Top ten lessons from the Iowa caucus results: The old formulas don’t work
By James P. Gannon
Here are the top ten things we learned from the Iowa Earthquake….
10. Hillary Clinton represents the past, not the future. “Back to the 1990s” is not a winning message in 2008. Making your concession speech flanked by a grim Bill Clinton and an aged and worn-looking Madeline Albright only emphasizes the point. This is change?
9. Iowa narrowed the field of Democratic candidates, but broadened the Republican field. Biden and Dodd are out, Richardson, (running for VP?) will be soon. The Dems are down to three (maybe just two) viable contenders, but Mike Huckabee’s win scrambles the GOP race, eliminating nobody.
8. Placing sixth in Iowa, while winning less than half the votes of Ron Paul (!), tells Rudy Giuliani how stupid it was to skip Iowa. He got 3% of the GOP vote. Fuggeddaboudit!
7. The Des Moines Register knows how to poll Iowa caucus-goers, and nobody else does. The newspaper’s final poll–widely questioned by the media and campaign hacks–had Barack Obama leading by a wide margin, with Clinton and Edwards virtually tied. Bingo! The Register’s poll showed Huckabee ahead by 8 points (he won by nine) and virtually nailed the numbers for Romney, McCain and Paul. Bingo! Doubters scoffed at the poll’s implication that a huge turnout by political independents would swell Obama’s support. Double Bingo! Other polls had Clinton winning.
6. That an African-American man can win a state that is “whiter than any place outside the North Pole” (to borrow Jack Cafferty’s gem) means that blacks in the rest of the country can finally believe that one of their race CAN really win the presidency. This has huge negative implications for Clinton in places like South Carolina, where many blacks initially supported her because they couldn’t make themselves believe a black man could win nationally. Now they can believe.
5. Money doesn’t buy votes in Iowa: Romney outspent Huckabee by 15-1 or more and got whipped. Clinton spent the most and had the biggest organization and placed third. Obama had money, but he won with inspiration, elequence and by embodying change.
4. Iowa’s Christian-Republican party uplifted ex-Baptist preacher Huckabee with a huge turnout of born-agains, but that won’t be a winning formula in New Hampshire, big primary states later, or nationally in November. How does he broaden his appeal now?
3. Obama has enormous potential to broaden the appeal of the Democratic party beyond the party regulars. Iowa’s Democratic turnout almost doubled from 2004, with independents and disgruntled Republicans rallying to Obama’s new politics that downplays the Red state/Blue state divide. This is bad news for the GOP in November.
2. The country is sick and tired of the old politics of division. People want a unifying President who can get things done, working with both parties. Both Huckabee and Obama represent unorthodox candidacies that break with their party’s past. This is dreadful news for Clinton.
1. It still makes sense to start the presidential race in Iowa. Long criticized for being too white, too small, too rural, Iowa showed its best qualities: serious-minded voters who study the issues and scrutinize the candidates, open to new ideas and new faces, broad-minded enough to give a black man a win in a state that’s 95% white. Such a thorough and personal testing of the candidates and their messages could not have occurred in big states like New York, California or Florida.
-- James P. GannonComments
Comment from wonka13
Time: January 4, 2008, 5:01 pm
Great analysis of the much discussed event last night. With a writers strike, Iowa and the orange bowl provided a bit of interest and diversity to TV news and entertainment at the-is cold start of the year.
It’s good to read some fresh takes on the behavior of the citizens of Iowa. Perhaps David Letterman won’t mind you borrowing his format!
–Bill Earle
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