Front Burner - In the race to lead the Democrats, Iowa caucuses can make or break campaigns

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Months of Democratic strategizing and in-fighting culminates on Monday in the first caucus of the party’s 2020 leadership race. Historically, the Iowa caucuses are the first hint of which candidate could take on the President in November. Today on Front Burner, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel takes us to Iowa, where the momentum of caucusing could be the key to capturing the Democratic nomination.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So it definitely feels like we've been hearing about the Democratic leadership race forever now. You know, whether they'll pick someone moderate and electable or progressive and exciting. And I believe that our campaign is the campaign of excitement. We are at our best when we fight back with big structural change. This is the United States

of America, for Lord's sake. There's not a thing we can't do if we do it together. Well, the process of actually electing a leader, it really kicks off today, when the months-long Democratic primaries begin with the Iowa caucus. I have a lot of questions about how this all works. For one, Iowa has these rules that seem a bit quirky, like tossing coins to break ties. Tails. Tails.

Tails. And the whole Democratic leadership process feels mysterious and convoluted. Today, I'm talking to Washington Post national political correspondent Dave Weigel about that, and also who stands to win this thing, and whether any of it is going to matter if Donald Trump is the opponent. This is FrontBurner. Dave, hi. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

So, Iowa is the first step in the Democratic leadership race. Most of the leadership candidates are there holding rallies and giving stump speeches as a final pitch to energize voters. And can you tell me what it's like on the ground there right now? Well, sure, it is busy. It stopped being busy last week because a number of senators were tied up with the impeachment trial. It is back to normal. There are people holding rallies in areas where they think they can perform well, three a day, four a day. The objective is to get into people's faces as much as possible and at these events

to sign up people who can either show up to one of the caucuses, which is an event where you literally physically position yourself around the room to count support for your candidate, or to be one of the people who organize in those caucuses. They've got hours left to go and they're not quite done. Can we talk a little bit more about that? You know, essentially how these caucuses work. Maybe we could start with this very sophisticated question. What is a caucus? Right. A caucus is a it's not a primary.

So it's not one of the events where you go to a polling place and you cast a ballot. It is a event that takes place in one per precinct. And there's nearly 1,700 precincts across the state. Some of them very small and rural, some of them enormous with a thousand voters. You show up in a designated time about 7 p.m. voters. You show up in a designated time, about 7 p.m. The way Iowa has worked for a long time is that in the room, let's say there's seven candidates who are competing for the state, as there are this year. In your room, if there are 100 people and a couple candidates get less than 15 people, you miss the threshold, the threshold of 15 percent. After everyone is

sorted, a few candidates will have had enough support where they start tallying them and counting delegates. But then they do a second round where if you support a candidate who didn't meet that number, you just walk away. Right. And these can be pretty boisterous, too, right? We need 10. Edwards needs 10. They can be. People spend a lot of time training, organizing, finding the ways to best convince people who they've never met before, or maybe a neighbor that they know, but generally somebody who might be unfamiliar to them, please join me, come over to my side, help this person become president. So it is, imagine instead of a secret ballot, you have to walk in, face your neighbors and say who you're voting for.

That's the process is. Yeah, that's kind of cool. I've never we don't have anything like that here. So I actually think it's quite a neat process. So can you help me understand then how this fits into the larger Democratic leadership race? So you've got all these precincts around Iowa. You've got all these caucuses. Where does that leave you? This is a process that lasts through the middle of June. There are 50 states.

There are a number of territories and places like where I live, the District of Columbia, that get delegates kind of week by week, a number of states vote. And so Iowa goes first. Eight days later, New Hampshire has a primary. After that, there's only 2 percent, really, of the delegates that will decide this nomination selected. Some of the biggest states like California and Texas vote in the beginning of March. Basically, in the month of March is when most of the voting happens. And in many countries, you know, a leadership race would be here are the party leaders, everyone around the country, take your ballot in the mail, send it back, pick the leader. Wait, that's basically what we do. Yeah. Yeah. Here it is

selective over a period of months. There are lulls in the calendar and they change every year. States have the power and parties have the power to suggest new dates, to move up the calendar. The only limit is that the state of New Hampshire literally has a law saying that they have to be the first primary. And whenever people try to mess with that, it wrecks the whole process. So is it fair for me to say that these caucuses and the primaries that are coming up to is all about delegates, right? About trying to send delegates to this convention in July

that will pick the Democratic nominee. Is that a fair sum up? It's a fair sum up, although that doesn't explain why Iowa is so important. Iowa is important just because it is a test of candidate organizing and then a test of momentum, which is a very slippery concept. But, for example, a caucus that really changed the course of the race was in 2004, John Kerry, Howard Dean, a few other Democrats are running for president. Dean camped out in Iowa and originally was leading in the polls.

For a while, he was leading literally every state primary. Had there been a national primary, he probably gets the nomination. Kerry in Iowa, through a series of circumstances, outworked him, got more support at the very last minute. He won Iowa and that shook up the entire race. Kerry received 38 percent of the Iowa delegates coming in distant third. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean with 18 percent. So even though only one state with less than 50 delegates of more than 2,000 that will be selected, even though only one state had voted, everyone around the country looked at what Kerry was able to pull off in Iowa and they behaved accordingly.

And there are years where Iowa doesn't matter quite as much, but it's unpredictable. People talk about Barack Obama in Iowa, too. I've heard this, that he gained like a tremendous amount of momentum. But on this January night, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do. Yes, the national polling in that year was that Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner, was up by about 20 to 30 points when Democrats around the country asked who they supported. Obama, who happened to be from Illinois next to Iowa, worked the state one by convincing margin better than a lot of people expected. And that reshaped the race. And a lot of people who did not consider Obama, especially African

American voters, they'd been they'd been interested in him. He'd been doing OK, but they flipped completely from Clinton to him. That changed the mess so that over the next few months and a lot of primaries in southern states and midwestern states with large black populations, he won very narrowly, but he won in a way he never could have if it was just the most famous person in the Democratic Party versus a senator who was getting known. I want to talk to you in a moment about whether or not you think any of that's happening with these candidates. But, you know, I've heard this focus on Iowa criticized because the state doesn't represent the diversity of the broader U.S.

very well. And can you tell me a little bit more about that? This happens every couple years. So there had been a bit of a Democratic reckoning about how white the state is. It's a reason why the party added Nevada to one of the very first states. But Democrats lost the 2016 election almost entirely because of white Midwestern voters switching from their party to vote for Donald Trump. Just in just enough of a margin that they couldn't win the Midwest. And Iowa had an enormous number. It has 99 counties and about 31 of those counties voted for Barack Obama twice and then voted for Donald Trump. So it became this source of fascination, like a perfect place for these Democrats to prove, OK, I might not be the most famous Democrat, like an Amy Klobuchar,

like a people to judge, or I might be perceived as a liberal, like Elizabeth Warren, but I can appeal in these sorts of places where people voted Democratic and then left the party to vote for Trump. You know, that was happening. But at the same time, there has been a steady stream of criticism that the state does not represent what is a diverse Democratic Party now. It's gotten a bit more diverse. There are more immigrants in the state every couple of years, but not as diverse as the country as a whole. life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Okay, so let's talk about the candidates and

what their performance in Iowa could say about this race. You know, every four years, democracy starts here in Iowa. Former Vice President Joe Biden has been described as the weak frontrunner for the nomination. And what has his strategy been like in Iowa? And how does that reflect his overall play for the leadership? Well, he's in the perfect position of somebody who has broad support in the party, but is not as competitive in this early state where voters can be selective. And frankly, one thing that Iowans do is with the knowledge that this is not the last primary, that this is just a race that's going to set up the primary, they're very aware that you might be choosing

two or three candidates who go on to New Hampshire, who go on to primaries past this. And based on how much they fundraise, based on how effective they are in debates, they'll keep going. So maybe they'll vote for John Edwards in 2004 because they want Edwards to keep campaigning. Yeah. And so a problem that Biden's had is you heard at the start of this process and you hear, just a lot of voters who think they don't want another old white man during the country. They came so close to electing the first female president, and they, before that, elected the first black president. There's a lot of pride in the party's diversity and some discomfort with just going back to a white male candidate because they think some voters might be uncomfortable with something else.

And so that leads to Biden himself, who is in his late 70s and has just objectively changed as a campaigner over the years. He's a lot less brash. He has given more to kind of long stream of consciousness. He's got a little bit tighter on the trail, but he's a very well-liked politician who was never very strong running on his own. Barack Obama pulled him in as vice president because he ran a pretty respectable campaign himself, but he'd run for president twice before and never done very well. So he did not seem threatening to all these Democrats with great ambition who were thinking, well, Trump is president, anyone can win. There must be an opening for somebody who is not an old white guy and not representative of the party that lost a ton of seats in the Obama years. Right.

That theory did not prove to be true for about 20 candidates, but we're down to 11 candidates total, seven of them competing for Iowa. And many are, if not competitive with Biden, doing better. We describe him as a weak frontrunner. It's fair because this is somebody who was on the national ticket twice. He has universal name recognition and is struggling to get past 20, 21 percent. one percent. Although, to be fair, speaking of old white guys, the other, you know, big contender here is Bernie Sanders. And there seems to be this huge surge that he is experiencing. And I believe that our campaign is the campaign that can bring millions of people into the political process who normally do not vote.

Is that because Iowans want, as you explained, to see a couple of people move on in the primary season? Or is there something else going on here with Bernie? Well, there also there was a debate in the party about why they lost so much power in the Obama years. And they went from control of most states and both houses of Congress to control of only a few states and no houses of Congress. So there was a debate that Bernie Sanders led in 16 by running for president saying the party should stand for national health care plan. It should stand for free college tuition. A very, very expensive democratic socialist agenda that is really not radical when you look at the world stage. It's more like what you have in Norway or the UK.

But it had a huge dent in the Democratic Party's mindset. I mean, he can make a lot of converts and remains popular. What happened over the course of the last year was that a number of candidates got in who were pretty well to the left of Hillary Clinton when she ran in 2016. Some of them had adopted Sanders' positions. They would be attacked by moderates in the party. You can't run that far to the left and win. They would decline, but Sanders is still there. And Sanders has the following as, this is sometimes very explicit at his rallies, people on his behalf will argue, he's the original, he was the first one making these arguments, you have to stick with him in order to get what he's been campaigning for his whole life. So over the summer, when Elizabeth Warren, who is very different, who's a more of a mainstream progressive, a former Republican who really got into politics through advocacy for debt relief and things like that, she picked up a lot of his support.

She lost it as the party attacked her. Sanders is still there. So Sanders, who got about half the vote in Iowa last time, is only getting around 20 percent in polling right now. But even in a crowded field with his organization, he's got more donors than anybody else. He has more volunteers than anybody else, not just here, but around the country. Sanders is in a pretty good position, Mark, because the party was unsure about its more moderate front runner. And because there's so much competition down the rest of the ballot. It's a more moderate frontrunner. And because there's so much competition down the rest of the ballot. So he might come out of the caucuses with something like 30 percent of vote, maybe maybe more, maybe less. That would give him a victory here. Now win for Biden here, even a weak win, would, I think, discourage some of the candidates like

Peep would have judged and Amy Klobuchar, the younger candidates, to continue. It would encourage left-wing voters to rally behind Sanders as one alternative. A win for anybody else, I think, would leave the field pretty divided. Oh, that's interesting. So basically, what happens Monday night will determine what these other candidates are going to do. Their limitation is really money. So we know how much these candidates have in the bank. They actually have quite a lot. Buttigieg, Warren, and Sanders all have more than $10 million left to spend.

The other thing that happens in the caucus is if you win and you're taken more seriously and voters are tuning into you, you can raise tens of millions at a pretty steady clip. Even if you lose, as Sanders did, he raised tens of millions in the month of just February in 2016 when he ran before. The candidates who come in fourth and fifth place, I think there will be a sense that they can't go further. And yes, if you look at Iowa, that might seem unfair. There are lots of other states that could vote. In the case of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, they represent states that are going to have their primaries in March. They might want to wait that long for those, but if they're fading and they're not raising money, they won't be able to compete. And can I ask you, where does Michael Bloomberg fit into all of this? Because, you know, here's a guy who's campaigning to be the next Democratic leader, and yet

he's not, like, participating. The Super Bowl is tomorrow. The State of the Union is Tuesday. And in between, I hear there's something happening in Iowa. So where does he fit into this? Well, Bloomberg realized something that you were touching on, which is that Iowa only has a few delegates. So he came up with an alternative strategy to run in the states that are going to vote starting in March. So only four states, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina,

vote this month. The rest begin voting in March. And this is where we hear the term Super Tuesday, right? Like when all these states vote around the beginning of March. Well, and there's a series of Super Tuesdays, which multiple states with as much as 20% of the delegates on a given day start voting. His strategy was to buy a lot of advertising and start campaigning there because no one else could afford to do it. Literally, I mean, he's worth tens of lot of advertising and start campaigning there because no one else could afford to do it. Literally, I mean, he's worth tens of billions of dollars and he can spend a third of that in his campaign and live pretty well. So he is trying to disrupt the system with his money and there's not really anything opponents can do about it. at it. All right. And one last question before we go today. On the Republican side of things,

it seems all but certain now that Donald Trump is going to be acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial. That means that if Democrats want him gone, they'll have to beat him at the polls come November. And from what you're seeing right now, does it look like any of the Democrats that we've been talking about can take on Trump or who right now is the most likely person to do that? Polling has a good level of support for Biden, who's the best known candidate and is perceived to be moderate. But as we've been saying, he's just run one of the less inspiring campaigns and people start to worry if this candidate can only get 100 people to show up as former former vice president in a small town and get blown away by four or five lesser known candidates. Where's the energy going to come from if he's the nominee? That's so people

have to think past what the polling is right now. The argument Sanders makes is even if he's a little bit less competitive with Biden, still still leading Trump, but not by the Biden margin, that he has the organization, the excitement that would compete with the president who's obsessed with rallies and with with grassroots organizing. And the argument for the people to judge Elizabeth Warren's is that they can do the same thing, that the country does want to change from Trump, but people don't know them yet. And it's pretty unknowable, but that was what part of the Iowa process is about. OK, Dave, thank you so much. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

All right, so before we go today, I just want to give you another update on the coronavirus outbreak. There's major news of the first reported death from the virus outside of China. A 44-year-old man died Saturday in the Philippines, although I should note the man had actually traveled there from the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, China. The condition of the patient deteriorated within the last 24 hours, resulting in his demise. Meanwhile, the number of Canadians seeking help to leave China's Hubei province has now jumped to over 300. Global Affairs Canada is chartering a plane to bring them home, but says there's limited space.

There's also still no timeline on when Ottawa will evacuate Canadian citizens. The U.S. and France have already repatriated citizens. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and talk to you all tomorrow.