Pod Save America - Iowa Episode 4: The final sprint

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

In episode four of this five-part series on the Iowa caucuses, we take you behind the scenes as the campaigns prepare for one of the biggest nights of the primary season, the Liberty and Justice Dinner. Obama’s speech at the event back in 2007 gave his candidacy an enormous boost, but we’ll explain why the evening is as much about what you say as how well you’ve organized. Then we’ll consider proposals to change the primary process that would reduce Iowa’s influence as we continue to wrestle with the question: is this really the best way to pick a president? This series is hosted by Tommy Vietor and produced by Pineapple Street Studios.

Have you ever messaged a friend about a manager who just won't stop texting you after hours? Or a co-worker who keeps posting weirdly suggestive Austin Powers GIFs in Slack? Well, you are not alone. I'm Anne Helen Peterson, and on my new podcast, Work Appropriate, I set out to find solutions to these oddly specific, yet somehow completely universal listener questions. Whether you work in an office chair or a sixth grade classroom, my guests and I are here to help. Listen to Work Appropriate every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. I was one of those people who thought, ah, the electoral map is fine. I can go about my business and not be as politically

involved as I was when I was younger. And then Donald Trump won. Alan Fire is the chair of the Madison County Democrats, like the movie The Bridges of Madison County, which I didn't see either, but it's southwest of Des Moines. The day after the election in 2016, like so many other despondent Democrats across the country, Alan and his wife had a moment of reckoning. Then Julie and I sat there at the table the next day and said, we have to do something. What are we going to do?

Alan decided to run for county chair, and he won. We talked in November at an event called the Liberty Injustice Dinner. Allen says he's not sure yet whose corner he'll be in on caucus night, but that's not because he doesn't like his choices. I'm annoyed at some of the recent media coverage that suggests that we need to find a better candidate that we're not happy with the current slate because so many people are undecided. Many people are undecided because it's a quality

slate of candidates. Two months out, the polls are in flux. A lot of people in Iowa have yet to make up their minds, which means that a bunch of candidates are still hoping that they can get traction. I'm Tommy Vitor. Today in episode four of our series, The Home Stretch, what it looks like on the ground in these last few weeks, whose organization is strong, how the campaigns test their teams and flex their muscles to show undecided voters and the national press that they can win. Because caucus night is less than two months away. And for some of these candidates, it's all riding on Iowa. Campaigning in Iowa has a lot of set pieces.

Those are events that every candidate basically has to go to. There's the Hall of Fame dinner, the Wing Ding, the Polk County Steak Fry. Those are real names, by the way. But the biggest of them all is the Liberty and Justice Dinner, or the LJ as it's known. The event used to be called the Jefferson Jackson Dinner, or the JJ. It was rebranded in 2015 after the party decided that it was a terrible look to name their marquee gala after one guy who owned slaves and another who forcibly removed Native Americans from their land.

Okay, so the basic strategy for doing well in Iowa is to organize, organize, organize, and then hope you get hot late. That's what's happening right now on the Buttigieg campaign. Whether or not that will hold until Caucus Day is a totally open question. I stopped by Mayor Pete's campaign office in Des Moines the day before the LJ, and the place was bustling. There was music blasting. There was a constant stream of young people walking in and out. They were carrying big signs, they were hot gluing lights onto massive letters, and preparing for something called the sign war. You feel the tops of those? They're laminated in case there's

in case there's any rain. The sign war is when campaigns informally compete to have their stuff, their signs, their posters, whatever, to be the most visible around one of these big cattle call events. It's fun. It's ridiculous. There are unfortunately still videos of me on YouTube wearing a red velour jumpsuit sprinting around Veterans Memorial Auditorium back in 2007. I was trying to put up as many signs as I could. The outfit is another story. But the sign war itself is actually important. It's a visible show of force to everyone in attendance. It's intense. These are like opening stages of a battle. How long have you guys been planning? Oh, we've been having daily meetings for weeks and weekly meetings for weeks before that.

Brendan McPhillips is the Iowa state director for the Buttigieg campaign. Especially in Iowa, it's important that you, you know, respect these political traditions here and you take them seriously. And there are really moments that are nothing but opportunity for a campaign. And you can either let them pass you by and just show up and, you know, give your stump and go on with your day. Or you can say like, okay, we're going to really organize around this and we're going to show people that we can do exactly what it takes to win a caucus, which is organize thousands of your supporters to go to a specific place on a specific time and date in probably really shitty weather and just be as fired up as possible about your campaign. In addition to turning out supporters

in shitty weather, Pete's team has also been dropping a lot of money on TV and radio ads in the last few months. As of this recording, they've spent $2.6 million on ads in Iowa. Now, that's small potatoes compared to the $34 million Mike Bloomberg spent on ads in a single week, but it's a lot more than some of his rivals. We've got, thankfully, the resources to have one of the largest teams, I think the largest organizing team in the country. And I mean, you know this better than anyone, like Iowa is about organizing and it's about doing the work to show that your supporters are real, that they're bought in, and that they're as passionate about your candidate as you are.

And we're definitely working hard to expand the base of folks who support Pete and tapping into people who might not be ordinary caucus-going constituents. It's part of the innovation we're trying to do in how to build a volunteer base, which isn't just put your volunteers on the phone for three hours a night, calling the voter file and getting a 6% contact rate. I mean, when I was a field organizer, you could count on 15%, 20% on a good night. And today it's like six, if you're lucky, because nobody answers their phone. Right. So we've really focused on inviting people and having them just go through the address book on their phone, call people and take down the same data that you do when you're doing a traditional

phone bank, but you're actually getting people to have conversations. Having people call through their contact list isn't a new strategy this cycle. Campaigns did it back in 2016 too, but it's an indication of how much tactics have had to change since 2008. Yeah, and your contact rate is through the roof. And then, you know, after you build that volunteer network, the next phase is just putting your head down and doing the work, doing the voter contact. So, you know, we're knocking a ton of doors, and we're going to keep doing that through December and January. Just plug people into, you know, the hard work of the winter.

The day of the LJ dinner was nasty. It was raining, it was brutally cold, but every campaign had big visibility events planned, and we tried to hit up as many as possible. Our first stop was Mayor Pete's outdoor rally. These are hardy people. These people are, you have to like beat a lot to be at this event right now. We've got some people playing cornhole here. Not sure I'd want to be throwing bags of sand soaked in freezing cold water if I were a rally attendee, but good for them. This event was a bit of a scene. Mayor Pete's tour bus was parked behind this big stage. Ben Harper was warming up the crowd with some gentle ballads.

When the people leave People take the lead When Pete takes the lead Take the lead I met Marcia Smith at the rally, who, unlike me, was wearing a sensibly large coat. I'm really impressed that an uncommitted voter would come out to a rally in this weather. This is not cushy conditions. No, no, no. But we appreciate everybody coming out and, you know, hearing the candidates and welcome to the panderdome, right?

Pete's campaign put the crowd at over 2,000 people. I would say it was way less than that. But either way, there were a lot of people standing around in the freezing rain when Mayor Pete bounded out on the stage. Well, friends, this is what it feels like when you realize you are definitely going to be the next president of the United States. His mic was cutting in and out a bit, but the crowd got those six key words. Next president of the United States. Of course, there were 13 other people in Des Moines that day who were also vying for that title. Or 12, I guess, since Beto O'Rourke had just dropped out that afternoon.

A few blocks from Mayor Pete's rally, Elizabeth Warren's organizers were waiting to welcome their candidate on 3rd Street. These are the field staffers who had been knocking on doors across the state, and they were going absolutely apeshit. On each side of the street, you have campaign staffers with signs jumping up and down, chanting, playing music. There's a huge inflatable Bailey the dog float, which I have to be honest, got me. Got me a little closer to a one for Warren. That's a joke. Olivia Ellis was there. She's the FO we've been talking to in the last few episodes. She got up at 3 a.m. that morning to drive down to Des Moines and would still be working late into the night. Just par for the course for an Iowa field organizer. It was very loud.

Warren walked down the line of staffers and volunteers. They were chatting, they were giving hugs, they were taking selfies, and everyone was just beaming. I am so inspired by you. Oh my God, I love you so much. It was hard to get on tape because of all the shouting, but you can kind of hear it. The FOs were saying things to Warren like, I'm so inspired. This is the most rewarding thing I've ever done. A staffer later told me that Warren often says to her team, I just can't let those organizers down.

This love fest was immediately followed by a press conference and the kind of whiplash you often get on the campaign trail. Warren was getting hammered by her opponents about how she'd pay for Medicare for All, and she had scrambled to respond. Senator, are you taking this up? Joe Biden called your plan mathematical gymnastics and said it's impossible to pay for Medicare for All without middle-class tax increases.

What is your response to him? Wow. So... Two blocks north, Bernie's pre-LJ event was set up just outside the Wells Fargo Arena. Whoa! It is nice to have some Vermont weather here. Bernie was joined on stage by a fast food worker and a farmer. We will defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country. Sanders made some news at the event. He announced a big tour the following week with a rising star in the Democratic Party.

Next weekend, coming here to your great state of Iowa, I'm going to be joining Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a series of rallies focusing on the need to pass a green new deal. Cory Booker's pre-dinner rally was inside, thank God. It was a mix of Booker fans and a bunch of undecideds. I created this spreadsheet because I have so many friends who organize different campaigns, and I've also met half of them now. This voter, Jessalyn, had a whole Google spreadsheet with the candidates she's considering and the issues she cares about. And then I have more of a fluffy, like, inspirational category. So that's where I rank the amount of times I've seen them and if they actually inspire me based on their personality, but also based on their policies. Iowa voters, man, they take this stuff really seriously.

Mitch Smith, the Booker organizer we've met over the last few episodes, was staffing the station where people could make bracelets. The kind with letters they were spelling out, we will rise. I love these bands. It's like, how's everything going? Where have you been today? It's been good. We went to see Mayor Pete's rally. He had Ben Harper.

A little less energetic. Okay. A lot of energy here. What time do you wake up? I woke up at 4.30. Two very talented and very brave Booker staffers sang a ukulele song, which is a total earworm. I apologize in advance.

The polls are wrong. In time, they'll change. We'll rise. We'll rise. We'll rise. The scene inside the LJ dinner was politics meets pro-wrestling. There was a fog machine, a light show, and around 13,000 screaming Democrats. Troy Price, the chair of the Iowa State Dems, told me they could have sold double the seats.

It's the Iowa Democratic Party's biggest fundraiser of the year. 13 candidates gave speeches that night. Several campaigns bought out entire sections for their supporters, and they performed coordinated chants and dances. All the prep we saw at Mayor Pete's campaign office did finally pay off with a big, loud crowd of supporters. Cory Booker's crew spelled out words like Thank you, Iowa! Cory Booker's crew spelled out words like rise and hope in big white lights. I love you! Together, we will rise! The Warren team rolled out a two-story Win With Warren banner.

To win over Iowa! After the speeches, the Warren organizers were all over the venue asking people to sign supporter cards, including the beer vendors. Here's Warren field organizer Morgan Sperry. Like, those are the people who we actually need to talk to, folks who are working all night. It's 7 p.m. on a Friday night right now. Like, they might have obligations that would prevent them from going to the caucus if they don't think about it ahead of time. Like, that's exactly who we're trying to engage. The people who are struggling to get by working as a bartender, that's who we need in the Warren movement. I'd much rather chase those people than like, hi, Lisa. Hi. Hi, hi, hi. There, she interrupts herself to greet this woman she recognizes.

Morgan told us she's been meeting with that caucus goer for months, and she's having a really hard time making her decision. And a few weeks ago we met and she was like, I just feel like I don't want to make the wrong choice because if Donald Trump is reelected, I will feel like it is completely my fault and I feel like that's how every Iowan feels everyone operates through this like game theory lens and they're like oh well I like them but like if this voter in Ohio likes them and this other person likes like I just don't know if they're gonna like them as much as I like them and da da da and it's like people just go with

who you believe in your Iowans that's the whole point just vote with who you believe in. You're Iowans. That's the whole point. Just vote for who you like. And I get it. And, like, I'm scared, too. But, I mean, Barack Obama, if everyone had gone through that decision, through this, like, lens of fear, he never would have been president. Morgan's right. And it was Obama's breakout speech at the 2007 JJ Dinner that helped Iowans get over that fear and elect him president. Bernie supporters ended up watching the speech from an overflow area next door because the

campaign didn't buy tickets to the event itself. The Biden team seemed to have a hard time filling the seats that they had bought. Early in the day, we met some Biden supporters who were laying out placards and thundersticks on seats in the upper decks, but that night, those seats were empty, and the thundersticks ended up in the trash. I know this might all seem kind of stupid, like who cares which supporters yell the loudest, who pack the bleachers, whose signs light up the brightest, but here's why it matters. It's because these events are a dry run for caucus night on February 3rd. It's a test of which campaigns can turn out their supporters, which organizers will work 15-hour days and be psyched about it, and which Iowans will venture out of the house on a really cold night. The other piece is

that experienced Iowa caucus goers in that room that night, they know it. They know this is a test of campaign strength, and a lot of them just want to be with a winner. Which brings us back to our original question. Is this actually a good way to pick that winner? After the break, some alternatives. We're back. I'm Tommy Vitor, and this is our special series on the Iowa caucuses. All along in this show, we've been asking one question. Is this a good way to pick a president? And if Iowa wasn't first, if this one small state didn't have so much power, how else might we do it? Elaine Kamarck is basically as expert as expert gets on this exact question. Would you mind just stating your full name and your position at Brookings? Sure. Elaine K. Mark, and I'm a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

In the Clinton-Gore administration, I ran a major project called Reinventing Government. I've been a Democratic National Committee member since 1997 and a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee since then. And she wrote a book called... Primary Politics, Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates. Street cred established. So here's a few ideas that people have kicked around as an alternative to Iowa. We could make another state first, probably one that's less white and less rural. We could have a national primary where every state has their primary on the same day. big, and it plays such an outsized role that it almost is that. The question is,

do you want to have a system where presidential candidates engage in retail politics? In a national primary, they simply wouldn't. You might as well just sit in a television studio in New York and run your whole campaign from there. The reason these small states keep their privileged status is because there's a feeling that it's not a bad idea to force presidential candidates to meet real people and have to interact with real people. That would not happen if you ran a national primary. That's what you would lose in the system. A bunch of other proposals have been floated over the years. The Delaware plan, where states vote in order from smallest to largest. A rotating regional primary. The Ohio plan, which is sort of a cross between the Delaware plan and a rotating regional primary.

Then there's the graduated random presidential primaries. And I could barely wrap my head around this one, but the simple version is that it combines going in size order with an element of randomness. So big states like New York and California aren't always last, but all of these proposals have their own problems and inertia is a powerful force. Elaine K. Mark has one other idea, peer review. Now, for those of us used to the modern primary process, this might sound almost un-American. It's just a nicer way of saying, let the elites decide. I think it's also fair to wonder if a peer review process would actually just play into the hands of a candidate like Donald Trump, who is running against Washington

and, you know, pledging to burn the system down. But when you hear Elaine explain it, it sounds pretty smart. You know, peer review simply means that your peers get to say whether or not they think you are acceptable and have the skills and the qualifications to do a job. So when we license doctors, we go through other doctors, license them. In other words, the public doesn't vote on whether your neurosurgeon should be a neurosurgeon. Your other neurosurgeons decide that. We used to have an element of peer review in the old-fashioned nominating system because it was controlled by other elected officials and politicians. And the process of getting nominated in the old days was really a process of negotiating with other politicians, which, you know, sounds to some people terrible. And yet, hello, this is how we govern. It is all about operating in a system of shared power. What we've lost when we've gone from a system where politicians had something to do

with the process to a system where it's essentially a glorified popularity contest or reality television contest is we've lost the input of people who know what sorts of things are necessary to actually govern. And that's, I think, a huge critique of the system. But it didn't really show up until 2016 when we nominated the least qualified person ever to be president of the United States, Donald Trump, and when we nominated someone whose temperament was simply not suited to the job. And so that should make us think about the vulnerability of this system. I know my Democratic friends, they get all upset when I say this could happen to us. They say, oh, no, we could never nominate a Donald Trump. Well, that's just not true.

We could easily nominate a Donald Trump. We are vulnerable in the future to nominating and sometimes electing demagogues, which is, of course, the worst fear of our founding fathers. So is this similar to, let's say, the American Bar Association, where you rate a judge qualified or not qualified? Yeah, my proposal is not to go back to the smoke-filled rooms, because I think there were plenty of problems there. My proposal is simply that the people who will govern with a president of the United States should have a chance to vote on them early in the process and essentially have a vote of yes or no, qualified or not qualified, purely and simply. Yeah. Do you think there are any downsides to including some sort of peer review process?

Oh, I'm sure that people will say, oh, it's unfair, it's elites, etc. However, to the extent that you limit peer review to people who are elected, it's hard to say that they're elites, right, because they've been actually elected themselves in elections. I think that you could create a peer review system in a variety of ways. You could make it simply a vote of confidence or no confidence, nothing attendant on it other than bad or good publicity. Or you could go much further and you could say people who don't get a vote of confidence can't be on the debate stage in the primaries, or you could go even further and say they can't get on the ballot. And let me dwell on that for a minute because that reinforces my earlier point. In 1976, Lyndon LaRouche, a cult leader,

was on the New Hampshire ballot running as a Democrat in the primaries. And the party chairman at the time, Don Fowler, took Lyndon LaRouche to court and said, we will not allow your name to be placed in nomination at the Democratic Convention because we do not think you are a Democrat. That case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, yes, the party has the right to declare who can be its standard bearer. And then when we got to the 80s and a racist Ku Klux Klan leader named David Duke kept running in Republican primaries, the Republican Party was sort of fit to be tied because they didn't want to be associated with a Klan leader. And sure enough, Scott Walker, who was the former governor of Wisconsin, who was a young party chairman at the time, kept David Duke off the Wisconsin Republican primary ballot saying, look, this man has no right. We don't consider him a Republican. So parties, you know, in the extreme cases, political parties have said, no, you are not capable of the job. And we do not feel that

you can run as the standard bearer of this party. Of course, the job right now in Iowa and everywhere is for Democrats to figure out who our standard bearer will be in 2020. And even though the Iowa caucuses are less than two months away, the polls are still changing all the time, which means organizers like Olivia Ellis are still out there grinding. We checked in by phone last week. We're not just talking to someone once, learning that they're undecided, and then visiting them again the day before the Iowa caucuses, right? We're going to these places every single weekend and making the case for Elizabeth and what she's fighting for. I was knocking in a precinct and I got to one of my doors and someone answered the door and went,

Oh, Olivia, I recognize you. I'm leaning towards Elizabeth now. Did they recognize you because you'd been at that door before or how did they know you? Did they recognize you because you'd been at that door before or how did they know you? Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Because I'm just constantly knocking on doors or my precinct captains are knocking on doors or, you know, volunteers are knocking on doors. So people for sure are undecided in Iowa. I mean, you see it. But I mean, that's why we just have to work three times as hard. And just because they're undecided doesn't mean we're going to give up. No, no. Unfortunately for them, the exact opposite. Yeah, exactly. See you tomorrow. Yeah. Yep. Mitch Smith, Cory Booker's organizer, is out there doing the same thing. And counterintuitively, he says the cold weather actually kind of helps. I found that in the

summer when it was 100 degrees, people with air conditioning inside said, come on in, have a glass of water, let's chat. And now, you know, knocking in the snow, we've had very similar interactions. And that's the nice thing about Iowa. The old moniker of Iowa nice is true. I can assure you of that. I think the biggest thing is I was home this past Thanksgiving. There were some cable news that was turned on and there were some folks saying this is a two-horse race or a three-horse race or a four-horse race in Iowa. But I think the biggest thing is just the level of undecided voters is so high that this thing is so much more wide open than it's being depicted on a national scale. So there is a lot that can happen in the next two months. This thing is wide open.

Margaret Giroux has worked for Beto O'Rourke in Iowa this year and was a regional director for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. She knows Iowa politics really well. The biggest thing that people talk about is health care. I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that Iowa hasn't expanded Medicaid. And we've just passed one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. But like people want to talk about health care and specifically mental health. That's the thing that comes up pretty much everywhere.

The other thing that comes up everywhere, obviously, is just beating Trump. And she says that focus is actually helping heal some of the wounds from the Clinton-Sanders primary. I don't know if people know this, but like Trump won Iowa by more votes than he won Texas. Right, right. Like beating Trump, I think, is a pretty personal thing to Iowans that actually go in caucus. I mean, they want to save their state in a way.

Yeah, no. You save the state, save the country, save all of us. In seven weeks, hundreds of thousands of Iowans will begin taking on that responsibility. As you may have heard, they take it very seriously. After February 3rd, the campaign season goes into overdrive. The New Hampshire primary is February 11th. The Nevada caucuses are the 22nd, and the South Carolina primary is on the 29th. Super Tuesday is exactly one month after the Iowa caucuses on March 3rd. So by spring, hopefully we'll have a much clearer idea of who will be on the ballot in November. And whoever becomes the nominee, that campaign will be stronger.

That team will be smarter because of all the work that's happened in Iowa. Here's Mitch. I think that the level of importance of this election is unparalleled. And I think that everyone on every campaign recognizes that regardless of who ends up winning the caucus and who ends up winning the nomination, that we are all going to be on the same team eventually. And here's Olivia. we are all going to be on the same team eventually. And here's Olivia. I mean, the only way we're going to get this thing done is if people want to be a part of this movement.

And I think a lot of people, you know, sat it out in 2016. And they don't want to feel that way again. They want to be knocking doors and making phone calls and doing everything they possibly can to stand behind the candidate that they think can get this thing done. I've spent months now thinking about whether Iowa is the right place to make this choice. And honestly, I still don't know for sure. But the reality is, as long as candidates who win the nomination continue to protect Iowa's role in that process, it's going to stay first. O.K. Henderson is the news director at Radio Iowa.

And if you want to know what's happening in the caucus campaigns, you should follow her on Twitter because she's a damn good reporter. Now, Kay is used to doing the interviews, not being interviewed, but she graciously agreed to talk with me back in August. It is the system that will exist until there's a president sitting in the Oval Office who says, I want to blow it up and I want something different. Until that person is elected, the Iowa caucuses probably will persevere.

Whether or not they persevere could be dependent on the caucus results themselves. If a candidate who skipped Iowa ends up getting the nomination, they will have far less incentive to keep Iowa first. But whatever system we devise is going to have flaws. And maybe those flaws are just part of being a democracy. My two favorite words are more perfect. That's Rob Sandigan. He's the Iowa State Auditor. We talked last week. The idea being that there is no such thing as perfection.

Even if you were to create a perfect system, the next day the world would change. Yeah. And that system would no longer, the world that it was created for would no longer be there. Right. I think we should always just be in the pursuit of improving everything and making everything more perfect. That's a great way to look at government writ large, frankly. Thank you. It's not my idea.

I can't take credit for that one. Yeah, the more perfect union. I feel like that was written somewhere. I can't remember. I think I've read it before somewhere. I mean, maybe that's the answer I'm looking for here. Like, is this a good way to pick a president? Traveling to 99 counties in one state, meeting with people who ultimately will stand in the corner of a high school gym and say they like you? Is that perfect? I don't know. But maybe that's more perfect than the alternative.

Whether or not you think this is the best way to pick a president, the Iowa caucuses are happening. On February 3rd, thousands of Iowans are going to brave the cold, join their neighbors, and help pick the Democratic nominee. As the field organizers have told us, it feels like the whole country is watching. The fifth and final episode of this series will come in late January, right before caucus night. We'll check back in with Mitch and Olivia one last time as they approach the finish line. In Iowa, at least. I'm Tommy Vitor. This series is produced by Kat Aaron. Production help from Justine Daum, Inaga Ranish, Ashagre. Joel Lovell is our editor. Music and mixing by Hannes Brown.

The executive producers at Pineapple Street Studios are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky. Thanks to Elena Schwartz and Nancy Rosenbaum. A special thank you to Tanya Sominator, Sarah Wick, Michael Martinez, Kyle Seglin, Brian Semel, Mickey Fancy, and Jordan Silver from the Crooked Media team.