The Trump-induced agony of the Iowa voter
Whatever else proves true about Monday’s Iowa caucuses, the campaign to win them is challenging myths and underscoring the agony of Democratic voters in 2020. They are struggling to reach a final decision because they know how consequential their choice will be.
And the Senate’s impeachment debate serves as a kind of murmur amid the din, a distant fixation of political junkies that nonetheless goes to the heart of the Democrats’ intense desire to remove President Trump from office.
Thus, one myth Iowa is shattering: Defeating Trump is central to some candidates but not others.
It’s true that electability is at the forefront of the campaigns of former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. But knowing their party’s preoccupation with victory, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are not shrinking from this question.
For Biden, events in Washington this week were at least a partial blessing as he and his campaign leapt on comments by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, inspired by the Trump defense team’s attacks on Biden and his son Hunter. “I’m really interested to see how this discussion ... informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucusgoers,” Ernst said. “Will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point?”
Voters roared back, “Yes!” at a get-together here Tuesday afternoon when Biden quoted Ernst’s line. On caucus night, he said, Iowans would “not only get to ruin Donald Trump’s night by caucusing for me, but also ruin Joni Ernst’s night.”
In an interview later, Biden was as specific as he could be about why the president doesn’t want to face him: “I have the best chance of beating Trump, picking up those states we lost, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc. I have the best chance of helping us win back the Senate because I’m value added in states like North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, based on the polling data. And who else is going to add value there and not downside?”
Buttigieg is explicit, too. Ads pointing to the energy his campaign has inspired close with the tagline “This is how we win.” They’re tailored to specific counties in the state that Trump swept in 2016.
Buttigieg is trying to dispel another myth — that a candidate has to pick between restoring pre-Trump values or transforming Washington. The 38-year- old Buttigieg’s insistence that he’s about both is aimed at his D.C.-based rivals — and perhaps especially at the oldest candidates in contention here who occupy opposite ideological poles, Biden and Sanders.
“We’ve got to reckon with the fact that the presidency is about to face issues and challenges just deeply different from anything that we’ve dealt with in the past,” Buttigieg said in an interview after a townhall in Ottumwa. “This is a good moment to be looking outside Washington and looking outside the familiar debates.
“So in my view, that’s something that I think I can offer relative to all of my top competitors.”
But Sanders and Warren are not shrinking from the electability question.
At a bustling Iowa City Sanders campaign office, one bumper sticker on offer reads: “Bernie Beats Trump.” Jodi Clemens, Sanders’ regional field director, stressed his success in drawing previously disengaged voters into the fray “by talking about the things hurting people here, the things that keep them up at night.”
And in a phone interview during campaign swings for Warren — who is largely bound to the Senate by the trial — former HUD Secretary Julián Castro argued that she is “best positioned to unite our party, and we are going to have to be united to beat Donald Trump.” You will find a fair number of Democrats here predicting that Warren will overperform expectations.
Iowa also dispels the myth that voters are indifferent to punditry. The perception is taking root that Sanders will finish first because of the size of his base and its unshakeable loyalty. This means that voters seeking an alternative to Sanders must balance their hearts’ desires with their strategic judgements.
Klobuchar, for example, seemed to enjoy a surge in recent weeks among voters who “wanted to pick a candidate who can go the distance, not only to be nominated but can win,” said state Rep. Cindy Winckler, one of her early supporters. But this calculation is, in turn, influenced by voters’ perceptions of how the rest of the field is doing.
Because of Trump, Iowa voters know only one thing with certainty: This time, they can’t afford to make a mistake.