If there’s anything more demented than spending perfectly good time off from work chasing presidential wannabes from event to event in the frigid of a New Hampshire February — a strange hobby I picked up in 1996 and continued in 2016 — I believe I have found it: Doing the same thing in the more frigid and much, much larger cornfields of Iowa.
The odd thing is, before my son had even a … well, kernel … of an idea to come to school here and become a Hawkeye, I had decided not only to do this but even to base the trip out of Iowa City, Iowa, home of the university and, to my thinking, a central location that gave me at least a fighting chance of catching every Democrat (and perhaps even a rebel Republican) at an event over the course of a four-day trip.
Well, I did it. Sort of.
As I write this from Doc’s Lounge in the suburbs of northwest Des Moines, the scheduled home of an Amy Klobuchar Super Bowl watching party (before she bailed down the street for a much larger but still overflowing barbecue joint), I have somehow made it to events for Joe Biden (twice), Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer and, sort of, Amy Klobuchar. (I hope she’s having fun. We miss her here at Doc’s.)
By the time this column comes out, you’ll know who won — but as I’m writing it, things are still very much undecided, not the least of which are the voters themselves. Because it would be hard to overstate the general state of disinterest in the political affairs in this state, which is so integral to the process, just 24 hours before the first votes are cast.
Unless you have the misfortune to proactively run into one of the candidates’ devoted canvassers, you’re extremely unlikely to run into anyone who wants to talk politics.
My greeting upon arrival from a woman in a Chiefs jersey smoking out front: “You here for Amy or the Super Bowl?”
She had clearly pegged me for the former, and let me know, with a mildly condescending but somehow sort of good-natured sneer.
It’s not that there’s no enthusiasm for the presidential race here, but that the passion tends to be encapsulated in bubbles surrounding each of the events, leaving the outside environs unscathed.
To wit: Day 1, I shot straight over to Cedar Rapids from the airport for an Andrew Yang event. On the way to the event, you would have no idea whatsoever that we were less than 100 hours from the first votes being cast in a pivotal election: There was an almost total absence of yard signs, bumper stickers, billboards and the like.
But once you got there, if you dared to go inside, good luck. For canvassers can smell blood, and there is no easier prey to pick out than an uncommitted visitor.
“Hello, have you signed in yet?” A young man with a clipboard asked the second I walked in the door.
“Well, I, no, I just …”
“Here, just fill this out …”
By the end of the process, I’m pretty sure I’d turned over my wife’s credit card information. I would learn later how to handle these things, but I was new to Iowa politics.
Now, part of the apparent apathy was clearly due to starting the process with candidates generating little enthusiasm relative to the overall field — Yang, who, by the way, is extremely likable in person, and, of course, former Vice President Joe Biden.
This is true. I don’t know what’s going to happen Monday any more than anyone else, but having been to two Biden events, I will say this: I will be shocked if he is better than fourth, as much as it pains me to say this.
Ottumwa offers a glimpse into why.
If you know of Ottumwa, it’s likely as the home of Radar O’Reilly. I was sad to see little by the way of tribute to the beloved “MASH” character in this charming enough downtown sloping toward the river. (This, by the way, is in stark contrast to another beloved fictional character from Iowa: Captain James T. Kirk, who has pretty much an entire town, Riverside, dedicated to him, including a bronze statue, despite the fact that, technically, he hasn’t even been born yet.)
Suffice to say, one does not expect to walk into an event featuring a former veep running for president and find people sitting at the bar (it was at an American Legion) who weren’t even aware that an event was going on in the other room.
And “awkward” doesn’t even begin to define the atmosphere. Sensing opportunity, I decided to see if I could order a beer and bring it in.
I clearly wasn’t the only one. About an hour into awaiting the tardy candidate, an elderly gentleman who looked like he might have been at the bar since Tuesday turned to the bank of cameras and 70 or so senior citizens waiting patiently at tables and uncorked his support:
“ZHOE BY-DUN FER PRESHIDENT!”
(Silence.)
“BEAT DA ORANGE CLOWN!”
This was Trump, he explained to us, when we didn’t pick up the vibe.
Joe Biden deserves better than this. Both here, when he made it, and the following day at a high school outside Iowa City, he gave perfectly reasonable presidential appeals to respectful, if not excited, audiences.
But he could not seem to catch a break. At the second event, he had barely started talking when a young man popped up right in front of him — how there is no security screening at these events boggles the mind — and asked if Biden would tell him why his wife left him.
Biden promised to speak to him after the event, but the man, like Elizabeth Warren, persisted.
“I’m beginning to see why your wife left you,” Biden wittily cracked, to the delight of the audience. He seemed to sense, as we would all later find out, that this, and another interruption, were caused by a “comedy” duo.
It’s all part of the show here, as is “Morning Joe,” the early morning MSNBC political staple, which Monday morning is airing live from Java Joe’s in downtown Des Moines. My wife has gotten me a ticket into the set. I’ve just settled in. And the woman next to me shows me a tweet from former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill kneecapping Trump for not knowing where Kansas City is located.
That and more next week, by which time, I can state fairly confidently, the Democratic Party will be in full panic mode over Bernie Sanders.
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