Editor asks: Where Are the Democrats?

In the editor's personal column in the weekly Anamosa Journal Eureka, she lamented that although two of the Republican also rans had put in appearances in Jones County (Iowa), none of the Democrats had yet showed up. Moreover, as noted in a diary from May 3rd, Rudy Giuliani first scheduled a visit, then cancelled when it was found that the hosts were not rich enough to help him campaign against the inheritance tax. That decision is regrettable not because of the potential loss of support for Giuliani, but because the visits the candidates make to Iowa help them to grow and learn as well about a broader segment of the country. In addition, listening to a candidate in person, allowing issues to be discussed without the constraints of the radio and TV sound bites, and outside of the slickly produced advertising, gives people a chance to evaluate that candidate in good faith, both on issues of substance and of style.

In the editor's personal column in the weekly Anamosa Journal Eureka, she lamented that although two of the Republican also rans had put in appearances in Jones County (Iowa), none of the Democrats had yet showed up. Moreover, as noted in my diary at DailyKos from May 3rd, Rudy Giuliani first scheduled a visit, then canceled when it was found that the hosts were not rich enough to help him campaign against the inheritance tax. That decision is regrettable not because of the potential loss of support for Giuliani, but because the visits the candidates make to Iowa help them to grow and learn as well about a broader segment of the country. In addition, listening to a candidate in person, allowing issues to be discussed without the constraints of the radio and TV sound bites, and outside of the slickly produced advertising, gives people a chance to evaluate that candidate in good faith, both on issues of substance and of style.

But the question remains, why we were able to attract early visits by Howard Dean, John Edwards and Richard Gephardt by this time in 2003,(as well as a visit in August from John Kerry to the National Motorcycle Museum) but no visits yet during this round from any of the large field.

One of the major differences in this election cycle as far as attracting candidates is that the nomination process has become even more front-loaded than before.

Here in Iowa, our perception of the process in the past has been that in Iowa and New Hampshire, candidates had the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to put together an effective campaign organization and attract sufficient support to be an effective candidate. The hope was that such a process would weed out those candidates who could not organize well and give the better campaigns a chance to grow and take their message to a wider audience. Then the later primaries and caucuses would choose from the viable candidates that survived Iowa, New Hampshire and a couple of other early states. In a tight race with two or three viable candidates left, a late primary state could play a huge role in deciding who the nominee would be.

Over the nine presidential election cycles since the current nominating system has been in effect, a candidate did not need to come in first in the Iowa caucuses to win the nomination - or the presidency. But it has been crucial for a candidate to place in the top three. In fact, since the current system was put in place in 1972 for the Democratic Party, no candidate that failed to finish in the top three in Iowa has gone on to win the nomination.

While we in Iowa like to think this part of the process helps the other states by allowing them to choose from field of viable candidates who have been tested in the early contests, many people in other states have grown to perceive Iowa and New Hampshire as having more of a say in the nominations than they do. Consequently, over the years, more states have moved up their primary or caucus dates to overcome that perceived inequity. This front-loading has forced the candidates to build a national campaign earlier in the process and, as a result, hurts everyone's chances of meeting a leading candidate in a coffee shop or other small venue looking for that last vote. No, with a front-loaded and compressed schedule such as we face in this cycle, the candidates must maximize their exposure with larger events.

Despite the clamoring in certain other states to be first, the Iowa caucuses are still the first contest that leads to the selection of delegates in the whole arcane nominating process. It will be interesting to see how large the turnout is as they have been forced back to another earlier date.

No matter how the process is compressed, the true test will be if that process can give us a nominee we can all work for in the General Election.