Edwards: The Iowa Losses
In the wake of Iowa, there is talk of John Edwards’ defeat and John Edwards’ victory. By a slim margin—eight percentage points, or roughly 20,000 people in a state of 3 million—Edwards ran second to Barack Obama in the Democratic caucuses. Slim or not, Edwards lost in a contest that, for many reasons, most of them not under his control, he needed to win.
Nonetheless, progressive analysts are saying that Edwards, in losing, won the war of ideas in Iowa, relentlessly weaving his own into the fabric of the ’08 Democratic campaign regardless of the party’s ultimate presidential nominee. “Barack Obama won tonight, but in a sense, John Edwards’ campaign also triumphed,” says American Prospect writer Ezra Klein.
I wonder. Edwards’ proposals—some of them—won credence. But not his basic belief, which is that America’s problems are deeper, and more systemic, than we’re allowing ourselves to think. On that score, Obama’s victory takes the country in an altogether different direction—one of high hopes, not hard slugging. — (much) more below –
Edwards’ Defeat
In a tight (38-30-29) three-way race, various factors can be cited to explain Edwards’ loss. According to the leading entrance poll (a survey of 2,136 Democratic caucus participants taken by Edison/Mitofsky), Obama dominated among first-time caucus goers (41-18 over Edwards; Clinton took 29); and first-timers were 57 percent of the turnout.
The turnout itself was stunning: Obama, and to a lesser extent Clinton and Edwards, found a new universe of Democratic voters in Iowa, exploding 2004’s pretty good turnout of 120,000 into 2008’s total of 239,000.
Young voters broke heavily for Obama. So did independents (and a few re-registered Republicans) who comprised nearly one-fourth of the Democratic caucus vote.
Edwards actually led Obama and Clinton among returning caucus-voters who were surveyed—the party activists of old. But Edwards lost, and Obama won, with the new crowd, which as Chris Bowers wrote on Open Left was “a creative class vote”—Obama’s supporters were younger, better-educated and better-paid than the other candidates’.
Obama’s appeal to the young is fit material for a book, but at a surface level it’s not hard to understand: He opposed the war in Iraq, as none of his older, more experienced and supposedly wiser opponents did (with the exception of Dennis Kucinich). He represents a fresh beginning, a break with the sad Democratic history of Kerry-Edwards and Gore-Lieberman (Lieberman!) and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He transcends race and class. He doesn’t saddle Gen X or Gen Y with the seamy side of America’s history; in fact, he looks right through it to the future.
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Iowa’s impact on presidential races is erratic. It can send up winners (Kerry in ’04, Gore in ‘00), or not (Bob Dole, Dick Gephardt in ‘88). The list of Republican right-wingers who’ve done well in Iowa only to collapse afterward is cautionary (Pat Buchanan in ’92 and ’96, Pat Robertson in ’88); but the Democratic results have been far more predictive (with the exception that favorite-son candidate Tom Harkin won Iowa in ’92 while the rest of the field, including Bill Clinton, worked on New Hampshire).
So Obama, by winning Iowa, is definitely launched. National front-runner Clinton is wounded, perhaps mortally. And Edwards, so close and yet so second-place, is—well, here’s a typical report of it by Los Angeles Times analyst Peter Wallsten: “The results are especially damaging for Edwards, the former North Carolina senator. Even though he barely edged out Clinton for second place, the Democratic race is very much a two-person contest, pitting Obama against Clinton.”
The same as it was before Thursday night, in other words.
Edwards, ignored by the traditional press for all of ’07 (except, of course, for his haircut mistakes), and far behind the leaders in fund-raising, desperately needed to win in Iowa to attract the “free media” that could keep him alive through South Carolina, Florida and the 22-state voting spree that will take place February 5. How do you compete in what amounts to a national primary when the press pronounces you dead and you have no money to say they’re wrong?
As I write this, the New Hampshire primary is four days away, and South Carolina—Edwards’ native state—votes January 26. But the polls in New Hampshire weren’t good for Edwards before he lost in Iowa, and approximately half the Democratic voters in South Carolina are black.
Edwards’ strategy now is to marginalize Clinton and pose the contest as between the two “change” candidates, himself and Obama. If that sounds far-fetched, and it does, consider what happens if Obama wallops Clinton in New Hampshire: Maybe, then, Edwards could run second in South Carolina (after having run second? a close third? in New Hampshire) and remain standing while Clinton goes away. Even so, wouldn’t Obama necessarily be the runaway winner on February 5?
No question, Edwards’ best and probably his only chance to win the Democratic nomination was to win in Iowa. For all its faults and quirky caucus rules, and its uneven effect on the national outcome afterward, Iowa does give an under-funded, under-reported and under-dog candidate like Edwards a fair chance to put his political cards on the table for everyone in the state to read.
Sure, Edwards was outspent in Iowa by a lot (on television ads alone, Obama spent $9 million, Clinton $7 million, and Edwards $2.5 million—plus another $2 million of so by union-backed independent groups with a pro-Edwards message).
And yes, the press in Iowa—especially the TV kind—couldn’t get enough of Hillary & Bill, Bill & Hillary. Until the Oprah & Obama show, that is.
Still, Edwards had his chances there too over a long year’s time, not to mention he ran in the caucuses in ’04—back when he was the young phenom, rather than Obama. Iowans heard him in this campaign (again), and they liked him (again). But by a slim, yet decisive margin, more of them liked Obama.
Which adds up to a loss—and leads back to the question of whether Edwards did, in fact, win in Iowa even while losing?
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Did Edwards Win Too?
The thesis that Edwards triumphed in Iowa anyway holds that his call to arms on the subject of corporate greed and economic inequality (the “two Americas” theme) so resonated with audiences that Obama and Clinton were persuaded/forced to embrace it too—thus making it Democratic dogma.
David Sirota, the populist author-blogger, stated this view in a DailyKos post that went up shortly before the caucuses: “[L]et me just say that no matter who wins,” he wrote, “it is absolutely great that economic populism has taken center stage so far in the presidential contest. Thanks to candidates like John Edwards and Mike Huckabee ignoring the Punditburo’s attacks and trumpeting the populist line, Wall Street-backed candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had to resort to posing as populists as well—and that’s a good thing. The more candidates channeling the public’s righteous anger at corporate greed and economic inequality, the better.”
Late Thursday night, Klein agreed: “The progressivism of the race, the focus on ideas, the courage of the Democrats—all were products of [Edwards’] early example.
“This is Barack Obama’s victory,” Klein continued, “and it’s richly deserved. But Edwards, running as a full-throated populist, set the agenda and finished second, ahead of the Clinton juggernaut. He said his role was to speak for the voiceless. He now barrels towards New Hampshire with ever more volume. And while his shot at the nomination is long at best, his candidacy, even if it fails, will have been far more successful than most.”
But if Edwards’ agenda was mimicked by his competitors—a debatable proposition—his message definitely was not. Compared to Obama’s message, in fact, Edwards’ take on the country’s problems and what is required to fix them is like the night to the day.
Obama’s sunny proposition is that “the cynics” are wrong, and the country will “come together around a common purpose” if we have the right leader. The right leader, moreover, is someone who will work with the Republicans and independents, forging solutions that “move beyond the divisions in Washington and … the bitterness, pettiness and anger” hobbling our two-party politics. “You believed so deeply in the most American of ideas,” Obama told his supporters Thursday night, “that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”
Edwards’ darker view is that our problem is “the system,” not just the current crop of leaders, and we’d better realize it before it’s too late. Like it or not, he says, there are two sides in Washington—the corporate, big-money, special-interest side, and the side that’s supposed to represent the people but so often doesn’t, which is to say the Democratic party. The first side fights like hell for the right to chase profits all over the globe regardless of working people and the planet’s future. If you think they’ll compromise with you, you’re “living in Never Never Land.” Only a president who rallies the second side against them—“a fighter”—has any chance of success against them.
Edwards: Beat the other side or it will beat you.
Obama: Choose unity over division. Tear down the barriers.
Obama: The politics of hope over fear.
Edwards: To win an “epic struggle,” first fear the consequences of losing.
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Six weeks ago, author-blogger David Mizner, an Edwards supporter, predicted the media report that would come from Iowa if Edwards won.
“Although Edwards campaigned heavily in the state and pinned his hopes for capturing the nomination on a win here,” it read (as Mizner imagined it), “it was still a striking upset, one that validated his emphasis on economic inequality. Crisscrossing the state, Edwards relentlessly sounded his populist themes, railing against corporate interests which, he said, had corrupted the political system and rigged it against middle and working class Americans.”
Last week, Bowers made a similar prediction: “If Edwards wins, the narrative will be about progressivism and populism rising. If Obama wins, the narrative will be about partisanship and ideology declining.”
Sure enough, Thursday night the narrative was all about partisanship and ideology declining—because Obama himself, in a towering victory address that called the nation together, made it so.
When Obama talked about “tearing down the barriers that have divided us for so long,” he evoked the civil rights movement—the best of our American history. When he talked about the power of hope over fear, he evoked his own history, “a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas—a story that could only be written in America.”
In his mixed-race lineage, his life’s mixed history of Harvard Law School and community organizing in Chicago (and of navigating Chicago politics en route to the U.S. Senate), and his mixed recital of the nation’s great “challenges” that hope and optimism will conquer, Obama literally embodies an upbeat America. Problems? Yeah, but nothing we can’t handle. Look at me!
This was—is—the triumphal version of Americana, in which the trajectory (from dismal slave beginnings) is ever-upward, and the rising tide, as JFK said, lifts all boats. It’s the history most of us learned. It’s the history our leaders wanted us to learn. It’s not much for telling why the U.S. has the greatest economic inequality—the biggest rich-poor divide—of any industrialized nation, or why, as free trade and globalization pull labor’s power apart, that divide is growing ever worse.
This parallel history—Howard Zinn’s history (in his A People’s History of the United States)—is about capitalism run amuck in a relatively young nation with lots of open land and little appetite for sharing or community property. It’s also a history of nativism and racism often disguised as religious belief.
No doubt, were Obama running as an angry black man railing at the poverty and corruption that white folks take for granted in America, he’d be dismissed as easily as Al Sharpton was, and Jesse Jackson was, by press and public alike.
But as a centrist candidate, who’s critical of Democratic “partisans” as well as extremist Republicans, Obama’s been embraced by the chorus of Washington pundits who celebrate Joe Lieberman as a statesman and can’t get enough of John McCain’s various “surges”—whether in New Hampshire or Iraq. David Broder of the Washington Post, for instance, gushed about Obama’s stump speech, calling it “a thing of beauty” even as he recounted how content-light it is. The New York Times’ David Brooks cheered Obama’s win precisely because Obama rejects mere “substance” and embraces American triumphalism: “Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory,” Brooks wrote, “which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity.”
Even better, from Brooks’ conservative vantage point, Obama makes Clinton’s “wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics seem uninspired,” and Edwards’ approach, with his “angry cries that corporate greed is killing your children’s future … old-fashioned.”
Thus, centrist Obama, unlike Clinton and Edwards, has held back from proposing truly universal health care. He talks more about Social Security’s woes than about global warming, or globalization. He lumps labor and trial lawyers in with big corporations when criticizing “special interests.” He’s run a “change” campaign, but primarily in the sense of turning the page in our history, not standing against the tide of it.
But then, he does stand against the tide as an African-American. Which is certainly all the “change” America can handle at one time, if indeed we can handle that much.
Still, the message of Obama’s campaign makes progressive activists like Nathan Newman, policy director of the Progressive States Network, uneasy. “I’m not annoyed like some at his ‘post-partisanship’ message, since the best way to build a big partisan majority is to assert this kind of non-partisan inclusiveness,” Newman wrote Friday. “No, the concern is that the ideas and policies filling his ‘change’ message [don’t seem to] connect with people beyond momentary distress to shape a real analysis of what’s wrong with the nation.
“At some level,” Newman continued, “Obama seems to say that the problem is merely the politicians. … He’ll nod to the problem of corporate lobbyists, but he usually won’t straight out identify the actors OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT (his emphasis), namely corporate power, as a significant target for change.”
Which is, of course, the heart of Edwards’ message.
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Edwards has run as an angry white man railing at the poverty and corruption that white folks take for granted. And so, while not dismissed quite as easily as Al Sharpton, he’s been routinely described by the pundits as “too angry” and not as nice as he was when he ran in ’04. “What’s he so angry about?” Hardball’s Chris Matthews keeps asking on the General Electric-owned networks. “I believe Obama’s strategy (and Clinton’s) offers a far more realistic path to progress than Edwards does,” sniffed Time’s Joe Klein.
What’s Edwards so angry, and uncompromising, about?
Again, fodder for a book, but perhaps it’s our failure to have a national health insurance program 60 years after Harry Truman proposed one? To have an alt-energy program, instead of oil (or nuclear) dependence, 30 years after Jimmy Carter proposed one ? Fair tax rates, so hedge-fund billionaires pay at least an equal percentage of their incomes in taxes as their maids? (Remember when we believed in progressive tax rates? Maybe that’s why Edwards has recently taken to comparing himself to the Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin D., both of who recognized malefactors of great wealth when they saw them.)
Maybe Edwards is pissed because he’s been listening to Al Gore since Gore was liberated from the likes of Klein, Matthews and the rest of the corporate-shill pundits who always counsel patience instead of progress on issues like, oh, the fate of the planet.
Or maybe he’s pissed at himself for voting for war in Iraq when he knew darned well that it was a dumbass idea, but he didn’t have the political stones to go against the tide of Bush-media warmongering. (Ah, I remember it well, from February, 2003: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A19025)
But above all, maybe Edwards is pissed that every time somebody suggests a reasonable reform of anything, the lobbyists tangle it up in complications … and the Republicans propose a preposterous alternative (and/or threaten a filibuster) … and the media counsel compromise, not to say toothlessness … and the corporations announce that their latest breakthrough will solve the whole thing anyway … which is why we still don’t have universal health care, still don’t invest in solar, wind or conservation, still subsidize capital investments that move jobs out of America, and still watch with vapid eyes as “the market” pulls the rug, the living room furniture and finally the sub-prime mortgage right out from under the middle-class, to say nothing of how we treat the poor.
To which the pundits reply, Yeah, but Edwards is rich, so why’s he so angry?
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The day of the Iowa caucuses, DailyKos posted its latest survey of readers about their presidential preferences. Kos, of course, is the biggest—the most-read—of the progressive Democrats’ blogs. Edwards was the choice of 48 percent; Obama second at 27 percent; nobody else was in double-figures.
Just as the young are coalescing around Obama, the activists who’ve seen enough to be pissed, rather than hopeful, coalesced around Edwards this time. I thought the Booman—Martin Longman, owner-proprietor of the BoomanTribune blog—explained it quite well that day. Here’s some of what he said:
“I don’t think the mainstream media or the people that work inside the Beltway really understand the blogosphere at all. We may not fully understand them either, but we have a better grasp of what makes them tick than they have of what makes us tick. We’re fighters. Fighting is pretty much all we do.
“This whole movement was born of a vacuum. The primary vacuum was in the media. We discovered in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq that the media was not only shutting out our voices, but they were distorting the facts, and the facts were, therefore, going unrebutted. And we discovered that we could publish our voices just as easily as the New York Times could publish the lies of William Safire, Judith Miller, or Dick Cheney. We discovered that we could factcheck the articles appearing in the papers and the warmongers appearing on our television.
“We found a truth deficit and set out to provide the truth that was lacking. For those of us that have been doing this for years, we are steeped in this contrast between what is reported and what is true. We know who the liars are. We know who the lazy reporters are. And we know who has been battling with us (Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd) and who has not (Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford). We now have comrades-in-arms…people that we have been standing with day after day after day. And we have enemies that have undermined our mission at every opportunity.
I’m sitting here listening to a speech Barack Obama made yesterday in Coralville, Iowa. He’s saying all the right things. Here’s an example (paraphrased): ‘If you have been steeped in the common wisdom of Washington DC that says it is a good idea to invade Iraq, you can’t be the best person going forward to question and change our foreign policy.’ And that is exactly right. That explains so clearly what it means to have been in the fight on the side of the blogosphere versus what it means to have been on the sidelines within the consultancies of the Capitol. But Obama hasn’t really embraced us. He’s gone his own way. And that explains why, in the end, the blogosphere broke heavily for John Edwards.
No, I don’t mean people turned their back on Obama because he didn’t pay the proper respect to the blogosphere. That isn’t what happened. Obama didn’t embrace our way of doing things. Worse, he began to use rhetoric we had spent energy to debunk. He went even further. He tossed aside one of our central insights…an insight won through hard experience: we cannot compromise with the Republican Party…we must smash them.
Perhaps because his wife is such an avid reader of blogs, Edwards’ campaign tapped right into our zeitgeist. He came out with our insight front and center. You want Edwards’ message? Here it is: ‘Fuck David Broder, fuck Joe Klein, fuck Chris Matthews, fuck FOX News, fuck Tim Russert, fuck Mitch McConnell, fuck Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Defense. We don’t need them. They won’t negotiate in good faith. They’re stacking the deck against us. And we can beat them by telling the truth and getting organized.’ That’s Edwards’ message, and that is the message we have internalized both through our successes and our failures.
What’s funny is that Obama is saying many of the same things, in his own way. The policy differences between Edwards and Obama are minimal. But Obama’s tone deaf to the blogosphere. And, as a result, the blogosphere didn’t trust him. Take Armando:
… we do not criticize Obama’s political style on aesthetic grounds; we criticize his style because we think it will not work to actually EFFECT CHANGE. We believe that despite his being touted as the change candidate, his political style is the one LEAST likely to achieve progressive policy change.
“His ’style’ will be ineffective. Why did so many of us conclude this? It’s because we have watched Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi try to negotiate with the Republicans (in the minority, the majority, no matter) and it does not work. We have watched the Dems talk tough and then back down time and time again. We’re done with conciliation and we don’t believe bipartisanship is possible without first crushing the Republican Party down to a stump.
Ironically, Obama might be the perfect candidate to provide the kind of crushing victories this November that will make true bipartisanship possible again. I definitely think that is a possibility. In fact, I feel his chances are strong enough that I can’t endorse Edwards over Obama. I do hope Edwards wins in Iowa, but not necessarily because I prefer him to Obama. More than anything, I want Edwards’ style to be vindicated. I want partisanship and combativeness to be rewarded. And I want Clinton/Lieberman/Ford/Carper/Carville/Begala/Penn to lose.
In any case, this is the best I can do to express why the blogosphere went for Edwards. None of the candidates were going far enough on policy, but at least Edwards was representing our fighting natures. And that, in the end, was decisive.”
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Watching Obama’s victory speech Thursday, and again Friday, I was wowed by his eloquence—how could you not be? But I also thought to myself, I hope he doesn’t believe that bulls—.
Yes, campaign as a uniter, not a divider. But realize, if you win, you’ll be in the fight of your youthful political life if you actually hope to get anything done, an “epic struggle” for which you’ve not really prepared the public at all. Hopefully, you’ve prepared yourself.
The alternative is to try doing what you say you’ll do, which is compromise with the other side and negotiate deals with the lobbyists and the special interests and—well, good luck with that. But it’s been 60 years since Harry Truman, and the only presidents who’ve really succeeded since then were the Republicans who were from the other side and didn’t negotiate with our side at all.
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