Buttigieg, Warren win big at Iowa event
Contrasting messages face off at state’s top Democratic fundraiser
DES MOINES, Iowa – The Iowa Democratic Party’s fall fundraising dinner long has been a critical measuring stick for presidential candidates in the lead-up to the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, gauging both theirability to give inspiring speeches and to demonstrate strong grassroots support.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg had a strong night on both fronts, bringing the largest pack of supporters to an arena filled with thousands of Democrats for a polished speech in which he offered the “hope of an American experience defined not by exclusion, but by belonging.”
“I will not waver from my commitment to our values or back down from the boldness of our ideas,” Buttigieg told the boisterous crowd of party officials, activists and campaign organizers. “But I also will not tire from the effort to include everyone in this future we are trying to build — progressives, moderates and Republicans of conscience who are ready for change. The time has come.”
Buttigieg’s powerful performance came on the same day that a New York Times/Siena College poll showed him surging into third place among Iowa caucusgoers, passing former Vice President Joe Biden and narrowly trailing U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
The 37-year-old candidate’s night in Des Moines helped his momentum and further elevated
what started earlier this year as a long-shot campaign. That was matched, however, by an equally effective showing by the front-running Warren, who contended the brand of moderate politics practiced by Buttigieg and Biden don’t go far enough to fight for working families.
“We need big ideas and — here’s the critical part — we need to be willing to fight for them,” Warren said. “It’s easy to give up on a big idea, but when we give up on big ideas, we give up on the people whose lives would be touched by those ideas.”
Warren’s and Buttigieg’s speeches illustrated the ongoing gulf between the party’s progressive left demanding major fights to force social change, and a moderate middle that has called for unity and a centrist message aimed at defeating Trump in the fall. That divide was reinforced by Biden’s plea to “restore the soul of the nation” post-Trump and Sanders’ declaration that “real change doesn’t take place without struggle.”
The Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration, which lasted nearly five hours and stretched late into Friday night, serves as the single most consequential campaign event ahead of the state’s Feb. 3 caucuses. This year’s annual fundraiser was the largest in the party’s history, drawing more than 13,000 people and a record 13 candidates, which required the event to be held at Des Moines’ downtown Wells Fargo Arena.
The event marked a highstakes moment for the candidates: 12 minutes to give a speech in a boxing-ring like setting encircled by thousands of amped-up Democrats eager to oust Trump in the November 2020 election. All the candidates railed against Trump. The differences emerged in their messages on how best to energize voters to defeat him.
Biden declared the “very character of the country is on the ballot” and said that the Democrats didn’t just need to beat Trump, but beat him “soundly,” and argued he was best positioned to do so. The former vice president also took a shot at those who support eliminating private insurance and implementing “Medicare For All,” including Sanders, Warren and California U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris.
“We can make sure that 160 million Americans who have insurance can keep it if they want, and if not, they can buy into a Medicare-like proposal,” Biden said. “That will not take four years or five years or 10 years to happen. It will happen immediately. There will be no increases in taxes for the middle class, none, none, none.”
Warren came into the Des Moines spotlight dogged by questions about her “Medicare for All” plan, for which she drew sharp attacks from moderates Biden, Buttigieg and Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar. The criticism boiled down to the fact that Warren had embraced Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, but had been unwilling to detail how she’d pay for the new health care system or address whether middle-class taxpayers’ taxes would increase as a result.
On Friday, she sought to change that narrative by announcing her version of “Medicare for All” — a $34 trillion plan that would require $20.5 trillion in tax increases. Unlike Sanders, who has said his plan would result in a tax increase for middle-class Americans in place of the costs and copays of their current private insurance plans, Warren vowed no such tax hikes for working families.
So-called “Medicare for All” would mean a free government-run health care system eliminating private insurance, while a public option plan would be a government-run system in competition with private insurance.
Warren said middle-class families would save some $11 trillion by no longer having to pay the premiums, deductibles and co-pays they currently must cover under private insurance plans. She’d pay for the plan by requiring employers to pay the $9 trillion they currently spend on health care to the federal government, expanding the wealth tax she’s already called for, cutting military spending and savings from eliminating the bureaucracy currently set up around private insurance.
Biden’s campaign slammed the proposal as unrealistic “mathematical gymnastics” thateffectively would raise middle-class taxes, claiming employers would simply pass on the health care costs to employees. The former vice president did not criticize the plan in his speech, and neither did Klobuchar or Buttigieg. But like Biden, the South Bend mayor touted his public option plan, “Medicare for All Who Want It,” which he said is “honoring your decision over whether and when you want it.”
Warren portrayed such plans as limited and unambitious.
“Anyone who comes on this stage and tells you they can make change without a fight is not going to win that fight. Anyone who comes on this stage and tells you to dream small and give up early is not going to lead our party to victory,” she said. “This is a time of crisis, and media pundits, Washington insiders, even some people in our own party don’t want to admit it. They think that running some vague campaign that nibbles around the edges is somehow safe. But if the most we can promise is ‘business as usual’ after Donald Trump, then Democrats will lose.”
Sanders offered a similar sentiment, quoting Nelson Mandela by saying, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”
“The establishment and the monied interests always tell us that real change is impossible,” the Vermont senator said. “Well, let me respectfully disagree. In my view, health care is a human right, not a privilege.”
In his speech, Buttigieg met the frequent calls for a political fight from the left with a measured tone aimed at uniting progressives, moderates and Republicans.
“We will fight when we must fight, but I will never allow us to get so wrapped up in the fighting that we start to think fighting is the point. The point is what lies on the other side of the fight,” he said. “And what lies on the other side of that fight is the hope of an American experience defined not by exclusion, but by belonging. That is what we are here to deliver.”
Buttigieg arrived at the arena with growing momentum. A New York Times/Siena poll released Friday morning showed him continuing to surge to the top of the field.
The survey found Warren solidifying her status as a front-runner with 22%, followed by Sanders with 19%, but the most notable change was the South Bend mayor’s rise to third place with 18%, passing Biden who polled fourth with 17%. The top three candidates all were within the poll’s 4.7 percentage point marginof-error of one another.
Beyond the night’s speeches, the event also marked an early test of the candidates’ resources and campaign organization — and for one candidate, the end of the road. Former Texas U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke ended his campaign hours before the event, telling supporters gathered along the Des Moines River that he no longer had the resources to move forward.
Many of the candidates held rallies before the event, and Buttigieg attracted the largest crowd there too. More than 2,000 people stood gathered in a chilly, rain-soaked plaza to hear the mayor speak and singersongwriter Ben Harper perform. Inside, Buttigieg’s supporters filled nearly one entire end of the arena, where they wore matching glow-in-the-dark bracelets and held giant neon signs that read “Boot,” “Edge,” “Edge,” (a play on how to pronounce the mayor’s name) with one in each level of seats.
Warren and Harris, who has cut spending and pulled resources out of New Hampshire to focus solely on Iowa, had the nextlargest groups of supporters. Warren’s supporters unfurled a giant banner at the climax of her speech that covered three levels while Harris’ supporters held glow-in-the-dark signs that spelled “Justice,” and held up purple and yellow placards that spelled KAMALA in giant letters.
Biden’s campaign bought tickets for at least six sections of the arena’s upper deck that went unused, and the former vice president had the smallest group of supporters among the leading candidates, raising further questions about the depth of his ground operation in the state. He was accompanied by firefighters who have endorsed his candidacy.
Iowa Democrats have held the fall-fundraising event, previously known as the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, since at least 1975. The fundraiser often has served as a pivotal opportunity for candidates to establish the viability of their campaigns, showing off campaign muscle through the sheer number of volunteers who gather at pre-dinner rallies and pack the stands at the main event. The 2007 iteration of the Democratic dinner proved to be a launching pad for Obama’s then-longshot White House aspirations. He drew 4,000 people to an outdoor rally with singer John Legend, marched through the streets of Des Moines with a drum corps and gave a soaring speech that won the night.
“I know that Barack Obama probably would not be president if he hadn’t had a great JJ dinner in Iowa,” his 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe said this week on his “Campaign HQ” podcast. “It’s really what propelled us. That really separates us from the rest of the field and enabled us to build a winning campaign there.”
Hoping the same is true for him this year, Buttigieg started his speech with a nod to Obama.
“The first time I came to this state was as a volunteer, to knock on doors for a presidential candidate — a young man with a funny name,” Buttigieg said. “And we knew the stakes were high then. The stakes are colossal now.”
And now, he’s the young man with the funny name trying to break out in Iowa.