Opinion: Be careful what you think about Iowa these days
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In a way it seems like it’s been forever coming. In another way, it’s shocking the time is so near. The opening shots in voting for the next president actually start in only 13 days.
There will be a brfief holiday break and then a flurry of campaigning and prognostications in the last few days before the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3. And, of course, polls, those statistical surveys that give us a calculated snapshot of a moment during these horse races. Everyone needs to be careful of polls, which are all we have to go by as the horses come around the fourth turn for the actual voting. So sometimes we think they’re predictive of outcomes now indicative of today.
So before the last blizzard of numbers, here are a few from the past to perhaps print out and keep in mind as a reminder to also keep something else in mind: caution.
At this point in the primary season in 2004, the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll of Democratic candidates right before the Iowa caucuses showed Howard Dean in the lead with 24%, someone named Wesley Clark in second with 19%, Sen. Joe Lieberman third with 12% and Richard Gephardt fourth with 11%.
That’s about it. Oh, no, wait. Way down near the bottom was that guy from Massachusetts, what was his name? Perry? Carey? No, Kerry! John Kerry. Guess what he had at this stage?
A whopping 7%.
Do you remember what happened to him there?
He actually came on in the homestretch to win the Iowa Democratic caucus and surge further, ‘reporting for duty’ as the party’s nominee at the National Convention. And there he chose as his running mate, someone named John Edwards, who himself had come back to finish second in Iowa and has hardly left the state since.
So Iowa’s vast, rolling, frozen fields may look like they’re sleeping for the winter right now. But a lot goes on there in these closing moments of those closely-watched caucuses.
--Andrew Malcolm