I'm on the second day of my book tour in Iowa for my book Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party and I'm seeing something amazing: John Edwards surging from conventional wisdom's forgotten candidate towards what seems to me an almost definite win on Caucus Day. Admittedly, I'm a bit biased: I'm personally a John Edwards supporter and the president of the Democratic Courage political action committee that ran this ad against Hillary Clinton.
But here's what I'm seeing. First - a taste of some big news: a major up-for-grabs statewide leader with a large and loyal following told me he is going to endorse Edwards in the next week. I'll report the person's identity as soon as I get the go-ahead. Second, Edwards supporters are super savvy about the caucuses. I remember attending a caucus in 2004 (as a Kerry campaign volunteer) and watching the Edwards folks, many of them union members, out-organize every other campaign to convince wavering voters to come to their side.
Here's what one Iowa Dem told me when I asked her who she was supporting: "Well, I tell the pollsters Richardson so that he can stay in the debates and get his message out there, but really I'm going to caucus for Edwards."
Edwards is just about everybody's second choice (an observation echoed by this poll). This will have an impact for two reasons. First, support for Clinton and Obama is quite soft. As they tear each other apart, it will create a space for Edwards's positive message. On a more tactical level, candidates who don't get 15 percent of the vote have their supporters redistributed to caucusers' second choice: another Edwards boost.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's campaign seems in free fall, with television news here repeating over and over again news of the Bill Shaheen scandal - news not likely to warm the hearts of Iowa voters who don't mind vigorous debate about the issues, but have a welcome aversion to this kind of cold, calculated personal attack.
On a deeper level, though, what we're seeing now is Iowa voters tuning into what the candidates are all about. And Iowa voters really do take these decisions extremely seriously and do a lot of their own research. And as they do, the progressive Iowa caucus goers reach beyond the media hype surrounding Clinton and Obama and learn more about the candidates themselves.
When they do that, they're likely to find out a few things:
Obama's the candidate so obsessed with accommodation that he voted for George Bush's energy bill, voted with Bush to allow credit card companies to raise interest rates over 30 percent, voted to with Bush to make it harder for ordinary citizens to hold big corporations accountable in court, championed highly polluting liquid coal, and refuses to provide truly universal health coverage.
Hillary Clinton has hardly been the "strong leader" that she portrays herself as. Instead, she's persistently allowed Republicans to bully her into changing her position on Iraq, Iran, health care, immigration, and trade. She's the candidate who can one week make a major announcement that America needs to reevaluate Nafta and then the next week announce her support (like Obama) for expanding Nafta to Peru. She's the candidate who says she first favors diplomacy over force with Iran and then votes in a way that could pave the way for Bush to authorize war with Iran. And, she's the candidate who, despite championing children, allowed polluter International Paper to burn tires at its paper mill, imperiling the lives of thousands of children in an attempt to get a handful extra votes in her 2006 Senate bid, who advised her husband to sign the draconian Republican welfare bill, punishing children because their parents couldn't get a job, and who gave into Republican pressure to abandon her "baby bond" program to give children in poverty a leg up, sending the money instead to retirement programs for relatively well off senior citizens.
In contrast, Edwards has stood against Clinton-Obama corporate and Republican accommodation from Day One of this campaign, being the first major candidate to propose detailed health care, energy, and trade plans.
Iowans are tuning into those facts - and tuning into John Edwards.