Will Iowa produce anyone who can trounce Trump?
And now, all eyes turn to Iowa.
OK, we don’t really need to say that. Feels as if all eyes have been on Iowa forever. Right now, the little state in the middle of the country has more political punch than the U.S. Senate. Plus no Mitch McConnell. What more can you ask?
The quadrennial ritual known as the Iowa caucuses is here. On Monday, Democratic voters will march off to a local gym or school auditorium or hotel ballroom and do their thing. When the results are announced, one or two candidates will be propelled into semiofficial front-runner status. One or two others will survive to trudge again through New Hampshire.
Eight or nine will be gone. They won’t all admit it, but we’ll know.
We’ve now gotten to the point, which comes in almost every story about the Iowa caucuses, when it’s time to complain about the system that gives one smallish, rather homogeneous state so much political clout. Most of us live in non-first places where the candidates are spotted mainly at fund-raising events.
How did Iowa get all this power? It started back in the 1970s, when the Democratic
candidate-picking system moved from the party leaders to the regular voters. Iowa wound up going first and really enjoyed the attention. It’s going to keep that spot even if it has to start holding the caucuses in August. “We take this very seriously,” said Troy Price, the state Democratic Party chairman.
You’d think some Iowans would get a little weary of being ambushed by candidates every time they go to the store and spending their evenings being barraged with political ads on TV and the web. But if they are, they don’t tend to admit it.
The biggest question Iowans are going to answer is whether the Bernie boom is real. Lately all around the country, Democrats have been wandering around looking at polls and muttering: “Wow, it looks like our nominee is maybe going to be — Sanders. Um, gee.” Unless, of course, they are part of the extremely large Bernie fan club, in which case they’re just bouncing up and down, waiting for their big moment.
What’s the secret of the Bernie bounce? Well, these days voters seem to be looking for candidates who are — real. And whatever you think of Sanders, it’s hard to imagine that a politician who cared only about his image would decide to become a cranky-looking whitehaired guy who shouts.
Donald Trump seems to have noticed the Sanders surge. The senator from
Vermont was the first candidate Trump insulted during his standard-issue rally this week in New Jersey (“crazy Bernie Sanders”) and the only one who came up more than once. Elizabeth Warren got a single “Pocahontas” and “Sleepy Joe” Biden didn’t rate a mention.
Sanders, 78, has been finding support in unexpected places — at least unexpected if you presume voters are drawn to candidates who are like them. He came in first in a poll of voters under 30.
Meanwhile, things have been looking not-great for Warren, whose poll numbers keep slipping while people keep grumbling that she’s unelectable since voters just aren’t going to pick a woman.
As strange as the caucus system is, Iowa does have its pluses as the starting gun. Voters truly are diligent. And the experience of walking around some cold shopping malls in Des Moines prepares candidates for walking around some cold shopping malls in New Hampshire.
We’ll be cranky again soon enough. But we’ll always have Iowa.