The political climate is heating up in a race that began at boiling point 10 months ago. James Lynch, a political reporter with the Cedar Rapids Gazette said the 2007 competition for the White House began with as much intensity as it had ended with in 2004.
Republicans
When it comes to the public opinion in Iowa on presidential viability, the Republicans have had a much more confusing race than the Democrats – at least up until a couple of months ago when Iowa’s Republicans realized that Mike Huckabee represents everything for which the neoconservatives stand.
With his charismatic stage presence (unless he is playing the bass guitar), attractive mind set on the issues that matter to the religious right and his new secret weapon, Chuck Norris, the Huckster has taken the state by storm and surprised the nation with his climb from mediocrity to superstar status.
In the first 10 months of what is to be the longest, most crowded presidential race in the history of America, Republicans didn’t know where to turn. Their party was in shambles after further reports of failure in Iraq and failed foreign, education and security policy caused the Bush administration’s popularity to fall to dismal depths. This was not helped by a series of GOP sex scandals which destroyed their only good card, that moral values.
Mitt Romney was Mormon and a little fake; Rudy Giuliani was a cross-dressing, pro-choice, anti-gun, border security conundrum who ran his entire campaign off of fuel from his performance after the 9/11 attacks; and John McCain was more polarizing than Hillary Clinton. The rest of the candidates, including Huckabee, were no-name representatives, governors and actors with little to no political experience or bad track records.
But when Huckabee employed Chuck Norris as a volunteer campaign tool and started pandering to the right wing as a former Baptist pastor who knows what Christian values mean, he saturated the trail with what Norris calls “Chuck Norris facts” and religious candor.
The Republicans had found their candidate. Giuliani, who was the most viable option at the beginning of the race, kept making an ass of himself by mentioning 9/11 in his answers to every question and Romney began his smear campaign on Huckabee, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of many Republican voters.
“I don’t want to hear what one candidate is doing wrong, I want to hear what Romney’s going to do as president,” said one zealous Huckabee supporter plastered in stickers, holding a “Faith, family, and freedom” sign at a Des Moines ballroom after Norris spoke on behalf of Huckabee.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul and other marginalized candidates have been exposed to de facto exclusion from the race by FOX News when the conservative media outlet decided to host several Republican debates in New Hampshire and not invite the fringe candidates. Supporters of Paul say the GOP doesn’t want him to get the ticket because of his unconventional policies.
But each candidate has his merit and a large support base. Even Paul returned from the campaign trail in Florida to hold a Des Moines rally Wednesday night to which more than 600 people showed up.
Huckabee told reporters that the polls don’t necessarily reflect the public opinion. A state poll on Friday had Romney ahead by a big lead. Two days later, a Des Moines Register poll showed Huckabee nine percentage points ahead of Romney.
So with polls showing Huckabee in lead; Romney, McCain and Giuliani losing favor from Iowa voters; and Fred Thompson and Ron Paul fighting for fourth place, Iowa will have never been louder than they will be tonight.
Democrats
The Democratic presidential race was much easier to predict than that of the GOP.
The trend throughout the 10 months leading up to tonight has been clear. Hillary Clinton was ahead for most of the race, keeping her percentage in the polls hovering around 25 percent. The same happened with the John Edwards campaign. But as underdogs Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Mike Gravel became increasingly unpopular, Barack Obama gained the majority of the state’s youth favor, constantly playing his “Change we can believe in” card.
In November, that card put him ahead of everyone else in the minds of Iowans for the first time on the campaign trail, according to polls, and he has widened his lead ever since.
At a rally Wednesday night at Hoover High School in West Des Moines, Obama spoke to a crowd of over 2,000 students, community members and the press. Sure at this point that he will gain the Iowa vote as he is ahead of Clinton and Edwards by six percent and eight percent, respectively, Obama’s message was one of pending change.
He has scheduled a post-caucus event in what sounds like anticipation of a win.
But as he counts on the idealistic youth vote to push him over the hump of his inexperience, there is one problem, the 18- to 24-year-old demographic is the least likely to show up on caucus night. So banking on a maybe is certainly a gamble, but is one that must be taken by Obama, who has been criticized for not being able to gather large support from anyone but nation’s youth, including the black community.
And Clinton has garnered a handsome amount of approval from older female voters by playing to their emotions on issues like health care and advocating her Iraq withdrawal plan, which many voters view as the most sensible.
Historically, middle-aged white women show up in greater numbers than any other demographic on caucus night, which is why former President Bill Clinton stumped for his wife in a frigid cold, corrugated tin storage building outside of the Amana Colonies to crowd of several hundred rural Iowans New Year’s Day, saying that Hillary has the right mix of experience and ideology to fix the health care crisis, our failing energy policy and the U.S.’s spider web of education problems.
With Bill's record and respect in his party, Democratic voters not lured by Obama see a two-for-one when caucusing for Hillary.
But Hillary’s deepest criticism among voters is that she is polarizing and cold. She is largely viewed as too driven to pay attention to the human interest.
One Hillary supporter, however, is quick tell people that she is just opposite.
“She is extremely warm and welcoming,” said lawyer Karen Lines of San Francisco, Calif., who came to Iowa to campaign for Hillary. Lines and her friend Colleen Wilcox, who tagged along on Lines’ trip said the public opinion on Hillary is a byproduct of sexism and circumstance.
“It has to do with being a woman and being Bill Clinton’s wife,” Wilcox said. “People are resistant to change.”
And the sleeper, John Edwards, is banking on support from Iowa voters that he gained as Sen. John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. One end-of-the-year poll actually had him pegged as the front runner in Iowa after the Clinton-Obama mudslinging battle became a hot topic last month.
His appeal to the Iowa farming communities as a candidate who will keep their interests at the top of his priority list consistently puts him in third place in the polls.
How it will end in Iowa for the Democrats looks much clearer than for the Republicans, but only tonight will tell what Iowans really think. Then, Iowans, at the forefront of the 2008 election, will send a message to states like Colorado.
-Hedgefund
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