board77

The Last Homely Site on the Web

notes from Iowa

Post Reply   Page 1 of 1  [ 7 posts ]
Author Message
Castanea_d.
Post subject: notes from Iowa
Posted: Fri 04 Jan , 2008 2:54 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 28
Joined: Sat 19 Nov , 2005 7:40 pm
Location: Iowa
 
I got involved a couple months ago with Bill Richardson's campaign, and even did a 2-minute introductory speech for him at one of his local appearances, as well as being a precinct captain for the caucuses last night. (Edit: for those who might not know, the precinct captain is not an outside "pro," but has to be a local volunteer, living in that precinct. The campaigns can, and often do, have some of their "pros" at the caucus to observe and assist, but they are not allowed to participate in any obvious way, most especially not to get involved with the wheeling and dealing of the evening. We had a Clinton "pro" on hand who scrupulously followed these rules. No other "outsiders" were present except for an Oriental exchange student who was observing, and one newspaper reporter.)

Our precinct, the smallest in our city, selected three delegates. All along, I considered it a long shot to win one. But going into the caucus, I felt confident; from phone calls and canvassing I thought that we were roughly equal with Edwards, and could squeeze him out for the third delegate.

The Obama precinct captain was all smiles as I introduced myself to him while we were setting up. I had modest hope that they might help us out with a few people to become viable, having heard rumors of some sort of “deal” that the two campaigns would help each other out (more on that shortly). He had other ideas than helping us, as it transpired.

I am friends with the Biden captain, who had worked very hard and developed a following for her candidate from almost nothing. I had hopes that perhaps we could work together in some way. The Edwards people had no precinct captain, to my surprise, and were rather dejected, with a hand-lettered “Edwards” sign on some notebook paper as their only identifying mark. I had some friends among them, too.

The Clinton people, mostly female, were highly efficient, by far the most organized of the groups. I had arrived an hour early to grab a good “corner” with plenty of visibility in the room; they were already there, all set up with signs outside in the snow and inside the room, energetic people in Clinton blue shirts checking their supporters in on their lists as they arrived and greeting everyone at the door. I jumped in and helped with this task so that Richardson would have some visibility. The county Democratic party's website had been wrong (no surprise) and people from two other precincts were showing up; we directed them to the proper place, fortunately just two blocks away. We helped the people who needed to register to vote, or change their party – even though, as it turned out, most of these were for Obama. Many of them arrived with pre-printed voter registration forms, all filled out except for the signature and I presume put in their hands by Obama canvassers; in all, these probably amounted to a score of people – nearly half of the Obama support.

As people arrived, I noted that we were running pretty much even with Edwards, though Biden was about even with us as well. But people kept streaming over to the Obama corner....

All told, we had 118 people, a strong turnout for our little precinct: 20 needed for viability and the chance of getting a delegate. We had eleven. Edwards had 15, Biden 11, Dodd 4. Clinton had 28, and the Obama people dominated the room with 49.

I tried to get some cooperation from the Obama camp; no dice, even though they could have easily spared the nine people we needed for viability, and I knew from canvassing that several of them had identified Richardson as their second choice. I called on them by name; no dice. Instead, some in the group heckled me and tried to get us all to come their way, so that there would be only two viable groups and they would get two of the three delegates. Their captain took me aside and said “We can slam-dunk the Edwards campaign and put him out of the race tonight with an Obama landslide. You are wasting your vote if you don't join us. And what about the deal? Your Gov. Richardson told all of his supporters to come to us.” I knew of no such deal other than having heard a rumor, and the rumor had them helping us just as much as us helping them. And I learned this morning that Richardson had, in fact, told his supporters to follow their own consciences if he proved non-viable and they had to go with a second choice. I would have walked out of the room and gone home before helping the Obama people at that point, especially after the way they had been heckling me.

I tried the four Dodd people; they were leaning more toward Biden than Richardson. I talked to my friend the Biden captain. They were now ahead of us, so she wasn't budging, suggesting that we all come over to their side. The Edwards people were trying to get us, trying very hard to get someone, anyone, to join them. To their credit, without any precinct captain and without anyone in their camp that was willing to speak up or take a lead, they did their best and gave it a good try.

In the end, the four groups that were non-viable (Richardson, Edwards, Biden, Dodd) all combined into an “uncommitted” group for the third delegate. As I told the group, “None of us are happy with this, but it is the best we can do.” I thought that if Richardson were showing lots of strength elsewhere in the state, keeping the Edwards group from winning that delegate was better than nothing. Keeping the Obama group from walking out with two out of three delegates was much better than nothing.

I am surprised at how small the support was for Senator Clinton, and I was very surprised that the Edwards campaign couldn't even field a precinct captain. And I was not expecting the level of Obama support that was in the room, nor the arrogance they displayed.

When I went downtown afterwards to the local Richardson field office and saw the numbers on the wall chart, and how few Richardson delegates we had, and saw the statewide numbers, it was discouraging. A distant fourth place, and we had needed third, or at least a strong fourth. The Obama people were outside their headquarters (in the same building), celebrating in the street. Clinton people (likewise in the same building) were coming and going quietly: no celebration there.

I think Edwards is in huge trouble, unless he can pull a miracle in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Clinton faces a tough fight, too, though she is by no means out of it. Yet, with a year of hard work, strong organization, and vast sums of money in Iowa, it is a bad sign that she couldn't do better than she did.

On the Republican side: Huckabee by a large margin. If anyone could be worse than Bush, he's the man.

I fear for our nation.

Last edited by Castanea_d. on Fri 04 Jan , 2008 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Top
Profile Quote
ToshoftheWuffingas
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 04 Jan , 2008 3:09 pm
Filthy darwinian hobbit
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 6921
Joined: Fri 11 Mar , 2005 12:52 pm
Location: Silly Suffolk
 
Thanks for that insider view. I almost felt I was there it was so vivid.

_________________

[ img ]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos

Norwich Beer Festival 2009


Top
Profile Quote
MariaHobbit
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 04 Jan , 2008 4:02 pm
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 8041
Joined: Thu 03 Feb , 2005 2:39 pm
Location: MO
 
I'm confused. Instead of voting, you guys just got together in groups and shuffled people back and forth and recombined the small groups into one big uncommitted one? :scratch:

Excuse me, but that's so weird I can't wrap my mind around it. How do you keep people from being bullied into changing groups?

_________________


.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
LalaithUrwen
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 04 Jan , 2008 4:32 pm
The Grey Amaretto as Supermega-awesome Proud Heretic Girl
Offline
 
Posts: 21756
Joined: Thu 24 Feb , 2005 3:46 pm
 
I don't quite get that either, Maria, but it was interesting to read.

Not that I'll be voting for any of those candidates, but the insider's view is pretty cool.


Lali

_________________

[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
vison
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 04 Jan , 2008 4:37 pm
Best friends forever
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 6546
Joined: Fri 04 Feb , 2005 4:49 am
 
Very interesting!!!! Thanks for posting it.

It is heartening to know that there ARE grass roots.

I am on the mailing list for Democracy for America, so I get a lot of emails urging me to get out and do this and do that. Since I'm a Canuck, it's all academic, but I read the stuff and feel as though I am on "the inside" of something.

_________________

Living on Earth is expensive,
but it does include a free trip
around the sun every year.


Top
Profile Quote
Castanea_d.
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 04 Jan , 2008 6:00 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 28
Joined: Sat 19 Nov , 2005 7:40 pm
Location: Iowa
 
MariaHobbit said
Quote:
Excuse me, but that's so weird I can't wrap my mind around it. How do you keep people from being bullied into changing groups?
Precisely. That is what the Obama camp was trying to do to us, and (I suppose) what I was trying to do to them, (in a polite and gentle way, of course). It is, unfortunately, part of the process. It did not happen last night in our precinct, because everyone that was there was pretty firmly committed to their candidate. It did happen elsewhere in town; one of the other Richardson captains was telling me that they had a delegate all wrapped up with just barely the number of people they needed, and one minute before the end of the half hour allotted for this sort of thing, the Obama people managed to steal one of their people away, meaning that the Richardson group got nothing. The Obama people gained nothing from having one more person, except for denying another candidate the delegate.

The idea is that you form preference groups, and in order to qualify for a delegate, your group must meet a minimum threshhold, in most cases 15% of the total present. Once the groups are formed and counted, and everyone sees which groups are sufficiently large, or “viable,” as they term it, the non-viable groups (like us) have a half-hour to see what they can do – combine with another group (as we did), convince other people to join the group, just dissolve and all the people go along with whatever other candidate they like as a second choice, or be stubborn and stick it out to the bitter end, and not be counted at all.

The whole Iowa caucus process has some serious drawbacks, to say nothing of it being first and giving an inordinate amount of influence to what is a small, mostly Caucasian, and highly un-representative state (kind of like New Hampshire). But what it does, extremely well, is it narrows the field. The arcane rules conspire to make it very difficult for a “minor” candidate to garner delegates. Yet, at the same time, it is not “winner take all” like most of the primaries (which I don't approve of, either), and it introduces virtually the only grassroots element into the presidential campaign -- New Hampshire is grassroots, too, and this year Nevada is having a caucus for what I think is the first time. After that, it is all about TV ads and soundbites.

(I keep editing this and adding more!) As for me, there is no way that I would have been stumping around in the snow and ice in a "winner take all" primary, knocking on doors and telephoning, contacting in some way every registered Democrat in the precinct, for a candidate who was running less than 10% in the polls. But with the decent chance to win one delegate, that is precisely what I did. I thought, in my innocence, that I could overcome the large advantages of money and organization that some of the other candidates had, and their lead in the polls, in our little precinct. And it came fairly close to working. I thought of expanding my efforts to the independents, Green Party people, and people who were not registered to vote, as the Obama camp did so successfully, but I ran out of time and energy and figured we would gain little from the effort. I got a little help from the Richardson campaign office with the telephoning, especially with follow-up calls in the last week for our handful of supporters and undecided voters, but we were on a tight budget and did not have the level of staffing that Clinton and Obama (and, I thought, Edwards) had, and our office was focusing more on the larger precincts where they had a more realistic shot at winning a few delegates, and on event planning, and trying to cajole the media into actually covering some of our events (the best we could do in the final weeks in our part of the state was one speech on C-Span, and a reporter from the Des Moines Register who followed Gov. Richardson around). We rarely managed so much as a sentence in the local newspapers, and not a word on the local network TV news programs, whereas Hillary et. al. were front and center, every day.

Anyway, I was going to say something else, about Senator Biden's campaign. There was an interview with Jimmy Carter in The Nation a few weeks ago, where among other things he talked about his experience in Iowa, which launched his campaign from complete obscurity. He said that it was basically just him and Rosalynn and a few other family members crisscrossing the state, with no money. He also said that such a campaign would be impossible nowadays. Well, Senator Biden gave it a try. Thanks to my energetic friend, his final event of the Iowa campaign, on Wednesday night, was right in our precinct. He was joined for the event by the dozen or so members of his family, from his national campaign manager and sister Valerie (who moved to Iowa back in the early summer, buying a house and the whole bit, partly to have a "headquarters" and partly to give everyone a place to eat and sleep for free), through a whole list of nieces and nephews and in-laws. And that was all of the “professional” staff that he had, for a national campaign for the presidency. The rest was all volunteers. All of his brochures were printed in black and white, not the glossy color of the other candidates. It was a shoestring operation.

And, I guess, it proved Pres. Carter right: it didn't work. He has now resigned from the campaign.

Last edited by Castanea_d. on Fri 04 Jan , 2008 7:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Top
Profile Quote
Ara-anna
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 04 Jan , 2008 6:53 pm
Daydream Believer
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 5780
Joined: Mon 28 Feb , 2005 11:15 pm
Location: Pac Northwest
 
Yes but if Richardson wins, New Mexico will have to put a dome on the Round House. And that will look funny.

_________________

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in

Five seconds away from the Tetons and Yellowstone


Top
Profile Quote
Display: Sort by: Direction:
Post Reply   Page 1 of 1  [ 7 posts ]
Return to “The Symposium”
Jump to: