Des Moines
One of the secrets of the Iowa caucuses has always been that there are no convention delegates chosen at them. That will happen many weeks from now, at county conventions and the state convention. And they are a unquely undemocratic exercise, particularly on the Democratic side, where the process demands that voters devote several hours of their time on a weeknight, and haggle with their neighbors over their second choices. (Republicans, by contrast, make their choices and leave. They are assuring their caucusgoers that they can be home by 7:30.) But in either event, thousands and thousands of Iowans are disenfranchised simply because the demands of their occupations–or their lives–make it impossible for them to appear in at their caucus locations at 6:30 p.m. on a weeknight. Doing well under these circumstances is not really a test of how a candidate will fare later down the line, when voters simply go to a polling booth that is open all day, or cast their ballots absentee.
The caucuses are–and have always been–a battle for the next day’s headlines. That means that the real thing the candidates are running against are expectations. Whether they beat them, and by how much, is what gives them momentum coming out of the caucuses. As we have noted here before, in 1972, Iowa gave George McGovern a big boost, even though he finished 13 points behind Edmund Muskie. And Georgia’s obscure former Governor went from “Jimmy Who?” to front runner in 1976 on the strength of coming in 9 points behind “Uncommitted.”
Other factors can come into play as well. All the attention given to the microphone anomaly that became known as the “Dean scream” four years ago produced a collateral victim: John Edwards, whose surprisingly strong second-place finish didn’t get nearly the attention it deserved. And these results will certainly be framed in the context of what comes next: A candidate who comes out of Iowa finishing strongly, but without the money or organization to do well in the next few contests, is not likely to get nearly as much out of his or her performance as one who is positioned well in New Hampshire and beyond.
So knowing all of this, how are the campaigns framing the race this time? Everyone is assuming the Democratic contest will be extremely close. But Hillary Clinton’s team is afraid that if she falls even a point or two behind Barack Obama, that is going to be declared a huge win for him. (Then again, they were the ones who based so much of their campaign on the idea of inevitability.) If that showing is reversed, and she comes out the winner by a point or two, her campaign worries that it will be portrayed as a tie. If Edwards wins (and that’s increasingly the talk you are hearing here in Iowa, given the large and enthusiastic crowds he has been drawing), his challenge in spinning the next day’s coverage is making a case that he has a credible path to the nomination from there.
What counts for a victory in the Republican race is even murkier, given the strange bounces it has taken already. The strongest contender in the national polls, Rudy Giuliani, isn’t even really playing here in Iowa. If Mike Huckabee wins, he too will face questions as to whether he has the organization or money to do well going forward. And if Mitt Romney pulls it out, even narrowly, the recent Huckabee surge could turn out to have been a gift. That’s because, until Huckabee had appeared on the scene, Romney had been presumed the winner simply by virtue of the enormous resources he had poured in to Iowa. Even a big victory would have been discounted. Now, if he can best Huckabee by even a point or two, he will be the first to claim the “Comeback Kid” mantle in this election cycle.
Speaking of which, how many people even remember that when Bill Clinton put that phrase into the political lexicon after the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and rode it all the way to the nomination, he had skipped Iowa entirely — and had just come in second to Paul Tsongas in New Hampshire by almost 20 points?