As someone who went to college in Iowa and (as PW regulars know) someone who likes to analyze polls, I note that John Fund is largely correct in pointing out the flaws of the Iowa caucuses and the reasons why polls are of little use in predicting their outcome.
The main quibble I would have with Fund’s piece is that — in an apparent hurry to conclude — he glosses over the element of organization in Iowa:
All of these arcane rules, combined with the fixed time and place voters mush show up in order to influence the result, make the Iowa caucus a test of organization as much as actual voter support. “The candidate that provides the most babysitters or literally drives older people to the polls the most can have a real edge,” Tom Tauke, a Republican former congressman, once told me.
Organization can be decisive in Iowa. Fund’s own passing comments about tiny turnout in rural precincts demonstrate the power of — as Woody Allen would say — just showing up.
This is true in both parties, so people seeking to make sense of the Iowa caucuses would do better to focus less on polls and more on stories about organization.
For example, the Boston Globe covers the competing union efforts for Clinton and Edwards (and the latter’s “99-county strategy”). Also note that story claims that Obama’s campaign is considered the best-organized, especially at the ground level. But it does so while talking about thousands of Iowa college and high school students. I suppose that might be true, but recall that Howard Dean relied on zealous students in 2004 to ill effect. Unions on the other hand, know a bit more than high school and college students about organization.
On the GOP side, TIME magazine’s interview with Huckabee seems to get it, juxtaposing Romney’s more traditional organization against Huckabee’s “informal networks,” which inlcude evangelical activists and home-schooling advocates. Churches, like unions, are good at getting people on buses and in minivans. That’s how the Rev. Pat Robertson beat then-sitting Veep George H.W. Bush in 1988 (coming in second to Sen. Bob Dole a near-favorite son from Kansas).
Less organized candidates can take some solace in the generally mild weather forecast for caucus night, which will marginally encourage more casual participants.
If Edwards and Huckabee do well in Iowa, some media pundits will likely salivate over a hypothesized resurgence of populist politics. But it is really more about putting butts on buses.
Update: You can mark down Christopher Hitchens as not a fan of the Iowa caucuses. Betsy Newmark seems to hope that good results for Edwards and Huckabee in Iowa, followed by defeat elsewhere, would get people to ignore Iowa, but — as Hitch notes — broken press promises to cover Iowa more realistically are all part of our grand quadrennial pageant.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Huckawock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
happyfeet,
One can only imagine what Marcotte would do with that.
She’d probably stick a battery in it and use it to mimsy her borogrove…
This is why Iowa is a poor positive indicator, but a decent negative one.
Getting butts on buses — or, more generally, getting fingers into polling booths to pull levers, push buttons, and/or make marks — is fundamental to any election strategy. Iowa is relatively small, both in area and in population, and the people there are quite willing to organize if motivated. It is therefore diagnostic of a candidate’s organization’s skills. Being able to get out the vote in Iowa is no guarantee that it will also happen elsewhere, but if you can’t organize in Iowa you have no hope in Pennsylvania, let alone Illinois or California.
And I really wish there were fewer snarks and more thoughtful analysis of the phenomenon that is Huckabee. Despite Marcotte or even Yglesias, it remains that a substantial fraction of Americans consider themselves religious, and a large subset of those are either “fundamentalist” (=evangelicals and Pentecostals) or Catholic, all with a large commonality of interest. They feel they’ve been stiffed by Bush and the Republican establishment — Sully’s reaction is just the first clue that his disease has begun to progress, damaging his thinking ability — and until and unless the other candidates are willing to endorse some of Bro. Mike’s positions you can bet on the fundamentalists staying with him, or away entirely, and if they stay he will easily get half, perhaps more, of the Republican base. Huckabee is not a religious Ron Paul, no matter how much some of us might wish he were.
Regards,
Ric
Just by the way is tomorrow like THE DAY or is it the next day? I think tomorrow would be wishful thinking maybe but either that or the next day which means we’re working with like a 11-60 hour window or so here I guess. What this better not be is anticlimactic cause I’m really into starting this ’08 thing off strong cause this ’07 thing was a little disappointing I thought.
Karl, your Christopher Hitchens link is a little outgrabe there.
Ric,
I agree with your point on IA (usually) being a good negative indicator. Of all of the caucus cliches, the notion that there are “three tickets out of Iowa” probably has the most validity.
That being said, one of the big unknowns this year is whether the religious sort of network Huckabee is relying on can be replicated in enough other states for him to get the nomination. History suggests not, but there are few enough data points to warrant confidence either way.
BTW, I take Huckabee’s supporters seriously. More seriously than Huckabee, in fact, though I agree that he’s not a crank. Which is why I suspect that as some of his policy positions (or lack of them) become better known, his support will decline — if that process has not already begun.
Hitch link is fixed; thx, happyfeet.
I refuse to take Huckabee seriously cause duh he was governor of Arkansas and also he embarrasses me cause my party is so much better than that and I have to talk to liberals every day and please don’t tell me giving Huck the conch would not be embarrassing cause it would be. Mortifying.
provincial ignoramus and anti-Darwinian is what Hitchens says from Karl’s link, though I wish he would say it louder.
Huck bothers me. It seems like religion may be the only thing he has not taxed. The candidates are far from ideal, but Huck seems to view the taxpayer as a revenue producer more than the others. That, and he really has come off uninformed to date. But, he is better than Paul. A bit.
Karl, perhaps I’m being too oblique.
I live next door to a lot of the people dismissed as “fundamentalists.” There are a lot more of them than a lot of people like to think, and what you may not understand is that they are pissed — and they have a lot more clout than many might expect.
Nearby, in Dallas, is a big center for Christian publishing. I’m a science fiction fan and sometimes wannabee author, and what a lot of folks in classical publishing don’t realize is that the Left Behind series, which is in many ways a sort of updated Kabbalistic story — “God fiction”, by analogy to “science fiction” — sold almost as much as Harry Potter did, just under the radar of the New York establishment. Go to any small town in my area, and you may or may not find a “normal” bookstore — if you do, it’ll subsist largely on used books, bestsellers, and some Christian stuff — but there will be two or even three Christian bookstores, all making a living. The same is true of movies. There are studios in Dallas, Nashville, and elsewhere cranking out Christian movies, and in the aggregate they probably make as much as, and perhaps more than, Hollywood does. There has gotten to be a whole sub-economy based on Christian trade, largely invisible to the establishment(s) on the coasts, and it is frickin’ huge.
And, as I say, they are pissed. They feel like Bush stiffed them on the FMA, and they’re probably right. They feel like they got screwed on the “compromise” on stem cells, and what generates real resentment is that they’re getting the same criticism from the Establishment, especially the Press, as if they had gotten what they wanted. The occasional pushes for “creation science” have less to do with Faith than they do with attempting to establish political force.
That soreheaded resentment is crystallizing around Huckabee. Most of them realize that he’s a dickhead, but he’s a dickhead of a specific type that’s as comfortable as an old shoe to them: the travelin’ evangelist, God-shouting fire and brimstone while looking down the decolletage of the chicks on the front row and paying for a new Cadillac with a stack of well-worn dollar bills taken from the collection plate. News that he’s taken money from the disreputable won’t faze them. That’s what those folks do — if they can’t convert ’em, it’s worth the time to impoverish ’em. A duty laid on by God, so to speak.
Did Jim Bakker’s support fall off when even worse scandals started getting public? Not by much, and anybody who doesn’t realize that Kenneth Copeland is a charlatan hasn’t been paying any attention — and he still makes a fortune from his dedicated followers. So do not count on support for Huckabee evaporating as the scandals mount. If anything it will solidify, at least in part from the perception that Brother Mike is being picked on by the Establishment.
Regards,
Ric
I think a lot of anti-Mormon bigotry is crystallizing around Huckabee too cause he’s a big fat bigot and you could totally see him being like a Girl Scout troop leader in like La Grange and being really careful about who he let join the troop so that none of them and also no pretty girls so his ugly-assed daughter wouldn’t feel bad.
Oh. That should be none of them *got in*
I really hate that fucktard by the way I should say so I’m not being disingenuous.
Huck was being a Dem today. He produces an attack ad, then claims to have second thoughts, and then decides to show the media the ad that he decided he would not run. Completely contrived BS.
On the smarmy scale, it ranks right up there with Edwards claiming he will not take special interest money in his America while taking big bucks from the robber baron families.
He must be stopped.
feets, you have given me my first genuine, coffee-spewing guffaw of the week. A Girl Scout leader in La Grange, indeed. I wonder how many other PWers might have an inkling of what we’re laughing about?
Just don’t let your perfectly justified distaste — let’s not use the h-word, hmmmkay? — blind you of the very real danger.
One of the facets of that danger is the Press juggling hand grenades without checking for pins first. They are playing up Huckabee because he is, to them, too ridiculous to be credible, and they believe (with some justification) that if they carry enough of Huck’s water he can get the nomination; they then expect that he will be trounced next November by the “real” candidate, that is, the Democrat. From where I sit, that looks a lot like the “I don’t know anybody who voted for Nixon” fallacy that has generated so much of Nancy and Harry’s frustration.
Robert Heinlein was pretty good at picking names. “Nehemiah Scudder” is simultaneously hickish and scary enough that you know going in that something wicked this way comes. “Huckabee” is hickish and silly, and I greatly fear it’s lulling people into a false sense of security.
Regards,
Ric
I agree with you about how the media is thinking except that I really think, that knowing Romney and Giuliani were going negative, they blew on Huck’s embers because they were scared to death Thompson would get the people disaffected as the frontrunners’ negatives increased.
This BS Huck is pulling with the negative ad is Clinton-ish. He is trying to get the negatives out there while claiming to be above going negative. Even the press laughed when he ran the ad for them, and CNN has run it about 200 times today.
Get some stones and go negative if that is what you want to do. giving it to the media, disclaiming doing so, and then letting them run with it is fucking dishonest. Something a Dem would do.
This is another one of those jobs for radio. They’ve got their work cut out for them today.
Ric,
I’m fully aware of how big the Christian economy is. I have friends in many areas of the country, and even Chicagoland (where I live) is home to the studio that makes VeggieTales.
I’m not talking about people finding out about this or that Ark. scandal, I’m talking about them discovering that he’s closer to Carter than he is to Reagan. Some, though by no means all, will end up with Romney or Thompson, which may preclude him getting enough traction down the road.
Moreover, as the main topic is organization, I again note that it remains to be seen how much of one he has outside Iowa. I imagine he’ll do well in SC, even without one. But there are plenty of states where he’ll flounder without local support. Even if good showings early on bring in money over the ‘net, the logistics of translating the money into an organization on short notice is formidible.
An NPR whore just did an All Things Considered promo for… “Coming Up… Mike Huckabee’s negative ad and why he says he will NOT run it…”
The actual story was actually shockingly, um, factual and even scoffed at stupid Huck’s stupidness. They’re still whores though.
Oh. That Kaus thing Mr. Reynolds links explains I think…
NPR just went with the crowd on this since they never want to get caught out telling a story at odds with the other media their check-writing audience consumes.
link for that Kaus thing
If McCain wins the nomination and any of the democratic front runners win the nomination, both parties are going to toss up their hands and not vote for anybody. Especially people who think not voting (ie 2006) doesn’t matter.
If I’m off topic, I apologize in advance.
Uh huh. Some of you have clearly forgotten or are trying to ignore something, which is that Clintonist tactics work. As witness happyfeet’s note: whether or not Huckabee gets tarred for “going negative” — which is not nearly the slam some pundits imagine it to be — he is getting his ad aired, for free, in venues he could never have paid for access to even if he’d had the money.
The other thing you need to know is that one of the reasons Jimmy Carter gets away with being a loose cannon around the world is that a substantial number of Christians consider him a good, Godly man deserving of at least tolerance, if not some minor support, even though his beliefs seem a little extreme. You are not going to peel support away from Huckabee, at least from his core, by comparing him to Carter; if anything he will gain by it.
Carter was a bad President. The Christians I know won’t use the vulgarity, but their response will approximate so the f* what? From their point of view Reagan was barely supportable, and everyone since has been a disaster on the order of the ancient Hebrews swapping the judges for kings. The details matter only in the sense of whether the end comes in flood or whirlwind. So Huckabee will be another bad President? Whoop te do.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Regards,
Ric
Fundamentalists may be supporting Huckabee, but I think a lot of them are doing so precisely because the media are making more out of his church affiliation than it deserves, and are glossing over his actual, you know, policies because, well, the media guys like those.
I think when it comes down to it though, most fundamentalists don’t trust the Establishment Media, and will wonder why the only thing they ever seem to hear about this Huckabee guy is what church he goes to. Is he running for Grand Poobah of the Whatever Fundamentalist Church, or is he running for president?
Most people I know who are of the so-called “religious right” aren’t that stupid.
Right, but these ones are the children-of-the-corn ones that had Pat Robertson come in second.
…and somehow I missed the Robertson Administration.
No, the “religious right” aren’t stupid, but “children of the corn” are irrelevant.
What you’ve got here is a fair number of people reaching the perfectly rational conclusion — perhaps wrong, but definitely rational, at least from their point of view — that the disasters resulting from a President Huckabee may be different in character from those resulting from, e.g., a President Clinton(s), but won’t be worse in any real way. If nobody can live there any more, it scarcely matters whether the city was destroyed by nuclear bombs or an asteroid strike. It’s the “our sonovabitch” principle expressed in national politics.
RAH never wrote The Sound of His Wings because he said it was too depressing. I greatly fear that the next year or so may strongly resemble his outline.
Regards,
Ric
Well see that’s what I mean. This Huckabee thing comes from a dark place, not from a happy optimistic place. It’s all very Carnivale except without the ethereal wagon-train-of-doom music.
IIRC, it was the election of Jimmy Carter (who didn’t win in the West, but carried the South and East) campaigning as a born-again, Washington DC “outsider” that awoke the mostly apolitical Protestants (Carter lost among Catholics) to their own political power.
I certainly wouldn’t underestimate Huck’s power in running the same campaign book…and the “floating cross” was shrewd beyond words … even as I believe the MSM is pushing Huck because they do believe he is a caricature that they are salivating to fillet in the general election. Believe me, Rather’s crude attempt at voter manipulation will pale next to what they have in mind for the Rep candidate of 2008 ..and with Huck they get a two-fer because they hate the Religious Right even more than Reps in general.
Darleen, I often agree with you, but in this case I’m afraid you’ve confused cause and effect. It isn’t at all clear which is which, so that may be excusable.
Anyone who considers American Protestants “apolitical” is either quite young, or has experienced an alternate United States in a continuum I never knew existed. For most of American history, the scene and focus of local politics was the churches.
A lot of people aren’t aware of just how embarrassing the Civil Rights era was for Protestants, especially Southern Protestants. It became obvious that Martin Luther King (among others) was right, and that they had been saying, and preaching, one thing, while doing something entirely different and not at all in accord with any reasonable interpretation of Scripture. That generated a number of different responses. The one that’s been enshrined in history is the defensive denialism and resulting hostility, which was very real — but just as important was the abashment many of us felt, and which resulted in something of a retirement from public affairs and a tendency to yield when challenged, especially on (what appeared to be) analogous grounds. That reaction is the reason why the Left prefers to couch its programs in the language of “civil rights”. Protestants, wincing from the drubbing they received — and even more from the awareness that it was deserved — tended to give when pushed from that direction. Jimmy Carter, as a New Democrat — a Civil Rights Democrat — got support not only as an outsider, but as One of Us Who Gets It, who was prepared to acknowledge the wrongs and move in ways that would tend to mend it. Irredentists moved across the aisle and voted Republican, just as some of the Leftists aver.
And now the abashed generation is passing, and a new generation takes the helm; and what do they find, as the reward for the self-abnegation their parents practiced?
Manger scenes on the courthouse lawn are illegal. College campuses where Christians aren’t even tolerated. An epidemic of abortion, coupled with sex education for twelve-year-olds that barely stops short of practical demonstrations. Perversion of civil rights, the very point that induced them to yield, into what is for all practical purposes the same system of preferences, only inverted. And just for the capstone, gay “marriage”.
Mike Huckabee is not Jimmy Carter. Happyfeet is right: he comes from a much darker and colder place. He is, if anything, the anti-Carter — where Carter symbolized abashment, Huckabee is an assertion. It’s common, and facile, to note that the extreme religious right is just as nuts as the “nutroots” Left. That’s right, but it misses an important point: the RR outnumbers the NL by a factor of ten to one… and this is still a democracy, or at least maintains the outward semblance of one.
Which is why I say the MSM/Press is juggling hand grenades without checking for pins. As I said, from the RR point of view all the visible courses ahead lead to disaster. That being the case, it matters little what the details of the disaster are, and Huckabee is One of Them. Hypocritical? So what? The evangelist who takes money from sinners gets to use it to do the Lord’s work, and the sinners in question don’t have it to support their perversions any more. Win-win, so to speak.
Expecting the RR to respond with the abashment and self-abnegation my generation practiced is gonna lead to some nasty surprises. I don’t expect to be saying “President Huckabee” any time soon, or ever for that matter — but somebody better start taking note of the rumblings at the grassroots, or an explosion of some sort is inevitable. Root causes, so to speak.
Regards,
Ric
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting opinion piece on how insanely complex the Democratic caucus rules are and if you link to my site, there are additional comments made by Democratic politicians about how much latitude for chicanery is inserted into the caucus rules.
John Edwards surged in ‘04 as did Kerry and Edwards could pull off a squeaker as the rural precincts are over-represented in the caucus rules and JE has been LIVING in Iowa for most of the last two years.
The DRM poll might be off-base if it discounts the ginormous investments that Edwards & Clinton Inc have made compared to Obama’s merely populist activities. This may also be the reason that Romney pulls off a final victory, although the Republicans’ rules are only a simple anonymous ballot procedure rather than the multi-step Dem process open to manipulation at each step.
Finally, if the weather is amenable, Obama might win. If it is stormy or hyper-frigid, then the well-organized Clinton & Edwards limo-busing activities kick in, especially in the frozen countryside.
Remember the Dems over-represent rural farm & county seat voters & Edwards has been to each Iowa county TWICE in the last two years.
“The Wall Street Journal has an interesting opinion piece on how insanely complex the Democratic caucus rules are and if you link to my site, there are additional comments made by Democratic politicians about how much latitude for chicanery is inserted into the caucus rules.”
Yeah, well, the important thing is the results are being taken care of:
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=116052
/tinfoil off
Ric =
I think that you are over-analyzing this whole thing.
Despite the rise of the “New Press” (internet), it is STILL the MSM who define the candidates.
Why are Guiliani and Thompson “out of it” for now? Becaused the press has decided it to be so. Huckster-be is in the spotlight because the press has deemed him to be their “man”.
I don’t believe for a second that the partisans who call themselves “journalists” are not pushing frantically for a Republican candidate who will be crucified in the presidential campaign. As far as I can see, Romney and Huckster-be are by far the two weakest candidates in the Republican field (I don’t take Ron Paul seriously, although he would be a disaster, too).
Guiliani and Thompson, who I see as the strongest candidates, are either being ignored, or belittled. Especially Thompson.
As aware as I am of the manipulative power of the MSM, I am STILL sometimes depressed by what their words can do to me. I know better, but when I am beaten over the head, day after day after day, it sometimes makes me feel like I actually DON’T have a clue.
But I do, and once in a while have to pinch myself to reject the MSM created “reality”.
I think Huckster-be and Romney would be steamrolled in a national campaign – even by Obama! – and the press is very aware of this.
Just my thoughts, but it seems clear to me that the MSM – despite the rise of the blog world – is still in the drivers seat when it comes to perceptions of the candidates.
I disagree with a lot of things Guiliani has done and positions he has taken, but I live near NYC, and know by my own eyes that what he did there was a fucking MIRACLE.
When Dinkins was mayor, you were taking your life in your habds to even enter NYC. Guiliani did what all said was impossible.
G. is my man, because, no matter what he’s done in his personal life (none of my business anyway), he’s got brass balls when it comes to doing the right thing for his constituents.
But the MSM sees this also, and will do their best to disparage and belittle him. They hate his guts. Always have, always will. They will savage him if he is the nominee, but G. can take as well as he gives. I mean, who among us is going to be throwing stones (except for the rabid fundamentalists)? For me, the MSM contempt for G. is a compelling reason to back him, and I do. Those of you who didn’t see the reality of what he did in NYC, the unbelieveable morphing of a living Hell into a liveable city, can have no idea of how much respect this man deserves.
In 1992 (Dinkins), I swore I would NEVER go back to NYC. It was a pretty terrifying place, even during daylight hours. In 1996, a friend asked me to deliver a package in the city, and I agreed. When I got to the city, I thought that maybe somebody had slipped me some mushrooms. I literally couldn’d believe that my eyes weren’t decieving me. There were NO street thugs, hustlers, pimps, or general lowlifes in sight. The streets were clean. You could have knocked me over with a feather!
The fundamentalists hold sway in some places (unfortunately, they hold disproportionate power in many of the primaries), but if they have their way, most of the rest of the country will turn off. Huckster-be or Romney as the Republican candidate will definitely keep me at home on Election day. G. has a lot of warts, but who here doesn’t?
I have SEEN what this man can do, and am convinced that he would be an amazing president. We need real balls, not the kind that hillary straps on.
And PLEASE! Don’t even mention Mommy (Bloomberg). But that is for another time…
A Giuliani/Thompson ticket would almost be like ordering something from a comic book and having it be all it was promised. Hopefully maybe someone will see the Virgin on a cornhusk come Iowa caucus day and the Huckapeasants will get distracted.
[…] a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the tendency of people to overrate polling for the Iowa caucuses and to underrate the importance […]
[…] they also jumped out because – even before the Iowa caucuses – frequent PW commenter Ric Locke was noting that Catholics could be brought into Huckabee’s orbit and potentially form a […]
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