President trump holds a keep America Great rally in toledo, ohio. Watch live this evening on cspan 2, online at cspan. Org, or listen live with the cspan radio app. Next, a panel of political analysts on their predictions for iowas first in the nation president ial caucuses. This was held in des moines. Id like to have everybody take their seats, please. And id 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, whos ahead, whos behind. To aid in that discussion im going to report we have breaking news. 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. Thats iowa . No, cbs news. But the state. Iowa, yes. Thats the race in iowa. And buttigieg also 23 . Yeah. See, i was right . Its the battleground tracker. Three white guys. Yes, you were. All right. I want to start. Pam, ill start with you. How do you see this race . You watch it from your perch there 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 sort of the impression i have which is that we really dont know what will happen on caucus night, that there are lots of different scenarios and several candidates who clearly seem to have enough support in the state that is showing up. One of the things i would want to caution people and david and some of the other people here on the panel can talk about this, is that survey work is very difficult these days. Its difficult to get people to respond. Its difficult because of landlines versus cell phones, difficult to try to predict whos going to show up on caucus night. And of course if you have weather like today, turn out may be great. And if weather is terrible, which it never seems to be on caucus night but theres always that potential, and particularly if its one part of the state rather than another part, that could have a big impact. I think all we can tell you from the surveys that have been done so far is that its really not at all clear whats going to happen caucus night. And for those of us that 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 we have no better guess than you do. Kelly winfrey. I have all the answers. No, im just kidding. Please share. Im keeping those, and ill tell you february 4th. No, i completely agree. Were all guessing at this point. And polling especially when you think about who will show up that night is pretty important. And that has changed outcomes of both iowa caucus results and general elections of who shows up. I think its interesting that dianne was exactly right, the three toppolling people are white men. We have two qualified women running. Im curious to see how it shakes out. I think one of the most interesting things will be how those second choice picks come because there is support for booker. There is support for yang. Theres support for klobuchar. They probably wont be viable in a lot of presipgts. So, where they go can have a big impact. If they all go to warren, then its a fourway tie. If they call go to biden, its a run away victory for biden. That second place is going to have a big impact on what the final results are. Explain why the second place showing in a poll is important to whats going to happen on caucus night. Well, the second the second when i say second place, i mean your second choice at the precinct. Yeah, thats what i mean. Yeah. 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 whatever you make your first pick, if you dont have 15 of the people there supporting that candidate, the candidate is considered not viable. One of two things have to happen. Either a, you need to get more people to reach that threshold to become viable, or b, go to your second choice. It used to be there could be more alignments and people could do movement. This time theres one realignment. Thats going to limit things. Maybe i feel good about yang. Hes not viable. Now i have to vote not my heart, but my head, and that might be biden. I think thats going to cause a lot of shifting. What do you say to reporters calling you up saying how do you see this race . Well, i think the highly contested republican, donald trump, will win that. Unless something happens between now and caucus night in iran that, you know, really shocks people. You have to look at National Polls as well as iowa. I mean, iowas influential. But very, very famous political analyst and journalist once said that there are three tickets out of iowa. I think that was you. First class, second class, and the back of the cabin next to the toilet. But if youre seated next to the toilet and the year is not the right year for the first and second class iowa caucus placers, you may end up getting the nomination. You may 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 that 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 had nothing to do with it. You left and the thing just collapsed. But i argue that 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 on the floor. That would be the greatest thing in my life to see that happen because it would be democracy on the floor. You dont mean literally fighting . Maybe literally. My money is on buttigieg in that case. This is the last year iowa has caucuses, and maybe theres going to be a brokered convention. You heard it here. To kind of play again i did predict earlier without hearing from cbs news that the three top vote getters in iowa were the three white guys. Getting back to what i said earlier, one of the things i worry about with the Iowa Caucuses is that its it diminishes the choices for other states. So, you know, you see this. But i think kelly made a good point and i was glad to know when i talked about caucus math earlier and how candidates have been able to use it, thats not going to be as easy for them this year. You have to put your second choice and stick with it. I think ive seen recent data on sanders supporters basically on their donation giving. So action for example earlier in this campaign, you might give to biden but also given to warren and might have given to buttigieg. What you see with sanders supporters is they typically dont have a second choice. So, i think what could happen as kelly just said is with the second choice on the candidates that are not going to be viable, who do they flock to . I think well see flocking to biden, buttigieg, and warren. Sure. So, i think theres a couple of things to keep in mind here. One, this race is incredibly fluid. I think the other people that have talked about it, thats a good way to characterize it. Its fluid. There are a lot of people. Theres a wealth of candidates for the democrats. A lot of people have a first choice but they also have a second choice. Polling has showed theyre relatively open to changing their mind. And the dynamics of caucus night could do that. Now, id like to push back on what steffen said about brokered conventions. I think thats a thing to talk about. But i think its probably rarely going to happen because its not in a partys interest to get to that point. Even in 2008 when you had Hillary Clinton and barack obama going down to june that was really late they didnt go into the convention because especially if youre going to run against an incumbent president , its not in the partys interesting to do that. The party will do the things they need to do to try to eliminate that. Talking about the rule changes in the earlier part of the session here, one of the other things the democrats have done have changed how super delegates are going to factor into that as well. But the third thing i would like to mention here is to not forget that the gop has caucuses also. You could learn really interesting things by looking at the gop caucus. The die hard gop people are the ones in years where they have incumbents tend to go. But there may be people who want to show dissatisfaction. It is notable that the iowa gop has not cancelled their caucuses. The gop in many other states have cancelled their 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 this process as being rigged for the incumbent president , so there will be gop caucuses. And also note for both the democrats and the gop at a caucus its more than just saying heres the candidate i like. Its also about elevating platform planks. It is also about governance within the party, electing people to central committees and those kind of things. These are important factors that the National Media never really reports on at all. But these are important in what caucuses are and the nature of them as well. David redlawsk. I might want to share with our audience that youve been spending time since august really doing Field Research going from event to event watching these candidates at work. So, whats your stance of whos ahead and whos behind . Yeah, ive been here since the head of the state fair and have been tweeting as i go, live tweeting it, mainly to keep notes for myself. Its 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 were 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, 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 actually can 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. That is to have at least 15 to get a delegate. That can no longer be done. When people come into their Democratic Caucus and they 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 count 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 medias going to have three different dmunumbers to w with. Im not quite sure where theyre going to go with it. I was looking at the cbs poll where theyre emphasizing the number of delegates each candidate would win if the numbers in the poll hold. But i suspect on caucus night, the fall backs going to be whats the note look like. The question is going to be is that 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 shell get zero in the precincts on the realigned vote. But shell have had votes in the initial alignment. Im saying this to say its a lot more complicated to say this and b to talk because even after 85 plus events, its just not clear to me where iowanss are going. Ill take one other point about that. In our most recent data, 62 of sanders voters say theyre unlikely to change their mind. 56 of biden. But 39 of buttigieg, 33 of warren, and only 30 of klobuchar voters they theyre certain about who theyre voting for. Theres a lot of Movement Still possible here. David, as the reporter on this stage, i can tell you what number is going to be reported. And thats the one we have first. I think the idps intention is to release it all at the same time. Whether theyll be able to do that, i dont know. This gets into our discussion earlier about not turning this into a primary and 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 caucuses are open events. Reporters can go to caucuses and watch the count themselves and have anecdotely some idea of what that initial body count is. But theres reporters are going to be standing on deadlines, editors and producers and news directors will be screaming at them. Whats going on . And you go with the first information youve got. And that shaped the narrative the whole rest of the evening. That has happened in every caucus that i have covered. Well, the republican story in 2012 is a great example of that because they went with romney because thats what the party told them. But that wasnt actually what had happened. And in 2016, i sat in the media center watching the frustration as midnight came and the democrats had not actually reported their results yet. The party does intend to report all of the numbers at the same time. But well see if that actually happens. And this whole issue of this count is one of the reasons one of the biggest criticisms that is made and has been made of these caucuses from the very beginning. Theres body, their sporadic, theyre not like a primary which is run by government. Theyre run by parties. And it is one of the big criticisms that we have. Dennis, i didnt mean to leave you out of the conversation. Its 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. If its a surprise, you cant expect it. If we expect it, its not a surprise. I love what journalists do. I wish we still had newspapers. But im not interested in the journalistic prediction of whos going to come in where. Ive got a broader interest. I dont want to hijack your question, but i think im more interested in the water than the fish swimming in it. And i think that what we see right now with the democrats is a continuation 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 i looked at National Party platforms. I looked at the 92 democratic platform, clinton, republican, gorge h. W. I didnt look at ross perot. I saw him as a historical speed bump. But i looked at the 1968 platforms, humphrey, nixon, and George Wallace who President Trump is seen as the latest iteration after pat buchanan in between. If you exclude Foreign Affairs, if you look at social and domestic policy from 68 and then look at 92 when Foreign Affairs at that point werent a big issue, we didnt have 9 11 yet, the soviet union was gone, the 92 democratic platform looked much like the 68 republican platform in terms of social and domestic policy. And the 92 republican platform looked much like the 68 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. I said theres a mirror image going on in the democratic side that we saw with say cruz and the republicans in 16. Youve got the warrens and the sanders arguing basically for a kind of base election, right . That we need to win the election by getting out, turning out progressives. And the i hate the terms left and right. But the more progressive kind of liberal. Whereas youve got the bidens and the buttigiegs and the klobuchars saying no theres a centrist liberalism thats going to win the election. I think thats the big argument right now we see between those two sets of candidates and we see that playing out to some extent here in iowa. Again, how that will play out election night, i dont have any more of a clue than anybody else. I think one of the things that could impact this race is whats going on in the middle east. It impacted the 2004 race i believe with john kerry. So, if theres an International Crisis and thats still looming above us, i think that could help joe biden because i think hes perceived as the person with the most International Na 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 is going to concentrate on the middle east now. You know, venezuela too much trouble. So, those are all Foreign Policy challenges. Is there agreement here that the Foreign Policy crisis, kelly, what do you think, works to bidens benefit . I think it works to bidens benefit and perhaps buttigiegs benefit as well. In theory, it should work towards the benefit of some of the other senators running. Why buttigieg . Because of his military experience and because of 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, especially for things that arent in the united states. So, i think some of the economic arguments that are appealing from the standards and warrens side of the party is going to be important. It depends if the situation with iran escalates to a point of where were in a war, then that becomes an advantage for biden. But short of we are now this a war, i dont think its going to matter all that much to most voters. Pev squires, what do you think . I think what the democrats may be forced into thinking by all the active 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 through whichever candidate that appears to be able to do that. At this point, its biden. So, electability. Electability. And beyond just electability, theres an extense shl notion that trump has to be removed. And i think Many Democrats will determine that biden, even if hes not their preferred candidate, may be the only option. Middle east, real quick. In regard to that, theres 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 eterms of this idea of removing President Trump from office, there has been an assumption in republican politics for, i think, quite a number of years now that no democrat can win an honest and legitimate election. And the corollary to that is if a democrat appears to have won, then it must not have been an honest and legitimate election. So, if any of these people happen to at least, what we see, beat President Trump. Theres going to be tremendous blow back arguing remember his concern even in 16, oh, i think this process is rigged anyway. So, democrats have to face that as well. Fact is no matter who wins the election, theres going to be blow back from the losing side. So, the democrats should pick someone whos going to lose the election so theres no blow back. No, im not saying that. I think its a fact of life. Donna hoffman, i want to go back to something you said earlier about the republicans and theyre having caucuses too. Why . Party building . Well, yes. Now, every party when they have an incumbent president and even in the mid year elections, the parties have caucuses. These are twoyear events, not fouryear events we should remember. Typically when you have an election like this, we can compare it to the democrats in 12, the party die hards will come, but you know that obama is going to get the nomination. So, we can pretty much assume trumps going to get the nomination. But the party, democrats for instance in 12, didnt squash opposition if there was any other 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. Theyre, you know, legitimate candidates in this sense who are challenging trump that will be present in that 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 i think itll be interesting to see where that support that is not trump comes from and how strong it is. And i think those are some things those are data points that are going to get lost because the attentions going to 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 issue, but those are secondary. Im 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 harken once told me that the reason one of the reasons he won in 1984 was that the democrats had a caucus, a spirited president ial caucus that year, and he had wonderful lists 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 harken said that was a pivotal thing to me. And the proof of that is that on caucus night in 1984, that day, president reagan came to iowa and he did he flew into eastern iowa i think it was waterloo, but i could be wrong did an event and flew into des moines. Air force one left 30 minutes before the republican caucuses started. It was brilliant. It sucked the oxygen of the day away from the democrats. It gave it to the republicans. I just would not be surprised to see air force one in iowa on february 3rd. If it happens, its a page out of reagans book. And david, i think thats a really important point. This time around its the democrats who are organizing. Its the democrats who have the lists. Its the democrats who are knocking on everybodys door in the state apparently. And there are a lot of them. So, there are a lot of staff. There are a lot of volunteers. And the republicans, even though theyll 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, because the democrats will be better organized at least at the front end. Theres a real battle for control of the iowa house. Right. So, 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 if this is and the age of social media, if that old rule works. Its not three tickets out of iowa. Everybodys got their own airplane to leave iowa. And, you know, say sanders, biden, and buttigieg finish in the top three, Elizabeth Warren gets the fourth ticket out of iowa. The fact is these candidates have so much money now that the original premise in iowa was you came here, ran, do well. It helped you raise money to go on to New Hampshire. Now these candidate versus plenty of money to sustain those campaigns long after iowa. So, dianne bystrom, whats the big deal with iowa now if they have plenty of money . The big deal right now is that this is what the media has to cover in addition to Everything Else going on, i guess, in the middle east and the world. But this is the first thing that theyre covering. So, theres attention on iowa because when you want to cover politics. Were first. Its not because we earned it. Its because were there. I think the media will cover it. I think this year because things are so divided, there isnt a clear cut leader right now. We have the top three people tied. I think theres going to be at least four tickets that come out of iowa and i agree it will probably be the top four right now. As someone said, sanders raised 34 million this last quarter and thats enough to finance the campaign through june and as we know from 2008, hell do that. So, i think the other thing thats going to happen, bloomberg has moved up a little bit in the national polling. Hes basically just buying his way into it. I do think theres going to be a bigger impact. We could see all sorts of different results. And so, you know, it could be after we get past those first four states and going into super tuesday, i think theres the democratic race is still going to be fairly muddled. Thats important. Two things have changed since the iowa caucus started. One, the arrival of social media as a campaign tool. And secondly, Citizens United which has lifted the cork on money. And theres so much more money sloshing around politics. You take that plus the ability to raise money over the internet and in small dollars. It changes a lot of the premises for why you wanted to come to iowa and get a ticket out of here. But i resent the idea that the more money you have the better chance you have of winning because thats not necessarily the case. Obviously if thats the equation, then there are two billionaires running. They should win, you know, in iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and so on. Its personality, tradition, connection, history. You know, in New Hampshire i have a property in New Hampshire. I spend a lot of time there in the summers. You know, the equation isnt very different from iowa. Plus i was going to say New Hampshire also expect contenders to come to their house, and town, and veteran of Foreign Affairs place. I go nuts because they come banging on my door in my cabin when im just trying to look at a sunset of something. Im not sure money is necessarily whats going to get somebody the nomination. Well, and thats actually it isnt money because you need delegates. If you dont get at least 15 support in primaries as well as the caucus, you win no delegates. This is across every democratic event. Its not ewe fleek unique to th caucuses. If four people are coming out of iowa at roughly 20 each, maybe a little bit more, theres literally nothing left for anybody else in terms of winning delegates. So, they may continue zombie campaigns with all their money for a while, but theyre going to have no realistic shot at actually winning the nomination. But as we just talked about earlier, if theyre not counting if media people arent counting delegates but counting initial preferences right, but the media doesnt decide the nominee. You need a majority of the delegates at the Democratic National convention. So, no matter what the media is telling us about, the issue is how many delegates have you won in each state . And if you dont get at least 15 of the vote either at the Congressional District or the state level vote, you will have 0 delegates from that state. Dennis. Theres a third fact. You mentioned two factors. Theres a third one which i dont have the answer. I would just pose it. Have the dncs debate criteria and the series of debates had impact on the caucuses . Have they diminishes the importance of caucuses or amplified them or not bothered them at all . It seems to me thats something to look at. Whats your answer to that . I dont have one. I think its a pr lel track. In terms of coverage, my initial thought is it dampened the contact to the caucuses. I think it has diminished the rules of iowa. Its the dnc debate rules winning the field. That may have been part of their rationale. What does anybody else think about that . I agree. I think thats its diminished the effect of the caucuses and also made it difficult for some of those candidates that maybe could get a foothold in iowa without a lot of money are now having to focus on getting all these onedollar donations to get on a debate stage to maintain viability for a National Campaign has kind of pushed them out of the field. I think corey booker has hung on, but i think hes an example of one thats on the bubble. Castro, gillibrand, some of these candidates that i think could have done better in iowa have been kind of forced to spend their time doing this other stuff that the party decided they should do. Pev . Im a little skeptical that the debates have had much of an impact. And i suspect as we run up to the caucus day that 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 initially and second or third debate, castro had his break out moment and of course theyre both gone already. So, i think your characterization as a parallel track may be more correct. I also think the fact that the democrats have lined up in sequence four different events around the country has also diminished the singular importance of iowa to some extent. One thing though, in 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. Thats the way they do politics there. Where do you get media if you dont get a big budget . You win iowa and then its free media and the bounce that comes out of the early states does have an impact. We have candidates now that seem to be wellfunded. Even klobuchar who is running the risk of finishing fourth or below in the first couple of contests has enough money to at least hang on to super tuesday. And then of course we have this novel contribution of bloomberg being able to sort of wait until super tuesday to make his entrance. And so what i think that does is it iowa will be important. Well talk about it up until the day after iowa. And then well talk about New Hampshire up until the day after New Hampshire. And then well turn to South Carolina. And at that point, sort of the winning wing that has traditionally been done by iowa will be done with 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. Some partys candidate is going to lose. The winning candidate is likely to be someone who has come through this path. And theyre sitting in the white house and saying why do we want to mess around with changing the rules of a game we just won . In fact, were sitting in the white house now. Were going to make sure that we do well and tend our fences in iowa so we dont get ambushed by a challenger in a primary. Thats as kennedy found with carter, as bill clinton found when he just shut down any talk of a Jesse Jackson primary in 96 over welfare reform. So, they dont want to change the rules of the game they just won. The party out of power who just lost, two things happen. There is the debate dennis just referred to. Are we better off with a more moderate or extreme party, conservative and Republican Party. Theres that argument over, why they lost, and second reason they lost is iowa. Who gave us the strip. They blame iowa, any support you have turning banking reforms. They go to the national convention, for the change roles 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 Congress 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 one the 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 doesnt 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 a 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. 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 but Hillary Clinton wasnt perfect enough. The 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. 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. If 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 there is 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 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 in a couple of months after 1999. 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 spike to the virtual caucus, which would 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, i want to let 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 track ed 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. So demography is not necessarily destiny. David 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. Its 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 . Whos going to be some of the people may lose on caucus night, but will be longerterm winners . The obvious choice is of course buttigieg, who has 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 and would suggest he will have a future, although if he does not win and the democrats do not take the white house, exactly where hell 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 in this state. Any names of candidates who are not doing well but you impressed you as people who could be distance runners . 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 some people or not is maybe a question and so 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 senates in contention. The republicans have more seats to defend than the democrats do this time around, unlike the previous time. There will be factor in those calculations. 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 maybe both on the democratic ticket in one place or another. Ill put cory booker as someone that well see more of and i think 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. Diane to your point, about saying it will likely be a woman or person of color, Amy Klobuchar comes to mind as someone whose name gest mentioned a lot as a good ticket balancer. Kind of getting to that i like cory booker, too, but if the, nominee is going to be someone from the east coast, and unless its 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 and another person we havent talked about is stacey abrams. Her name has been bandied about as well and she is a very persuasive speaker on 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, 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, anybody, what sort of republican candidates look like people who might be people who could do well in iowa . We have seen nikki haley coming out here. Sure, holly, from missouri, senator, seems to have an interest, possibly mike lee from utah. Cotton, senator 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 . And they could face their own kind of political civil war after trump. David y well have to have another panel in four years. There you go. Marco rubio. Marco rubio . He has been in the news a lot. Explaining what is going on and not quite on trumps side and finessing it. He is a good speaker and very charismatic. Obviously he is latino, so. 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 then than Bernie Sanders and biden and warren are now, so democrats still have to do that generational shift. The republicans are ahead of them in it. David y steffen, i thought you had i thought i saw your hand. Anne . I think nikki haley on the republican side. There have been predictions that a first woman president will be a republican rather than a democrat and so i think she is positioning herself. There is big rumors in nebraska that ben sasse is trying to position himself for a run. And again, coming out of a more he was kind of a trump critic but certainly 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 in fact more likely to be republican . 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 democrats do it, it is this kind of confusing matter of splitting up delegates. Kelly i think has something i was going to add, the process tends to favor republicans, but also republican women tend to be viewed generally 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 youre going to get a woman elected, youve got to get a lot of people on board. Somebody more moderate is more likely to that. Having said that there are some republican women that are extremely conservative, that these days 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 . I notice he 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 posttrump era. Correct. Donna, go back to dianes comment about the first woman president is likely to be a republican. Do you agree or disagree . I think its probably a tossup, but 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. But one i wouldnt also discount on the republican side, would be will hurd, 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 kind of positioned at this point to go down that path and at least explore where were going there. And so, you know, those are things that we cant discount in terms of thinking about the Republican Coalition not being very diverse, yet you could have the capabilities of some candidates within that coalition to be diverse and yet and still excel, because nikki haley, will hurd, all of these people that weve mentioned because theyre 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 thoughts 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 at 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 completely irrelecant 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 accessible. They dont have that battle and i think in that case, republican caucuses continue on. Its been true as i mentioned earlier, the losing party always has a debate over the message and its process and if the democrats lose, there will be more arguments about iowas role in this process. Any other comments . I agree with david, but i think 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 and, no matter how we argue that our caucusgoers turn out to be more representative of the total Democratic Party, which i think they are, its also about expanding the vote. You see that now with the rising electorate. No matter what you want to say in case i know we are running out of time, but the two states that had both a caucus in the primary were washington and nebraska. In nebraska 34,000 people voted in the caucus. In the nonbinding primary, there were 80,000 people. It was more of a difference in Washington State where 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 wnna thank thank the state of Iowa Historical Museum for sponsoring this. Id like to thank cspan for covering this event. Id 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