed clearer to me: there is inherent goodwill for a woman seeking power but a far sterner demand she be up to the challenge.

“That higher bar asked too much of Ferraro,” Sasso said, as the running mate of presidential nominee Walter Mondale. “Clinton has already cleared the bar."



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