Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 2020 Predictions For The Iowa Caucuses 20240713

Commission on International Religious freedom looks at ways to counter the growing threat of antisemitism around the world. Announcer next, a panel of political analysts on the iowa president ial moines. , held in des i would like to have everybody take their seats, please. And i would also like to reconvene our Panel Discussion on the history and handicap in the 2020 Iowa Caucuses. We had a great discussion in the first hour about the history of these events. We may come back to some of the themes we were talking about there. But in this hour, i want our scholars to focus on the current caucus race. And how they see the race unfolding, who is ahead, who is behind. To aid in that discussion, i report we have breaking news. A cbs poll just out has sanders at 23 , biden at 23 , buttigieg at 23 , warren at 16 , and klobuchar at 7 . So, details at 6 00. [laughs] that is iowa . Cbs news. Yes, in iowa. The race in iowa. Buttigieg also 23 . I was right. It is a battleground tracker. Three white guys. [laughter] yes, you were. All right. I want to start with you. How do you see this race . You watch it from your perch in missouri. How do you see this contest . Watching it from afar, i have no greater insight than if i were immersed in it right now. I had just noticed that cbs poll. It seems consistent with the impression i have, which is we really dont know what will onpen on cauus night caucus night. There are lots of different scenarios, and several candidates who clearly seem to have enough support in the state that it is showing up. But one other thing i would want to caution people, and other people on the panel can talk about this, is that survey work is very difficult these days. It is difficult to get people to respond. It is difficult because of land lines versus cell phones. It is difficult to try to predict who will show up on caucus night. And of course, if you have weather like today, turnout may be great, and if the weather is terrible, which it never seems to be on caucus night, but there is always the potential, particularly in one part of the state rather than another part, that can have a big impact. So i think all we can tell you from the surveys done so far is that its really not at all clear what is going to happen caucus night. And for those of us who are political junkies, that probably adds to the fun. But as scholars, we would like to be able to Say Something with a little bit greater certainty than that we have no better guess than you do. I have all the answers. [laughter] just kidding. Please share. I am keeping those. I will tell you on february 4. No, i completely agree. We are all guessing at this point. And polling, especially when you think of who will show up that night, is pretty important. And that has changed outcomes of both iowa caucus results and general elections, who shows up. Of who shows up. I think it is interesting that diane was exactly right, the three top polling people are white men, and we have two qualified women running. I am curious to see how it shakes out. I am most curious how those second choice picks will come, because there is support for booker, there is support for yang, there is support for klobuchar. They probably will not be viable in a lot of precincts. Where they go can have a big impact. If they all go to warren, this is a fourway tie. If they all go to biden, it is a runaway victory for biden, so that second place will have a big impact on the final results. Explain why the second place showing in a poll is important to what will happen on caucus night . When i say secondplace, i mean their second choice at the precinct. Thats what i mean. So, for those of you on the democratic side who havent done this on the democratic side before, and what will be different this year is that whenever you make your first pick, if you dont have 15 of the people there supporting that candidate, the candidate is considered not viable. So one of two things have to happen. Either you need to get more people to reach that threshold and become viable, or you need to go to your second choice. It used to be there could be multiple alignments and people do more movement. This time, it is one realignment, so that will really limit things. Maybe i really feel good about yang and i go to him. He is not viable, now i have to vote my heart and not my head, now i have to vote biden. That might cause a lot of shifting. What do you say to reporters calling you up saying, how do you see this race . I think the highly contested Republican Donald Trump will win that. [laughter] unless something happens between now and caucus night in iran that really shocks people. You have to look at National Polls as well as iowa. I mean, iowa is influential, but a very, very famous political analyst and journalist once said there were three tickets out of iowa. I think that was you. First class, second class, and the back of the cabin next to the toilets. But if you are seated next to the toilet, and the year is not the right year for the first and second class iowa caucus placers, you might end up getting the nomination. You might even end up winning the election. So in iowa, you dont have to win. You can come in first, second or third and still do very well politically. I wrote an article for the newspaper you formerly and sadly dont work for anymore, the des moines register, which i see has gone into tremendous decline since you left. I blame it all on you. Social media has nothing to do with it. You left, and the thing just collapsed. But i argue this may be one of those wonderful years where we have a brokered convention this summer where nobody has enough delegates and you come in there and youve got biden and sanders and buttigieg and maybe warren as well coming in with a chunk of delegates and fighting it out onhe flo. That would be the greatest thing in my life, is to see that happen because it would be real democracy at work. Not literally fighting . Maybe literally. My money is definitely on buttigieg in that case. The things i hear every four years, it will be the last time iowa will have caucuses and maybe they will be a brokered convention. Well, you heard it again. [laughter] to play on it again, i did predict earlier without hearing from cbs news that the three top vote getters in iowa at this point in time were the three white guys. Getting back to what i said earlier, one thing i worry about with the Iowa Caucuses is that it diminishes choices for other states. But i think kelly made a good point. When i talked about caucus math earlier and how candidates have been able to use it, thats not as possible this year. Because when you go in, you have to put down your second choice and stick with it. I have seen some recent data on sanders supporters, basically on their donation giving. For example, earlier in this campaign, you might give to biden, but also to warren and you might have given to buttigieg. With sanders supporters, they typically dont have a second choice. So i think so what could happen, as kelly said, with the second choice on these candidates who are not going to be viable, who do they flock to . I think we will see some flocking basically to biden, buttigieg, and warren. So, i think there is a couple things to keep in mind here. One, this race is incredibly fluid. I think there are people who have talked about it. Thats a good way to characterize it. It is fluid. Theres a lot of people, a wealth of candidates for the democrats. A lot of people have a first choice, but also a second choice. Their polling shows they are relatively open to changing their mind. And the dynamics of caucus night could do that. Id like to push back about what was said about brokered conventions. I think thats a thing to talk about, but probably is rarely going to happen because it is not in a partys interest to get to that point. So even in 2008 when you had Hillary Clinton and barack obama going into june, really late, it they didnt go into the convention. Especially if you are going to be running against an incumbent president , it is not in the partys interest to do that, so the party will do the things they need to do. To do to try to eliminate that. Now, talking about the rule changes in the earlier part of the session here, one of the other things the democrats have done is changed how super delegates factor in. That could be an issue later on as well. But the third thing i would like to mention here is to not forget the gop has caucuses also. You could learn really interesting things by looking at the gop caucus. The diehard gop people are the ones who in years when they have incumbents tend to go, but there might also be people who want to show dissatisfaction. It is notable the iowa gop has not canceled caucuses. States in many other have canceled primaries and caucuses because they dont want to publicize any kind of opposition within the party. These are party events. The gop, in order to help them maintain first in the nation status, didnt want to do that, they didnt want to see the process as being rigged for the incumbent, so there will be gop caucuses. And also note, for both the democrats and the gop, at a caucus, it is more than saying here are the candidates i like, its also about elevating platform planks, governance within the party, electing people to central committees and those kinds of things. And these are important factors that the National Media never really reports on at all. But these are important in the Party Building aspect of what caucuses are, and the democratic nature of them as well. I wanted to share with our audience, you have been spending time since august doing field research, going from event to event watching the candidates at work, so what is your sense of who is ahead and who is behind . I have been here since the head of the state fair and have been tweeting as i go, mainly to keep notes for myself. It is an effective way to do that at the events. So, ive probably been to 85 or 90 candidate events at this point. And im no more certain about the outcome than anybody else, as we are looking at this. The poll that was just reported makes sense to me. It kind of tracks with what i think were seeing. Weve been doing some survey Research Work as well and just did a second wave on that, and its very similar. But whats really, really important here, people have been mentioning the second choice piece, there are key changes to the democratic rules that are going to change the nature of the caucus and what can actually happen on caucus night. Earlier in the first half, there was a comment about how barack obama in 2008 sent voters to john edwards groups when they had more than they needed to be viable in a precinct, at least 15 to get a delegate. That can no longer be done. When people come into the Democratic Caucus and express their first preference, they will be locked into that first preference if their candidate is viable. There will be no more moving around for those people. The only people who will be allowed to move are those whose candidates dont get at least 15 in the precinct. That really does change the dynamic of what happens on caucus night, which has a lot to do again with how the delegate counts are reported. But the democrats are going to tell us the actual vote counts for the first time, both the initial vote count and what they call the realigned vote count after every candidate who doesnt reach 15 is dropped. So, the media is going to have three different numbers to work with. Im not quite sure where they are going to go with it. I was looking at the cbs poll, where they were emphasizing the number of delegates each candidate would win if poll numbers hold. But i would suspect on caucus night, the fallback will be what the vote looks like, but the question will be is it the initial vote or the final vote . That means a lot for a candidate like Amy Klobuchar, who is unlikely at the moment, although everything can change in the next few weeks, to be viable in many precincts, meaning she will get zero in those precincts on the realigned vote, but she will have had votes in the initial alignment. I am saying all this, a, it will a, to say it will be a lot more complicated to even know who the winner is, and b, to simply talk, because even after 85plus events, its just not clear to me where iowans are going. I will make one more point about that. In our most recent data, 62 of sanders voters say they are unlikely to change their minds. 56 of biden. But 39 of buttigieg, 33 of warren, and 33 of klobuchar voters say they are certain about who they are voting for. A lot of Movement Still possible here. As the reporter on this stage, i can tell you what number is going to be reported, and that is the one we have first. I think the intention is to release it all at the same time. Whether they will be able to or not, i dont know. This gets into our discussion earlier about not turning it into a primary with New Hampshires concerns. Will the Iowa Democratic party have this information, but sit on it until they have the delegate equivalent number and release it all at the same time . The problem with that is that the caucuses are open events. Reporters can go to caucuses and watch the count themselves and have anecdotally some idea of what that initial body count is. But reporters are going to be standing on deadlines, editors, producers, news directors, will be screaming at them, whats going on . And you go with the first information you get, and that shapes the narrative the rest of the evening. That has happened with every caucus i have covered. The republican story in 2012 is a great example. Because they went with romney because that is what the party told them, but that is not actually what happened. In 2016, i sat in the dia center watching the frustration as midnight came and the democrats had not reported results yet. The party ntendo ito report all of the numbers at the same time. But we will see if that actually happens. This whole issue of this count is one of the biggest criticisms that is made and has been made of these caucuses from the very beginning. The counts are spotty, sporadic, they are not like a primary that is run by government, they are run by parties. And s one of the big criticisms. And it is one of the big criticisms. Dennis, i didnt mean to leave you out of the conversation. It is quite fine. Sometime this past fall, a reporter asked me, what surprises do you expect . And i said, listen to what you just asked me. [laughter] if it is a surprise, you cant expect it. If we expect it, it is not a surprise. I love what journalists do. I wish we still had newspapers, but i am not interested in the journalistic prediction of who will come in where. I have a broader interest. I dont want to hijack your question, but i am more interested in the water than the fish swimming in it. I think what we see right now with the democrats is a continuation of the problem, for democrats of the problem for democrats, is they still have not figured out who they are in a postreagan era. In the 1990s, i went back and looked at National Party platforms. I looked at the 1992 democratic platform, clinton, republican platform for george h. W. I didnt look at ross perot. I always thought of him a sort of a historical speedbump. But i went back then and i looked back at the 1968 platforms, humphrey, nixon and george wallace, whom some see President Trump as the latest iteration after pat buchanan in between. If you exclude Foreign Affairs, it was all about vietnam. If you look at social and domestic policy from 1968 and look at 1992, when Foreign Affairs at that point were not a big issue, we didnt have 9 11 yet, the soviet union was going. Was gone. The 1992 democratic platform looked very much like the 1968 republican platform in terms of social and domestic policy. And the 1992 republican platform looked very much like the 1968 wallace platform. And democrats are still trying to figure out who they are and how to talk about politics beyond just laundry lists of policies. And i think that we see that right now in this argument. There is a mirror image going on in the democratic side as we did with ted cruz and republicans in 2016. You have the warrens and the for as arguing basically kind of base election, that we need to win the election by turning out progressives. I hate the terms left and right, but the more progressive kind of liberal. Whereas youve got the bidens, the buttigieges, and the klobuchars saying that there is still a kind of centrist liberalism that will win the election. I think thats the big argument right now that we see between those two sets of candidates, and we see that playing out to some extent here in iowa. How that will play out on election night, i dont know more than anyone else. I just want to say one brief thing. One other thing i think it could that could impact this race is what is going on in the middle east. It impacted the 2004 race with john kerry. And so, if there is an International Crisis and that is still looming above us and if that ratchetes up, that could help joe biden because hes typically perceived as the person with the most international experience. I see heads nodding. You agree with that. Venezuela now has finally admitted that maduro is a dictator, because they just shut down the legislature. No more opposition elections. And mr. Guaido, who is the president of venezuela of the democratic constituency of venezuela, is now finished. I work with a lot of my former venezuelan students on the venezuela democracy project, and this is the end of that. Especially since the Trump Administration will concentrate on the middle east now. You know, venezuela is too much struggle. Those are all Foreign Policy challenges. Is there agreement here that the foreignpolicy crisis kelly, what do you think, doesnt work does it work to bidens benefit . I think it works to bidens benefit and perhaps buttigiegs benefit as well. In there he it should work to some of the others as well. Why buttigieg . Because of his military experience, and a fair amount of his stump speech is related to being a leader in the world and kind of that moral american authority. But i think that americans have a short Attention Span for things that arent in the united states. So i think some of the economic arguments that are appealing warren sideders and of the party will continue to be important. It really depends. If the situation with iran escalates to the point of we are in a war, that is an advantage for biden, but short of now we are in a war, i dont think it will matter all that much. All that much to most voters. What do you think . I think that what the democrats may be forced into thinking by all the activity that we see around the world is that their desire to get rid of trump and to remove him from office will lead them to support whichever candidate appears through the information that is available as most likely to be able to do that. At this point, it is biden. So electability . Electability, and beyond just electability, there is an existential sort of notion that trump has to be removed, and i think Many Democrats will determine that biden, even if he is not their preferred candidate, may be the only option. In regard that, of course, typically there is a rally around the flag effect with president s if we get into some sort of war. Whether that would occur in this particular case, i dont know. But in terms of this idea of removing President Trump from office, there has been an assumption in republican politics for quite a number of years now that no democrat can win an honest and legitimate election. And the corollary to that is if the democrat appears to have won, then it must not have been on honest and legitimate election. An honest and legitimate election. If any of these people happened to beat President Trump, there is going to be tremendous blowback. Remember in 2016, i think this process is rigged anyway. Democrats have to face that as well. The fact is, no matter who wins the election, there will be blowback from the losing side. So the democrats should pick someone who will lose the election so there is no blowback . No, im not saying that. Donna hoffman, i want to go back to something you said earlier about the republicans, and them having caucuses, too. Why . Party building . Well, yes. Now, every party, when they have an incumbent president and even in the midyear elections, the parties have caucuses. These are twoyear events. Not fouryear events, we should remember. Typically when you have an election like this, compared to the democrats in 2012, the party diehards will come, but you know that obama will get the nomination. We can pretty much assume trump will get the nomination, but the party, the democrats in 2012 for instance, didnt squash opposition if there was any at a caucus to obama. The republicans are running up to that line in some ways. So we have both walsh and weld. Both of them have experience, they are legitimate candidates in that sense challenging trump, that will be present in those rooms. What kind of percentage will they get, if any, in some of these precincts . They will get some in some places, and it will be interesting to see where the support that is not trump comes from and how strong it is. And i think those are some things, those are data points that will get lost because the attention will be on the democratic side. But i think theres a lot of interesting things that could happen on the republican side related to that, potentially some platform issues, but those are secondary. I am glad you mentioned that. Because the caucuses have an effect beyond just the president ial race. All politics is local. First of all, they are an important organizing tool. You mentioned 1984. Senator harkin once told me one of the reasons he won in 1984 was that the democrats had a spirited president ial caucus that year, and he had a wonderful list of names of activists in every precinct and corner of the state, and the republicans didnt have a similar caucus battle. Reagan was getting reelected. And so, senator harkin said that was really a pivotal thing. The proof of that is that on caucus night in 1984, that day, president reagan came to iowa and flew into eastern iowa, i think it was waterloo, but i could be wrong. Did an event, and then flew into the des moines market. Air force one left iowa 30 minutes before the republican caucuses started, which was really brilliant. It sucked all the oxygen of the day away from the democrats and gave it to the republicans. I would not be surprised to see air force one in iowa on february 3. If it happens, it is a page out of reagans book. David, i think that is a really important point. This time around, the democrats are organizing, the democrats have the list, the democrats are knocking on everybodys door in the state apparently, and there are a lot of them, so there are a lot of staff and volunteers. The republicans, even though they will hold a caucus, none of that is happening on the republican side. This may have real repercussions for the senate race in iowa in 2020, for the congressional races, all of which are likely to be competitive races. The democrats will be better organized, at least at the front end. And there is a real battle for control of the iowa house of representatives. The legislature. All politics is local. I appreciate the audience member who called that organizing issue to our attention. So, what happens now . Who gets what tickets . We talk about who gets tickets out of iowa. I wonder, in this age of money in politics, in the age of social media, if that old rule still works . Because it is not three tickets out of iowa. Everybody has got their own airplane to leave iowa. [laughter] you know, say sanders, biden, and buttigieg finish in the top three, Elizabeth Warren gets a fourth ticket out of iowa, the fact is, these candidates have so much money now that the original premise in iowa was that you came here, you ran, you do well, it helps you to raise money to go on to New Hampshire. Now these candidates have my to have enough money to sustain these campaigns long after iowa. What is the big deal with iowa now if they have plenty of money . Well the big deal right now is this is what the media has to cover, in addition to Everything Else going on in the middle east and the world. This is the first thing they are covering. There is attention on iowa, because when you want to cover politics, we are first. Like someone said, it is not because we earned it, it is because we are there. The media will cover it. Because things are so divided, there is not a clearcut leader. We have the top three people tied. And so, if that comes out of iowa, this year there will be at least four tickets that come out of iowa. And i agree it will probably be the top four right now. You know, someone said the other day, sanders raised 34 million this quarter. That is enough to finance this campaign clear through june. From 2008, he will do that. I think the other thing that will happen is, bloomberg has moved up in the National Poll and is basically buying his way into it. I think there is going to be a bigger impact this year. In the first four states, we could say all sorts of different results. It could be after we get past those first four states and go into super tuesday, the democratic race will still be fairly muddled. That is important. Two things have changed since the Iowa Caucuses started. One, the arrival of social media as a campaign tool. And secondly, citizens united, which lifted the cork on money. This is just so much more money sloshing around politics. You take that plus the ability to raise money over the internet and small dollars, it changes a lot of the premises for why you wanted to come to iowa and get a ticket out of here. You know, i resent the idea that the more money you have, the better chance you have of winning. Because that is not necessarily the case. I mean obviously, if that is the equation, then there are two billionaires running, they should win in iowa and New Hampshire, South Carolina. And so on. It is personality, it is connection, it is tradition, it is history. And, you know, in New Hampshire, i have a property in New Hampshire, i spend a lot of time there in the summers, the equation is not very different from iowa. Plus, i was going to say, new hampshirites also expect every contender to come to their town and their house and their veteran of the foreign wars place. I mean, i go nuts because they come banging on my door on my cabin when i am trying to look at the sunset or something. So, you know, i am not sure that money is necessarily what is going to get somebody the denomination. The nomination. And that is actually, it is not money because you need to delegates. And if you do not get at least 15 support in primaries as well as the caucus, you win no delegates. This is across every democratic event. It is not unique to the Iowa Caucuses. So if four people are coming out of iowa at 20 each, maybe a little more, there is nothing left for anybody else in terms of winning delegates. So they may continue zombie campaigns with all their money for a while, but they will have no realistic shot at actually winning the nomination. But as we talked about earlier, if they are not counting, if many people are not counting delegates, but are counting initial preferences right, but the media does not decide the nominee. You need a majority of the delegates at the Democratic National convention. No matter what the media is telling us, the issue is how many delegates have you won in each state, and if you do not get at least 15 of the vote at the Congressional District or the state level vote, you will have zero delegates from that state. Dennis. Dennis there is a third fact that you mentioned. A third factor. I dont have the answer, i would just pose it. Have the dncs debate criteria and this whole series of debates had an impact on the caucuses . Have they diminished the importance of the caucuses or amplified them or not bothered them at all . Carcasses . It seems to me there is something important there to look at. I think it is like a parallel track that in terms of coverage, my initial thought is that it has dampened somewhat. David y i think it has diminished the rule of iowa. It is the dncs debate rules on the field, not a bunch of people in smalltown iowa expressing their preferences. Dennis yeah. David y what does anybody else think . I agree. I think it diminished the effect of the caucuses and made it difficult for candidates who maybe could get a foothold in iowa without a lot of money are now having to focus on getting these one dollar donations to get on a debate stage to maintain viability for a National Campaign have pushed them out on the field. I think cory booker has hung on, but i think he is an example of one that is on the bubble. Castro, gillibrand, some of these candidates that could have done better in iowa have been kind of forced to spend time doing other stuff the party decided they should do. Im skeptical that the debates have had much of an impact. I suspect as we run up to the caucus date, the focus on iowa will be so overwhelming that any memory of the debates will have dissipated. And if you recall from the debates, it was harris who had the big moment, and in the second or third debate, castro had his big breakout moment, and they are both gone. I think your characterization is a parallel track, maybe more correct. I also think the fact that the democrats have lined up in sequence for different events around the country has also diminished the singular importance of iowa to some extent. One thing is, in an effort to diminish the significance of iowa, other states have moved their contests closer to iowa. This has been a pattern. The unintended consequence of that historically has been to simply make iowa that much more important because the only way a candidate is going to compete in california for example is through media. That is the way they do politics there. Where do you get media if you do not have a big budget . You win iowa. There is free media. The bounce that comes out of these early states does have an impact. We have candidates that seem to be wellfunded, even klobuchar, who is running the risk of finishing fourth or below in the first couple of contests, has money to hang on to the super tuesday, and we have this novel contribution of bloomberg being able to wait until super tuesday to make his entrance. And so what i think that does is it iowa will be important, we will talk about it until the day after iowa, then we will talk about New Hampshire up until the day after New Hampshire, then we will turn to South Carolina. And at that point, the wedding that has traditionally been done the winning that has traditionally been done by iowa will be done by the first three or four with nevada. Before super tuesday. One factor that enters into this question about should iowa be first and the role it plays is, some candidate is going to win the white house. And some partys is going to lose. The winning candidate is likely to be someone who has come through this path. And they are sitting in the white house and saying why do we want to mess around with changing the rules of the game we just won . In fact, we are sitting in the white house, we will make sure we do well and attend our fences in iowa to make sure we dont get ambushed by a challenge of the primary. As kennedy found with carter, as bill clinton found when he just shut down and talked of a Jesse Jackson primary in 1996 over welfare reform. They do not want to change the rules. They want the party out of power that just lost, two things happen. There is a debate, are we better off with a moderate message or a more extreme message . Liberal and the Democratic Party, conservative and the Republican Party, so there is that argument over why they lost. The second reason they conclude they lost is iowa. Who gave us this turkey . And they blame iowa. There is where you have the argument and the churning begins for making reforms. They go to the National Convention where they change the rules to the next convention. And the other thing that happens is, the two nominees go to the people who want to change the process and say look, we got our job is to worry about the november election. It is not to worry about the process in four years. So forget talking about iowa and New Hampshire and these early states. We have to keep our eye on the ball. New hampshire certainly is a battleground state, iowa may be. We do not want to alienate those people. Ad inertia. You never reach a consensus in america on how this process ought to be changed. There are two criticisms. I know you agree with this. Iowa is not diverse enough, how did barack obama win the Iowa Caucuses . The democrats have an incredibly liberal perspective in this state. That is the only thing that counts. The ethnic composition of the state and there are a lot of latinos and africanamericans here. But if obama had not won the caucuses is in iowa, i doubt he would have won the nomination. It credentialed him that a state with a lot of nonblack and hispanic voters trusted him. And the other thing is the argument that iowa makes the caucuses so complicated i got an email from a very famous iowa political consultant. People cannot afford to go for two hours at night and participate in caucuses because you know they are busy and so on. That is why the Iowa Caucuses turn out only about 10 of eligible voters. Well, the pew center has great statistics. Primaries do not turn out many more voters. A lot of primaries are maybe 12 , maybe 15 . Then we have this big academic argument, how you do statistics on turnout. Forget about it. Academics are crazy that way. The truth of the matter is that going and stopping at a polling place in wherever it is and voting in a primary, and not having to spend two hours in a caucus, and only taking 10 or 15 minutes to vote in a primary is also too difficult for most people, or they are just not interested in politics. Iowa does not really suppress the percentage of people who participate. It does suppress the people who participate. Right . Because the people who cannot get off work to spend two hours doing a caucus or cannot get childcare or paper cut childcare to do that tends to be people of lower socioeconomic groups, more likely to be women, more likely to be people of color. When you are in a state already that is very white and you are suppressing the number of people of color that can go vote, that is disenfranchising that group of people. The other thing is just because iowa selected obama does not mean that the people in this country are well represented by iowa caucusgoers, because we have different life experiences. Is iowa a good place for women candidates . I would say no. Until this last cycle, and kelly winfrey, i retired when she was getting ready to run, finally iowa this year has gone up to one third of the women, that one third of the legislature is women. For those of us doing work in iowa, kelly has done it since she has come here, getting women to run in iowa and successfully we had a lot of success in 2018, but there was success around the country. We raised iowa was finally over 25 of its legislature in my first time here. By the time i retired, we got to 33 . That is hard work by organizations for recruiting and supporting women. Also in 2018, like the rest of the country, we were able to elect sydney and then abby finkenauer. We elected a woman governor. He looked good now. Those of us in the state for a long time, it is a tough sell. I cant tell you how many people in 2008 wanted to elect a woman president , but Hillary Clinton wasnt perfect enough. The rural cities in iowa which tend to be more progressive have more influence because the rural areas are very conservative in terms of women as well. There is an argument that has been made that the caucuses are undemocratic. Those are valid criticisms. There is also another side of that coin which is the caucuses are very democratic. In the sense that states that primaries are doing the same things at the end of the day that we are doing in iowa. They are electing delegates to the National Conventions. They are electing Party Leadership and platform planks. It happens in a different way and it is probably Smaller Party activists who are doing that in primary states because most people think, i am going to go to the candidate, vote for my candidate, and it is done. That is not actually what you are doing. Whether it is in iowa or a primary state, you are going to an event and electing delegates to go to the next level of conventions. It mirrors the indirect process of a National Election with the electoral college. If we think about little d democracy, when i teach a class and we talk about grassroots democracy, what do we hold up as the, you know, pivotal thing . New england town halls. This is like a new england town hall. It is regrettable that there are people who cannot come to those meetings. And those have real implications. But at the same time, this is where deliberation takes place, it is where civic discussion takes place, it is where Party Governance takes place. That sometimes gets lost in talking about some of the antidemocratic nature of the caucuses. But at the same time, there are other democratic aspects of them as well that we also need to factor in. Democracy in states where these things are not taking place, those decisions are being made by a smaller pool of party activists. David. David r what donna just said, but let me add, i have done a real politics in new jersey. I was a local elected official. I did activists politics and in iowa. Even as an elected official, i had no involvement in the state platform or decisions made by the state party. It was definitely a small group of people, of insiders. I came to iowa in 1999. A couple of months after getting here, i was chairing my first precinct caucus and we were having discussions about the platform and sending things forward and so on and so forth, just a kind of reiterate donnas point. I also want to note, no one can argue that iowa voters are descriptively representative of american voters, of democrats, even republicans. You just cannot make that argument. It is absolutely true. No one can argue that the caucuses do not make it difficult for some people to participate. On that point it is a real shame at the Democratic National committee i think unnecessarily spiked the virtual caucus, which uld have provided an opportunity for participating outside of the set time and physical location. But Iowa Democrats at least, and to some degree republicans, but more democrats in our research are highly represented, those who caucus, when it is a large turnout, as it was in 2008, are highly representative of Iowa Democratic voters as a whole, including on gender, and are ideologically representative of the Democratic Party as a whole nationally. So one of the push backs on this, you know, we have a bunch of white guys left, the nonwhite candidates were also not doing well in South Carolina, where independent campaigns are going on not directly influenced by iowa but by the campaigning. 60 of democratic voters in South Carolina are africanamerican, but none of the nonwhite candidates in South Carolina were pulling more than a couple of percent. It is not a unique situation to iowa that nonwhite candidates have not been doing well. I do think it matters here. I do think in fact there is always some issues revolving around race and gender. But i do not think that is the reason to say iowa should not play the role it plays. I had a huge argument with david y i want to let Dennis Dennis i was going to say a version of what david said. In 2008, when we did the caucus book, i looked precisely at the issue. Yes, iowa is not demographically representative of the country as a whole. However, looking at 2008, Iowa Democrats, though somewhat more dovish than democrats nationwide, pretty well tracked democrats nationwide in terms of what they thought the most important issues were. Iowa republicans were moderately more prolife than republicans nationwide. But they too pretty much tracked where republicans were nationwide. Demography is not necessarily destiny. David y i want to switch gears here in the time we have remaining. One of the things i want to talk about, we sort of handicapped the race and how we see that playing out this is a big field of candidates. Some of them are young enough that they will be around for future campaigns. It is true, many president s get there on their second or third go. Nixon, reagan. Who in this field of candidates impresses you as someone who may not win, but who is going to be in good shape to run again or becomes comes out of this campaign as an enhanced political figure in america who winds up in the cabinet of the next president or is an enhanced figure . Who is going to be some of the people, may lose on caucus night but will be longerterm winners . The obvious choice is of course buttigieg. His name had been bandied about by democrats, but clearly his ability to mount a National Campaign as the mayor of south bend has been impressive. It would suggest he will have a future, although if he does not win and the democrats do not take the white house, exactly where he will be spending this time and what platform will be available to him is uncertain. Castro is another person who, although did not do particularly well this time around, may be able to reformulate his approach and do better next time. But again, there is just so much uncertainty even between now and caucus day, i hesitate to write anybody in or anybody off. David y we are forecasters. I have not gone to the 2020 for race, which has already started 2024 race, which has already started in this state. Any names of candidates who are not doing well but you impressed impressed you as people who could be distance runners . Donna there were some who dropped out of that were impressive. Kamala harris made a decision to drop out when she did to not put more resources into the race, to focus on her senate job. Potentially beto orourke i think probably still has things to do. Whether he alienated people or not is maybe a question. With regard even with the people who are not in the race, you have a lot of people who could be chosen for cabinet positions, vice presidency for example. One thing to factor in with the senators in the race, if you have a sitting senator who will be tapped for a cabinet position or Vice President , what are the rules within that state for the appointment process . The senate is in contention. If the republicans have more seats to defend than the democrats do this time around. There will be factors in those calculations. David y any other names come up . The obvious ones are Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris will be you know back. My prediction will be, there will be a woman or a person of color or both on the democratic ticket in one place or another. I will put cory booker as someone we will see more of. I think he is a great vp pick as well. I have been impressed by him. I think he could be an energetic bottom half of the ticket. David y dianne, to your point about it is likely a woman or person of color, Amy Klobuchar comes to mind as someone whose name gest mentioned a lot as a good ticket balancer. Dianne kind of getting to that, i like cory booker, but if the nominee is going to be someone from the east coast, unless it is buttigieg, that is what it looks like right now, then i think the tendency to want to pick someone from the midwest or the southwest another person we havent talked about is stacey abrams. Her name has been bandied about as well and she is a very persuasive speaker. She did a great state of the Union Response in 2018. And so or was it 2019, yeah. She is another person. David y on the republican side, no matter what the outcome of the Iowa Caucuses is in 2020, in 2024, republicans will have to come up with a candidate. Either President Trump is finishing his second term or the democrats have won and republicans will need a candidate. Dennis, what sort of republican candidates look like people who might be people who could do well in iowa . Dennis we have seen nikki haley coming out here. Sure, holly from missouri, senator seems to have an interest, possibly mike lee from utah. Ttonsenator cotton from arkansas. You know, the big name there for the republicans, is it going to be trumpism without trump, or are they going to move in a different direction . They could face their own kind of political civil war after trump. David y we will have to have another panel in four years. There you go. Marco rubio. David y marco rubio . He has been in the news a lot. Explaining what is going on and not quite on trumps side. He is a good speaker and very charismatic. Obviously he is a latino. Just real quickly, democrats still have not finished the generational shift that republicans started some time ago. I mean, if you do the math roughly speaking, Pete Buttigieg could wait eight president ial cycles to run and still be younger than Bernie Sanders an biden and warren are now. Democrats still have to that generational shift. The republicans are ahead of them in it. David y steffen. Steffen, i thought you had i thought i saw your hand. Diannei think nikki haley on the republican side. There have been predictions that a first woman president will be a republican rather than a democrat. I think she is positioning herself. There is big rumors in nebraska that ben sasse is trying to position himself for a run. Again, coming out of the more he was kind of a trump critic but has dampened that criticism and actually was endorsed by trump for a senate campaign. David y why do you say the first woman president may affect in fact more likely to be republican . Dianne i am going to have to go back there has just been i think the way the process is in the Republican Party over the Democratic Party, winner take all type of thing, the way the democrat do it, it is this kind of confusing matter of splitting up delegates. Kelly i think has kelly i was going to add, the process tends to favor republicans, but also republican women tend to be viewed as more moderate than democratic women. Democratic women seem to are often viewed as the most liberal of the party by sex component. So if you are going to get a woman elected, you got to get a lot of people on board. Somebody more moderate is likely to that. Having said that, there are republican women that are extremely conservative these days that would have a hard time. Someone like nikki haley might be able to walk that line. David y donna. Nobody things mike pence might be thinking about running in 2024 . He did visit the same flood twice here. We have to include him. He would do well. He could be a midwestern regional favorite, just like in the past. A lot depends on obviously whether trump wins reelection or not this time in terms of whether pence is damaged or not going into 2024. But it is true the Republican Party is going to have a debate. It is going to start here over what it is, what it stands for the post trump era. Correct. David y donna, go back to diannes comment about the first woman president is likely to be a republican. Do you agree or disagree . Donna i think it is probably a tossup. There is a valid argument. We can look at joni ernst in the state of iowa being the first elected female senator in that sense. One i would not also discount on the republican side, will heard, the only africanamerican republican who is retiring actually because he is in a very tough district. He is scheduled to visit New Hampshire coming up. And obviously that is not for this cycle. But a similar kind of argument, we could see another africanamerican president , and it might actually be a republican, and he would be the one positioned at this point to go down that path and at least explore where we are going there. And so you know, those are things that we cannot discount in terms of thinking about the Republican Coalition of not being very diverse, yet you could have the capabilities of some candidates within that coalition to be diverse and still excel, because nikki haley, will hurd, they are people of color or female or both, they could try to unite that coalition what happens after donald trump . I think that is the key question here. As you go forward, is it going to be the party of trump continuing or Something Different . The republicans have not made that decision yet, i dont think. David y we are nearing the end of our time. I want to ask if anybody has closing thoughts or comments about this question of iowa and being first. Maybe what, what should iowa be doing to hold onto its place or what is the alternative . A National Primary . How about doing the caucuses on a saturday evening . Any thought about those kinds of questions . A National Primary is not a viable alternative. There are a lot of issues involved in that that we cannot get into. The real question is, what happens in 2020 . If donald trump wins reelection, i think the Iowa Caucuses are in really serious trouble and that point, because the democrats will continue to be arguing about whether the system works. The new rules are meant to open it up more. There will be additional pressure, a political ideological thing to have accessibility for democrats. And i honestly am not sure the caucuses can survive that for 2024. If trump loses and the democrat who wins runs again in 2024, whatever democrats want about the caucuses will be irrelevant and it will be the republicans who drive it. They do not have the political ideological position about opening up the caucuses, about making them more accessible. They dont have that battle. In that case republican caucuses continue on. David r it has been true as i mentioned earlier. The losing party always has a debate over the message and its process. If the democrats lose, there will be more arguments about iowas role in this process. Any other comments . Dianne i agree with david. But if democrats lose, there is going to be continuing pressure, i think, among Democratic Party members in this country to do Something Different. Because there seems to be a lot of unhappiness. You see it on the media all the time, you know, about iowa. No matter how we argue that our caucusgoers turn out to be more representative of the total Democratic Party, which i think they are, it is also about expanding the vote. You see that now with the rising electorate. No matter what you want to say i know we are running out of time, but the two states that had both a caucus and primary were washington and nebraska. In nebraska 34,000 people voted in the caucus. In the nonbinding primary, there were 80,000 people. In washington state, 800,000 people voted in the primary and about 300,000 showed up for the caucus. So you know, i think if we are about expanding the electorate, a caucus does not do that. David y i want to thank all of you for taking time to be here and participate in these discussions. I would like to thank the state of Iowa Historical Museum for sponsoring this. I would like to thank cspan for covering this event. I would like to thank all of you in this audience for spending time with us today. Thank you all for being here. We are adjourned. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] our Live Campaign 2020 coverage continues on thursday with President Donald Trump in toledo, ohio at a keep America Great rally. Watch live on cspan2, ondemand on cspan. Org or listen on the go with the free cspan radio app. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning, discussing escalating iran tensions with don bacon. California democratic congresswoman barbara lee and williams. Orrespondent watch washington journal, live wednesday morning. Join the discussion. Wednesday in the british house of commons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson takes questions from members. This is also the first question time since the conservative party secured a full majority in the house of commons. See it live on cspan2. Here is a get our live coverage on wednesday on cspan. Eastern forat 10 00 general speeches followed by legislative business at noon for work on legislative dealings with 5g technology. 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