Today, Explained - Deep fried podcast
Episode Date: August 12, 2019Vox's Tara Golshan spent the weekend at the Iowa State Fair trying to figure out what eating deep fried Oreos has to do with running the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....com/adchoices
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It's fun for all ages, and the kids can try it for free. Tara Golshin, you spent the weekend at the Iowa State Fair for Vox. Why?
Well, it's 2019 and it's about six months before the Iowa caucuses, which is the first time
voters will be able to cast their vote in the 2020 presidential election.
And almost all of the Democratic 2020 candidates were at the Iowa State Fair this weekend.
Tell me about the fair. I've never been. It sounds kind of amazing.
There are a lot of foods on sticks. There are pork chops on sticks and fried cheese and fried chicken and fried Oreos.
Dreamy.
Anything basically that's going to give you a heart attack is at this fair.
Aren't two of the candidates, like, vegans, though?
What are they eating?
One of the candidates is vegan, Cory Booker.
So Cory Booker ate some PB&J sandwiches on a stick.
I'm going to get one more PB&J.
The PB&J's on a stick?
It's the sandwiches.
It's still on a stick. It's the sandwich is on a stick.
All right. This is amazing, guys.
I think the best way to describe this is a little slice of heaven.
I've heard previous years have had a yodeling contest, a hog calling contest, a wives calling their husbands contest.
Can you hear me? You get yourself in here right now.
Does like all of Iowa show up? How many people come out?
So a lot of people show up and
not even just from Iowa, from around the country. And in 2017, there were more than a million people
that came. And especially going into an election year, it's a big draw to see the candidates
because there's also an actual soapbox where each... There's an actual soapbox for the candidates to
get up on. Yeah, there is this kind of bale of hay that is
sponsored by the Des Moines Register, the local paper here, and each of the potential presidential
candidates can get 20 minutes to get up there and rally a crowd and tell everyone what they're about.
Hello, Iowa State Fair!
My name is Elizabeth Warren, and I'm running for president because I am sick of a country that works better and better for a thinner and thinner slice at the top.
The fair started, I think, last Thursday, was a big thing this weekend and carries through to the end next weekend.
But most of the candidates showed up this past weekend.
Who were Iowans most excited to see?
Some of the biggest crowds were for people that you would expect, like Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Kamala Harris and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Cory Booker also got a really big crowd.
Notably, Slipknot was performing the night of Cory Booker's speech, and they were doing a sound check during his rally.
We need to get back to what the Constitution says.
Ouch.
Which is even more harsh if you know what Slipknot sounds like.
Yeah, I actually don't know what Slipknot sounds like.
I can help with that. You want to know?
I don't know if I want to know.
Oh, it's my duty as a former teenager to demonstrate for you what Slipknot sounds like.
Give me one second. Poor Corey.
Oh, fun fact.
The lead singer of Slipknot's name, Corey.
Whoa.
Also interesting fun fact about Slipknot, which I learned this week, is that they're from Des Moines.
They're from Iowa.
Hometown heroes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're coming home. Des Moines. They're from Iowa, hometown heroes. Yeah, yeah, they're coming home.
Des Moines, fucking Iowa!
So Slipknot did well.
How about all the candidates?
How did they do?
I think what was most notable to me
is that Iowa voters are known
for kind of hearing everyone out.
I mean, there was a crowd for Marianne Williamson.
There was a crowd for John Delaney.
These candidates that haven't really been registering much attraction in the polls.
But the big names are still the big names here.
And you ask Iowa voters, they're still naming people like Biden and Warren and Sanders and Harris and Buttigieg.
And those are the people that really captured the attention of state fairgoers.
Did any of them say anything beyond the sort of boilerplate?
I think the most notable thing of voters that are Democratic or leading Democratic is that
their number one priority always to me was that they want to get Trump out of office. Iowa is a state that voted for Trump in 2016.
He beat Hillary Clinton by almost 10 points.
And currently the polling shows us that he's about 11 points underwater in the state.
And are there still Republicans hanging out there,
interacting with these Democratic candidates, or is it sort of just a partisan crowd?
So every soapbox speech begins with a disclaimer.
What are we? Iowa nice. That means no heckling. Be kind to your fellow humans. No signs held up because then people can't see. And that's not very nice, is it? jeer. Of course, that was sometimes broken. There were times where there were Trump supporters in
the crowds that they were wearing Make America Great, again, hats and flags. I was walking with
Senator Bernie Sanders as they take a tour around the fair usually, and he ate a corndog and walked
around the amusement park. Guys, be careful that you, there were Trump supporters that were booing him.
So you see that kind of activity as well. But overwhelmingly, a lot of people were here just
to listen to the candidates and see what they had to say. And I even talked to some Trump supporters that have no intention of ever voting for a Democrat
that did want to hear what the Democrats had to say, and they were just standing there quietly.
Did that whole Iowa nice thing apply to the candidates themselves?
Of course, when we see all of them together, it's usually on a debate stage,
and they're taking shots at each other.
Yeah, I think something that has really been
showing through is how much the candidates want to show that they're friends with each other.
There's all these moments where they run into each other constantly at the fair. And there was a
moment between Kamala Harris and Representative Tim Ryan where he passed his kid on to Kamala
Harris and they were just chatting at the state fair.
There was another very funny moment where Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's son was deciding who to vote for in this unofficial, unscientific poll.
Here, I'll let you do my vote.
And he was joking, oh, maybe I should vote for Senator Warren.
And of course, Kirsten Gillibrand put her kids straight and made him vote for her.
She's good.
Come on.
She's pretty good.
I'll vote for her.
Did anyone, like, move the needle in any way?
Did anyone have a big moment that may actually change their standing in the polls? I don't know if we can tell at this point
whether or not the Iowa State Fair made it for anyone.
I'm sure it is always a big thing,
especially for some of the lesser known candidates
to get out in front of people.
But also notably, I didn't see anything
that really kind of broke it for anyone.
The Iowa State Fair is kind of like a high risk, high reward kind of a thing.
Like you're in front of all these people.
If you have a misstep, it could go really badly for you because you're like on a big stage here.
Did anyone have a misstep?
There was a moment on stage where Joe Biden tripped over his words.
We choose unity over division.
We choose science over fiction. We choose science over fiction.
We choose truth over facts. But even that was kind of a blip on the event. He was very well
attended and people were following him around. Obviously, he's a former vice president to an
extremely popular president and people want to take their pictures and see Joe Biden eat ice cream. Is there any sense at the end of the weekend how people felt about the candidates, formal or informal polling or anything like that?
There is an informal poll.
And I do want to stress that this is extremely unscientific.
But basically what happens is that right outside of this soapbox area, there is a corn kernel poll,
which is essentially every fair goer, Candace, gets a kernel and you get to pick which candidate
you like the best and put it in the jar of the candidate that you are most likely to vote for
at the time. And it's all the candidates, Republican and Democrat. And what we saw was that it did kind of reflect general state polling. So Biden, Warren,
Buttigieg, Harris and Sanders were the ones registering on that poll. And of course,
on the Republican side, Trump was overwhelmingly winning over his challenger, Bill Weld.
Does, like, the Electoral College come in at the end of the week and just, like, tip them all over and say, we're going to do whatever we want to do anyway?
I do not think so.
A good joke. After the break, whether you have to eat all those deep fried Oreos and PB&Js and corn dogs to win the election.
Hello?
Hey, Desmond, it's Sean. How's it going?
Good.
I hear you're on vacation. Is that true?
It is. I'm in Bethany Beach, Delaware, in the United States of America, in North America, in the world.
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Desmond, invite me to the beach next time, okay?
I'll try.
Not sure if my mom will allow that.
Okay. Chris Larimer, professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa.
How long has the Iowa State Fair been around?
It's been around, I think, since about 1854, and it's grown in popularity over time.
But the real purpose of it is just sort of showcase the agricultural sector of the state. And, you know,
there are new attendance records set every year where, you know, we're at the point where it's
pretty regular that we see over a million people attend the Iowa State Fair over that period.
When exactly did the Iowa State Fair become important to politics?
I think when you look at the importance of the Iowa State Fair to politics, I think it coincides
with sort of the popularity of or the attention given to the Iowa caucuses.
So Jimmy Carter visited the Iowa State Fair when he was first running in 1976, and he's sort of credited with putting the Iowa State Fair to help them in their candidacies because it's a way to sort of showcase yourself to a large group of people, people who are active just generally in the state of Iowa.
And so candidates have continued to use that.
And so as the caucuses have become more popular, using the Iowa State Fair for political purposes for presidential candidates has also become more popular. Have there been like really eventful presidential candidate visits to the Iowa State Fair? Or is it always kind of, you know, glad handling and
deep fried Oreo eating and that kind of thing? Well, yeah, there's certainly a lot of that.
But I think Donald Trump's visit in 2015 is certainly going to be the most unique where
he comes in, flies in in a helicopter, lands, takes a group of kids
up in the helicopter to tour the state fairgrounds. Quite a few children going to take rides today. So
where are the children? Get them over here. That's great. I love children. I love Iowa. Great place.
I mean, that has by far has to be the most unique visit by any candidate. But the other big one I
think a lot of people look to is in um
2011 when romney visited the iowa state fair so the big part of the when the fair visit for
candidates is that they do the des moines register soapbox where they're up on the stand and giving
speeches to a large crowd of people that are just gathered around yeah that's where romney made the
the famous statement that corporations are people too. Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people.
So where do you think it goes?
It goes to their pockets.
Who's pockets?
His pockets.
Do we have any idea how much the fair has an impact on the actual election?
No.
It's a great question, but it's really hard to measure. You
know, you'd have to be able to somehow measure, okay, who walked up to the soapbox that day?
Who listened to the candidates? You know, how long did that effect have on the individual voter?
And did that influence their decision six months later, you know, in the Iowa caucuses? And that's
really hard to do. I think you could say there's potentially a small effect there in terms of voters seeing candidates they're thinking about considering caucusing for.
And maybe if that candidate gives a performance on the soapbox that's appealing to that individual
voter, then maybe over the next few weeks, they're more likely to follow that candidate.
When they come to Iowa, maybe they're more likely to attend an event for that candidate. And then,
you know, potentially they're maybe more likely to caucus for that particular candidate.
But it's something that's almost impossible to measure at this point.
You mentioned that the fair sort of has its origins in showing off Iowa's agricultural might.
What issues matter most to these fairgoers at the Iowa State Fair?
On a general level, it's the same issues that matter to most people across the country in
terms of just the direction of the country, you know, the economy, jobs, unemployment.
But when you listen to the candidate soapbox speeches, you know, there's still a lot of
talk about agriculture.
There's a lot of talk about middle class.
And understand that we need strong farm policies and we don't need a president that is treating our rural areas and our farmers like they're a bunch of poker chips in one of his bankrupt casinos.
More recently, a lot of talk about tariffs, the agricultural industry generally.
So I think, you know, those speeches, they're trying to appeal to the sector of Iowa's economy that they think that most voters see as most important to
continuing to improve conditions in Iowa. I don't know. I guess you grew up in Iowa.
You live in Iowa now. Do you attend the state fair, Chris?
I don't. I know. And this is really sad to admit publicly, but I don't attend it on a regular
basis. I have a lot of people that do. My dad grew up just outside of Des Moines, so he would go there on a regular basis.
I won't tell anyone.
Yeah, please don't.
It's sad to admit. that all of these candidates flocking to Iowa for a weekend and spending so much time there
in the months leading up to the Iowa caucus biases their attention to one state that,
you know, has 3 million people or so instead of covering the entire country and running around
talking to voters who maybe have different needs? Yeah, I think you could say that. I think there are two sides to that, right? I mean,
it's the same question when it comes to the Iowa caucuses, right? Is it fair that Iowa gets that
much coverage when it comes to the Iowa caucuses or the candidates spend that much attention on
the state, as you said, where you're talking about 3 million people? So on the one hand,
you could say, no, it's not. It seems rather silly to spend that much time where you're
talking about a small subset of voters, and you don't even have any idea if any of these people are actually going to show up to caucus six months later.
On the other hand, you could say that it puts candidates on the spot a little bit,
and it forces them to talk to voters on a small-scale basis. And it gives you a sense
of whether or not these candidates are comfortable talking to voters, capable of answering questions
on the fly. And it sort of shows their
strengths or potential weaknesses as a candidate in terms of talking about the issues. And so it's
really sort of this unscripted event, which appeals to a lot of people, because I think
you talk to voters and they're kind of tired of the scripted responses or the scripted appearances,
even thinking about the debates that we've seen. Does Iowa ultimately end up picking who becomes president or at least who ends up on the ticket?
Not necessarily. So Iowa does a good job. And a lot of people have talked about this
of sort of winnowing the field, right? We often talk about three tickets out of Iowa
if you want to be the nominee, the exception being John McCain in 2008, who actually finished
fourth in the Iowa caucuses, but of course went on to be the Republican nominee.
But between Democrats and Republicans, the Democrats actually do a much better job in terms of predicting the nominee.
That is, who wins the Iowa caucuses?
There's a better track record as far as the person who wins the Iowa caucuses on the Democratic side and their likelihood of going on to be the nominee. And there's also a better track record between what happens in Iowa on the Democratic side
and then what happens in New Hampshire a few days later in the New Hampshire primary.
On the Republican side, the record's not as good.
And, you know, a lot of that goes back to the strong role of social conservatives,
the evangelical vote in Iowa on the Republican side.
You know, this year, what you'd expect is that they would at least winnow the field a bit,
that after caucus night, you would expect to see a number of candidates drop out.
And you would expect the candidates that finished in the top three,
maybe top four in Iowa to have a pretty good chance of being the nominee.
And it's just around the corner in February of next year.
Yeah, right. It's going to be a long six months.
Chris Larimer teaches politics at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Before we go, one last reminder that KiwiCo wants to spark joy and creativity and tinkering
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