Cross-posted at The Field.
John Edwards is a former US Senator with a populist economic message running for president in 2008.
Fred Harris was a former US Senator with a populist economic message running for president in 1976.
On the night of the Iowa caucuses 32 years ago, “uncommitted” won with 37 percent of the caucus delegates, but Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia came in first among the candidates with 28 percent, creating his launching pad into a New Hampshire primary victory and then to the White House. The remaining Democrats were bunched up behind and on caucus night the networks were unable to give clear numbers for second and third place among the candidates...
I was in New Hampshire that winter, a teen-ager trudging through cold and snow, canvassing door-to-door for the folksy Oklahoma senator known to supporters as "Fightin' Fred." Harris had written a book, The New Populism, and campaigned on slogans like “Take the Rich off Welfare” and “The issue is privilege: We need a redistribution of wealth, income and power.” The final Iowa numbers arrived days after the news cycle that spun Carter as the big winner there and a wash for second and third place.
All the Harris campaigners tried to explain to New Hampshire voters that our candidate, and not US Rep. Mo Udall of Arizona (Mark’s dad), was the true liberal-left alternative to Carter. We implored that the eventual Iowa numbers showed Harris, in a surprising third place with 10 percent of the delegates, ahead of Udall (6 percent) and the previous cycle’s vice presidential candidate, Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver, with 3 percent. Sen. Birch Bayh, of Indiana (Evan’s dad) had placed to Carter in Iowa with 13 percent of the delegates. None of them got the momentum or media attention he needed out of Iowa, and Udall would place second to Carter in New Hampshire, emerging as his leading rival in later primaries.
But the news cycle got ahead of the true results, and Harris never got the Iowa bounce that his supporters felt he deserved from the media. (Voters probably don't consider a four-percent differential as significant as the seven points between Kerry and Edwards, and the 14 points between Edwards and Dean, in Iowa in '04, as all that significant: those were clear margins. What comes on January 3 might well not be.)
Edwards' disadvantage comes, in part, because the same kind of sub-contest to become the "non-Clinton" is underway now between Edwards and Obama that Harris and Udall fought. What happened to Harris may well happen to Edwards on the night of January 3. Like Shriver (and Lieberman) before him, Edwards has the weight of having been the previous cycle's veep candidate on an unsuccessful ticket. And he has the added weight of having come in second in Iowa in 2004. As Yepsen noted, Edwards has to beat that expectation and win Iowa outright to be considered by voters in subsequent primaries.
(And like Harris, who had been chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a suggested vice presidential pick for Lyndon Johnson, the trial lawyer Edwards has just enough insider-institutional baggage for his class-struggle message to be ballasted down.)
Here’s the immediate problem for Edwards: He could end up winning the Iowa caucus in terms of delegate count, but lose the spin war over who “won.”
As Roger Simon noted back on December 17:
“Instead of waiting for actual votes to be counted on the night of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus, a consortium of the major TV networks and The Associated Press will conduct an entrance poll to measure how people say they will vote.
“Those results will be broadcast long before the official vote is announced and, in some cases, before the voting is finished…
“In 2004, the entrance poll had the Democratic candidates in the same order of finish as the official results: John Kerry first, John Edwards second and Howard Dean third.
“But what happens if the entrance poll results differ from the official tally this time? Won’t this lead to confusion and accusations of media manipulation and fraud?”
In poll after poll, Edwards has usually edged out the others for “second choice” preferences (although he and Obama are virtually tied in some surveys, and Obama tops him in others), suggesting that Edwards has the most potential to grow between the time the entrance poll is conducted and the actual caucus results are completed. He could begin the night in third place but end it in first. And that might still not be enough to generate the public perception – at least by the New Hampshire primary five days away – that he "won" in a way that generates momentum for him.
Thus, if the “entrance poll” results show Clinton or Obama – or both – ahead of Edwards, and those “results” are announced (as they will be) before the real results trickle in, you can bet that both Clinton and Obama will jump on stage at their corresponding supporter rallies, live on national TV. One will claim victory, based on the entrance poll, and the other will say “Thank you! Who would have thought that I would have come in a close second in Iowa, and maybe will be first by the end of the night! Hello, New Hampshire! I’m your new comeback kid!”
Alternately, one or the other will play it cute: “The early results show a two-way (or three-way) virtual tie... On to New Hampshire!” (That's an easy call for Clinton, who probably can't get out of Iowa fast enough if her thoughts could be read.)
TV anchorpersons will scold that “well, we won’t know the final results until later,” but it will be the gamesmanship on stage that will be remembered. (Think Howard Dean’s “Aaarrrggghh” scream, or Kerry’s pivotal announcement of his campaign web site URL on live national TV… Or for a more audacious election night speech, look to Bill Clinton’s ’92 “Comeback kid” rally in New Hampshire where, many have forgotten, he only came in second that night.) In a virtual two-or-three-way tie in Iowa's entrance poll, it will be the best actor, with the most enthusiastic crowd, that will be perceived as the Iowa “winner,” if any is perceived at all.
Still, this isn’t 1976: the actual results will likely be known by the time the morning newspapers are printed (but perhaps after voters at home have turned off their TVs).
The third-place-in-the-entrance-poll scenario simply won’t be as devastating for Clinton or Obama if there is a two-or-three-way virtual tie. The media pundits will claim it “historic” that “for the first time” a woman, or an African American, has won or come close to winning the Iowa caucuses… and the tie-breaker becomes New Hampshire.
So Edwards has to thread two needles on January 3: he has to be first or second in the entrance poll results, and then he has to win the actual delegate count outright. The other two – each with piles of money in the bank – will barrel into New Hampshire for the two-way showdown that Iowa didn’t conclude for them.
See also:
- The 2004 Iowa caucus entrance poll results.
- A new interview with the pollster that will conduct the entrance poll on January 3, Joe Lenski, by Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal.