Iowa 2020: Field of Dreams or Screams
01:06:57 Share

I'm Henry Olson, and welcome to this week's Horse Race. Today, I'll go round the horn with political analyst Kyle Kondik of Saboteau's Crystal Ball, talk Trump with the Brookings Institution's Bill Galston, and dig deep into Iowa's political cornfields with University of Northern Iowa political scientist Donna Hoffman. The horses are at the gates. They're off. ♪

Joining me today on Round the Horn is Kyle Condon, managing editor of Saboteau's Crystal Ball, one of the leading political analysis and prognostication sites and publications in America. Kyle, welcome to The Horse Race. Good to be here, Henry.

Well, you know, it's almost the time when we start talking about the real games. I think of the political season as analogous to baseball where we've been in spring training, but now we're about ready to start the regular season. Except a month and a half of spring training. It's more like a year and a half of spring training.

Given the elongated nature of the presidential primary season and how it seems to begin even before the midterm happens. But here we are finally. Yeah, no, it's totally ridiculous.

I'm old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan announced in the second week of November 1979. Even I think Bill Clinton in 92 was like November of the off year or something. You know, I mean, it's – but boy, it is really lengthened out. Yeah. So we've already been burned out and bored beyond belief because we've heard it all before.

But now it's actually going to matter. Right. So how do you see the race shaping up four days or five days before the Iowa caucus? Yes.

You know, look, I mean, I think that Joe Biden's staying power here has really been pretty noteworthy in that kind of just like a Donald Trump in 2016 or Mitt Romney in 2012, sort of written off for dead at certain points. You know, you'd see all these stories in Politico or National Journal or whatever. Not to criticize the reporting. I'm not. It's just they're telling us what the campaigns are saying and saying, oh, well, you know, when Joe Biden, you know, falls apart, you know, we'll inherit X, Y and Z and part of the electorate. And, you know, it just doesn't.

It doesn't necessarily happen that way. And so Biden has been steady here. And, you know, Sanders look like at certain times he might sort of fall off and be eclipsed by other people. And yet he's coming on. It seems like relatively strong here right before Iowa. And the possibility exists that that Sanders could actually sweep Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, the first three contests.

And there, you know, maybe there would be downstream consequences for that if that happened. But, you know, Iowa itself does still seem like pretty much a wild card. And also you've got to remember, you know, because of these delegate rules, you know, there's going to be shifting that goes on even at these caucus sites. So walk my listeners through the Rube Goldberg contraption that is the Iowa Democratic Party delegate rule.

So basically, just and actually, you know, the delegates are ordered proportionally everywhere. That's that's the Democratic rule. The Republicans are different in that there's winner take all, although there are 15. There's a 15 percent threshold. So hypothetically, if only one candidate got over 15 percent in the in in a congressional district or in a statewide race, then they'd only be entitled to the delegates. So.

hypothetically, you could have winner take all for the Democrats, but practically speaking, you're not going to. And at these individual caucus sites, uh,

And people will, if they're, say, supporting, I don't know, Michael Bennett or, you know, a candidate who's probably not going to get to 15 percent, then there's a second round and they could sort of move along. And that's why sometimes you'll see these reports of alliances among certain candidates. In fact, Biden was a part of that in 2008, I think. I don't think it really helped him all that much. Yeah.

Certain candidates will band together so that if one or the other is not viable at a certain site on the night of the caucus, they'll support the other one. But it's a very complicated process. I mean, polling is hard regardless, but polling a caucus I think is even harder. And so I wouldn't necessarily – I personally won't be that critical of these folks if polls end up being wrong. And the polls are also telling us different things. Yeah.

I think we're going to get the final Des Moines Register poll over the weekend. That's sort of generally regarded as the gold standard poll. But they got it wrong. But they got it wrong. I think Pitt had Cruz leading in – I'm sorry, had Trump leading in Iowa in 2016. He ended up losing to Cruz but then did well down the line. So I think what – you look at the data and you say, boy, we probably should expect

a fairly close, muddy outcome. And if it's something different than that, then we'll adjust. But that's sort of what I'm preparing for. So under these Rube Goldberg rules, the old joke adage, vote early and vote often, actually applies because you show up early, you vote once. If your candidate's under 15%, you get to vote again.

which means that we could very well have two or three different winners, depending on somebody takes first place, but then the losing people gang up with somebody else, and that propels them into another position. How do you think we interpret that if what ends up happening is one person had a first-place victory, but another person had a, as they say, final vote preference victory? Well, I mean, to me, I mean, again, you know,

what ends up happening is sometimes the, whatever the sort of the quote narrative is. And, you know, look, I mean, in our own ways, people like you and me end up contributing to that narrative based on how we respond to the results. But that's a, you know, a lot of different people respond to it, how things get covered.

And then there's this game of beating expectations or whatnot, which again is sort of a false thing. But here's the thing, and there's been some academic research about this. In an era where the parties are deliberately not trying to pick the nominee, someone steps into that vacuum and the collective media establishment kind of steps in to sort of make judgments about this.

And, you know, we are going to get these different, you know, different results. It'll all be up for interpretation. Ultimately, there is there's just a delegate count of the delegate count. You know what? Iowa is only one percent of all the total delegates awarded or something like that.

Um, so, you know, maybe there's more hype there than actual, uh, you know, reality given that it's, that it's just a small state and it's also a caucus. So participation is naturally going to be less than what it, whatever it would be if there's a primary. Um, so this is a long way of me saying caveats abound. Yeah. In other words, uh, we take a look and we say, you can make a case for almost anybody winning, you know, the Iowa caucus that even somebody, look,

It's close enough that one could imagine even like a Liz Warren would pick up a lot of if she had to deal with the Yang and the Steyer people that she might go from third or fourth place in the first preference to first place on the delegates because they're more progressive. So anybody can win.

Except maybe Michael Bloomberg, who's not competing. Right. And this will also have to do with, again, this expectations game. The feeling generally, and this has been reflected in the polls, is that Warren has been sort of sagging lately. And so has Buttigieg. Not necessarily in Iowa, but for Buttigieg anyway, but nationally to the point where Bloomberg seems to either caught or maybe even passed Buttigieg nationally, even while Sanders and Biden and Warren are generally ahead.

So, you know, if Warren were to get second or something, she could probably parlay that into some positive coverage. And so some of this just has to do with who's able to kind of spin the results the best that they can based on whether they actually get support or not. I'm waiting for the Amy Klobuchar spin room spinning a close fourth place into a huge victory. You know, I've been waiting to see if she would, because there were some, you know, when Rick Santorum ended up,

kind of, sort of winning Iowa. That was another one that was sort of a muddle between him and Romney, but Santorum certainly overperformed what the polls suggested. There was a little bit of sign. If you go back and look at those polls, and I just can't remember specifically what it said, but there was a little bit of a sign of a Santorum picking up steam at the end. I don't

I don't know if we've really seen that with Klobuchar. I mean, she's doing better, but she's still, you know, in fourth or fifth place. Yeah. I mean, the three most recent polls that came out have her at 10, 11, and 13, which is a significant increase over 6, 7, and 8. Right. But it's...

still has her in fourth or fifth place and just closing the gap. She'd have to have a pretty massive surge to pull into second or third on the first preference ballot. Right, right. And, you know, without a good performance in Iowa, and again, it'll be sort of in the eye of the beholder what a good performance actually is. Certainly that's double digits, though, I think at least for Klobuchar. But I don't know what sort of rationale she would have to really continue if she finished in single digits in Iowa. Yeah.

And, you know, that's I mean, it's not a home state, but it's kind of kind of there's a pseudo kind of home field advantage for her. And then you look at New Hampshire and it's the same thing. I mean, I've long thought that, you know, whoever finishes second between Sanders and Warren in New Hampshire or, you know, behind the other in New Hampshire, I mean,

And given that there's kind of a home state advantage there, what much rationale does the losing person in that dynamic have to go on? And again, it's up to these candidates how long they're going to stay in and how much money they raise, et cetera. But there is some winnowing. That's the term. And that does go on. Except then you've got the question that because of the way Democrats award their delegates proportionally with a 15 percent floor,

and the fact that between, I think you were telling me, between Casimir Pulaski Day, this is your line, so. So between two ethnic holidays, Casimir Pulaski Day, which is just celebrated in Illinois, and I think it's celebrated on different days in different places, like in Buffalo or something in the summer. But anyway, between that day, which I think is March 2nd this year,

and then March 17th was St. Patrick's Day, you're going to have more than half of all the pledged delegates awarded. And you've got all these big states voting, you know, California and Texas on Super Tuesday, a bunch of the South votes on Super Tuesday as well. You've got Michigan and Washington and a few other states on March 10th. And then you've got four really big states voting on March 17th, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and then also Arizona is not really a big state, but it's a substantially sized state. And, you know,

The delegates that are awarded in those contests are going to dwarf those awarded in February, and that'll help us determine whether we've actually got a real frontrunner on St. Patrick's Day or whether we don't. And then there's only a little bit less than 40% of all the delegates remaining to be awarded after that. But that's the thing, is that, you know, put yourself on the—you're Pete Buttigieg, you're Elizabeth Warren, you're running in third and—you know, just—

projecting out. You're running in third or fourth place, but you're at or near the 15% mark in all these places. Right. And you've got money that you can spend. Why not stay in for Super Tuesday? Right. And...

So that means that in the past where very quickly we've seen it winnow down to two people here, we've got four. And if Klobuchar were actually able to jump in there, you might have five people who argue and her home state votes on Super Tuesday as well. Minnesota, you could actually argue, well, you know, anything can happen.

Right. Anything can happen in 10 days. So why not give it a shot? A lot of these candidates, Buttigieg can be running every four years until you and I are in the retirement home. He's so young. But the others are actually this might be their last shot legitimately. So why not give it?

Why not give it all you got? Roll the dice. And also, if no one is really establishing themselves as a clear leader, then the possibility of a contested convention is out there. And a lot of these candidates will think, boy, if I could go to the convention with

whatever X percent of the delegates and maybe when the game of roulette ends, it will pick me. And look, we haven't had a second, we haven't gone to a second ballot at a national convention since 1952. Now there's been some drama going into the convention more recently than that. And arguably, I guess in 1980 with, with Carter and Kennedy and 76 with, with Ford and Reagan. But in terms of an actual contested convention, you have to go back to, to,

your second ballot, you have to go back to 52. So no one actually knows how this would really work or they don't have any experience in how a contested convention would even happen. So that might even be more of an incentive for these candidates to just say, oh, well, might as well just, you know, go all the way and maybe the game of musical chairs will end and I'll actually be on the ticket or I'll be leading the ticket. So again, there are a lot of unknowns here. Now, I will say that the history counsels us that no matter how complicated this looks today,

These things have a way of working themselves out. But I also I don't know if you or I necessarily have a sense of how it will shake out. I mean, I, you know, I guess I'd probably rather be Biden than any other candidates, but I don't feel particularly strongly about that. And there's just a lot of a lot of X factors here. So since this is the horse race, you're counseling people to wager on Biden, but wager on the field first.

Yeah, I think that's probably right. Biden would have individually the best odds of any candidate, but the field itself would have the best. If you just took the field over Biden, he'd probably be better off there. And I do still think that the demographic makeup of Biden's supporters is

skews older, skews more African-American. I think that's generally a good place to be in a primary. And I also think that as the field winnows, but you know, now maybe some more of Warren's folks would go to Sanders, but I think that, you know, Klobuchar's folks and Buttigieg's folks would generally maybe go more toward Biden, but I don't, I don't know the answer to that. And you've got, you've got Bloomberg out there spending, you know, more money than we've ever seen in a primary basically or,

what does that do? And he probably hurts Biden more than the other candidates. So it's, it's really a crapshoot. I mean, if I felt, if I felt like I had some sort of comfortable hot take here, I would offer it, but I just, I just don't feel like I do. Yeah. Well, one of the, one of my, uh, one of the reasons if I were one of these candidates, I would hang on, uh, even if I was running in fourth or fifth, as long as I was getting some delegates and in the game is, uh,

story, a letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote after his first failed run for the Senate, because he, of course, failed in 1858, but he was the Republican Party nominee a couple of years earlier than that. And he talks about how he goes into with a short of a majority, and the Democratic candidate comes in with a short of majority, and there's these free soil Democrats,

You know, like seven or so. And he tells the story of how the candidate favored by them ends up being the senator. Because when you get into this where people won't accept, you know, Bernie's people won't accept Biden, Biden's people won't accept Bernie. They have to look down. That's right. And that means maybe Amy Klobuchar comes in with 10 percent of the delegates and becomes the nominee because she's the only person they can settle on. Of course, I don't think that will happen. But weirder things have happened.

Yeah, you just you just never know. And and then you've got this wild card of the superdelegates who were sidelined officially in the process. So they basically can only vote on the first ballot if there's no real contest on the first ballot. Well, they can't vote on at all on the first ballot. They can only vote on the second ballot.

I think if it's just to support the obvious nominee by acclamation, I think they can vote. Oh, yes, but the obvious nominee, yes. But if there's any question, the superdelegates can't vote. Right. And so if you get to that second ballot that, again, I've mentioned has not happened in most people's lifetimes, then the superdelegates activate and –

uh, you know, I could just, yeah, I think about that, that part in empire strikes back and star Wars where, uh, uh, Lando's deputy low bot, his eyes, there's that shot where his eyes open and he activates, uh, and they put their machinations into effect. That's what I, that's the picture always comes into my head, but I'm also, you know, a star Wars geek or whatever, but there are some, there are some folks, you know what I'm talking about out there, but anyway, you're talking to one of them. Yeah, that's right. So, uh, anyway, the super dog is activate, uh,

The threshold for winning, of course, goes up because the total number of delegates goes up. But the superdelegates account for something like 15 percent of all the delegates. And, you know, there's always a possibility that the superdelegates would would sort of

You know, if Sanders is one of the alternatives and they go with somebody else, particularly if Sanders, you know, got the most votes or something, boy, there'd be hell to pay. And that's where the Democrats could really come out of this convention just looking like a very haggard party, which, of course, would be beneficial to the president. Yeah. And of course, the president.

despite having everything thrown at him but the kitchen sink and probably even the kitchen sink a few times over the last three years. At one point last week, as you tweeted out, had hit a post-impeachment high or post-inauguration high in his job appointment.

That's right. And it's fallen back a little bit, but still at a historically high level. What do you make of this? And what do you think the prospects are for Trump actually breaking through that barrier and maybe getting close to 50-50 on his job approval? A lot of things at play here. John Sides, who the George Washington political scientist, Vanderbilt, I'm sorry. No, he was. He just moved over the summer. Yeah. So anyway, Vanderbilt.

He and a number of other political scientists do the monkey cage side. And he basically – he wrote something recently about how presidents going to reelection generally see their approval rating rise a little bit, which sort of makes sense. You're sort of consolidating your party. You've got an opponent to focus on. And I also wonder if we're seeing –

Maybe some sort of like differential effect going or differential response effect here. And let me let me explain what that is. So listeners may remember after the first debate in the 2012 presidential race between Romney and Obama that Obama basically did did was perceived to have done poorly. And I think in actuality did poorly, too.

And Romney got a little bit of a polling boost out of that. There actually were a few national polls that showed him leading when generally he wasn't before then. And, you know, it ended up being that Obama still ended up winning the race. He recovered a little bit. But there was also some thought that basically that Republicans were sort of energized by that happening and that you may have seen that pop up in polling results and that this sort of increased energy is sort of reflected in the numbers. I kind of wonder if the sort of the threat to Trump is.

is causing something similar in impeachment. And I don't have any evidence for that necessarily, but it is a dynamic you see sometimes that if someone, if a party feels like it's disproportionately threatened, that maybe that sort of pops up in the polls as sort of more of a rally around the flag effect. And therefore, maybe the president will fall off in back to his normal state of approval, which is more like 42 or 43 in these averages.

Um, but maybe not, you know, maybe, maybe this consolidation lasts and we're seeing kind of a general election style kind of consolidation. But here's the overall takeaway is that I don't think you could argue that the president has been hurt by impeachment by the numbers. You could even argue that he has been helped, but maybe that won't last or what have you. And it also leads one to think, boy, I mean, I think the Democrats would say, oh, well, we did this impeachment because we had to, because the president was using his power essentially to aid his reelection. Um,

Which I think is like a reasonable argument. But if you go into the process knowing that the chances of conviction are either non-existent or extremely slight, then what you're really doing is you're trying to use this to make an argument against the president for the next election. And

Based on that, I don't know if it's working. Now, maybe things happen here that change the outlook, although, boy, there have been so many bombshell developments about the president regarding the Mueller report, the lead-up to the Mueller report, people close to the president going to jail, and yet none of those things really seem to move the needle all that much, and impeachment is kind of the ultimate example of that. Yeah, I've written a number of times that...

Republican voters and now Trump Republican voters, people who were not Republicans before Trump, see themselves under siege. Yep. Yep. And that people who see themselves with no option but fighting back will fight back. Yep. And they are fighting back by supporting the president. And Democrats continue to be.

and their allies in the media continue to be shocked that their strategy of the beatings will continue until the morale improves isn't improving morale. Yeah. And look, even at 44, 45% approval, you know, the president's disapproval is still consistently over 50. If, if the Democrats can unify the, you know, the, the, the Trump disapprovers, that's a path to victory. So it's, you know, I, I, and I, I'm someone who's basically felt for months now that, that,

the 2020 general election is essentially a coin flip. And I really still feel that way. That said, if you wanted to say that Trump's position looks better today than it did three or six months ago, I could see that. You know, I mean, again, I personally don't think much has changed one way or the other. But I think there's data you could point to that's pretty good for the president. And it's this push and pull going on. It's like,

you know, a president, an incumbent president running for re-election with a feeling of peace and prosperity, that person should generally be in good shape. And yet there are still a lot of concerns about the president's behavior and the intensity of his opposition. So, I mean, one thing I think it's just important to remind listeners is that

Trump does not have to win the popular vote in order to win the presidency. You take a look and you say, well, he's at 45 or roughly what he's at in the real clear politics average now. Disapprovers are 51 or 52. That's an obvious loss. Well, no, it's not an obvious loss because his electoral coalition is disproportionately concentrated in high electoral vote swing states.

And we saw last time that he could lose the popular vote by 2% and win. Some people say it could be as large as 3% to 4% this time and still win because, again, the people who have moved to dislike him are disproportionately in states that won't swing the Electoral College. That's

Yes, suburban Houston may be up in arms, but Texas is still red. Right. Yes, Orange County may be up in arms and they no longer send Republicans to Congress, but at the presidential level, it's still blue. So that the people who are upset aren't swinging the needle presidentially. And how much do you think Trump...

At what point, when you look at the job approval ratings, taking this into account, do you say, OK, Trump's moved into the favorites range, even if he's upside down in the job? I mean, I think 45 is probably a pretty good number to look at. And that's kind of where he's been. Now, that hasn't been where he's been consistently throughout his presidency.

But anything over 45 nationally, you know, that probably puts him in probably puts him more in that sort of that favorite role. And again, that's kind of where he is right now. But I'm also I'm not sure that that's going to continue. But if it does continue, then, you know, it's better. And again, if you know, again, if he's at 45 nationally, that probably means he's at closer to 50 and in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, maybe. Or at least he's not below 45 in those states.

And you've got the Marquette poll that came out about 10 days ago that when Trump was a little below 45, he was above 48 in job approval in Wisconsin. Now, there's also been some polling that suggested that Trump is not necessarily winning every single person who approves of his job performance. Yes. Which is, you know, I mean, he won in 2016 because...

He did decisively better amongst people who had a poor view of him and of Clinton. That was about 20 percent of the electorate, according to the exit polls. He won that group by 17. Will that group stick with him? And to me, that's sort of an open question, too. We're also going to be in a higher turnout environment than 2016, I think. Probably 6 percent of the electorate went to third parties.

I'm assuming that that's going to be lower, although we don't know what the make of the roster of third party candidates is going to be yet. So that, that'll, that'll make, make a difference. But you know, the president, you know, generally speaking, I think the approval rating is a good proxy for what the president could expect to get to the vote, but maybe not. And that, and again, that some of that depends on his his opponent. And you know, some of these folks may do better amongst different demographics than others. So looking at last thought,

Next couple of weeks, what's the one thing you're looking for that could actually be a determining factor or a significant factor in setting the stage for November?

Well, in terms of the nomination battle, I think if Biden wins Iowa, he's in really pretty good shape because that's a state that he does not have advantages in, I don't think. He is very reliant on African-American voters. There are hardly any African-American voters in Iowa. Similarly, I think the biggest threat to Biden is if someone –

Sanders is the likeliest option, but maybe it'd be somebody else. Someone actually sweeps the first three states and it's not Biden. That to me would be pretty important. And also, if Sanders really starts to rise here, is there some sort of stop Sanders movement? Although I feel like sometimes when these stop whoever movements start, they don't work, historically speaking.

So, you know, it's and, you know, I think a lot of people, a lot of establishment Democrats anyway, feel like Biden would be a stronger candidate than Sanders. Maybe they're right about that. Maybe they're wrong. I think they both bring different liabilities to the table. I think all these Democrats bring a lot of liabilities to the table. But then again, the president does, too. So, you know, what do you what do you do with that?

But, you know, it's just sort of, you know, these February contests help set up that sprint in March. And so that's what we sort of be looking for. But, you know, again, Biden is the Biden's the only one who I think it's sort of skate by in Iowa and it's not that big of a deal. But then, you know, New Hampshire being second is a problem because that's a state where you'd expect Sanders to do really well. Well, Kyle, thank you for your observations and thank you for joining me on the horse race. Thanks, Henry.

Today on State of Play, we will be looking into the first in the nation vote, Iowa and its caucuses, which will be taking place on Monday, February 3rd. Joining me is a local expert, Donna Hoffman, professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. Welcome to the horse race, Donna. Well, thanks for having me on.

One of the things we always hear about the Iowa caucuses is that it's not like a primary. It's all about boots on the ground and organization. How true is that? And how do you rate the different candidates' organizations as we go into the final stretch?

Well, it's very true, because you have to realize it's also—not only is it organizationally complex, it's decentralized. So this cycle, there are 1,678 precincts on the Democratic side, and each one of those precincts will have a meeting. And for the campaigns, their challenge is to try to find a caucus organizer for each of their campaigns to get their supporters out, to educate their supporters to understand what they're supposed to do, where they're supposed to go.

And it can be a real challenge. Also, you know, this is a meeting.

It's going to take an hour, maybe two hours. February in Iowa, the weather can be cold. It's what's always cold. It can also be nasty. And so you have to have your supporters really motivated also. It's not enough just to get people to say, yes, I support your candidate. It's do you support my candidate and will you actually turn out to the caucuses? And so this is the challenge for the campaigns. And so because it's a very decentralized process, they try to spread out.

They'll have field offices in some of the larger counties, some of the farther out-of-the-way places as well. They will try to—they'll have some paid staff. They'll try to get free volunteers as well. The most useful way to organize—

You know, in a precinct, which is a neighborhood, the most effective way can be with people who are in that neighborhood asking their neighbors, come out, support this candidate. And so these are all tasks that a campaign in Iowa has to do, because the caucuses are really unique, and it is really grassroots democracy on the Democratic side as well. You know, when you go to a caucus, you stand in the corner with your people.

It's not secret. It's not a balloting event. It really is a group meeting, and there can be dialogue back and forth. There's also first alignment, second alignment. So if you're in a group that is unviable, generally speaking, in most precincts, that's going to be less than 15%.

then the people in that group have an opportunity to reorganize or to realign. They can go to a viable group or they can try to get some of the other viable groups to come over to them so that they are viable. And then that is how the delegates are selected. Wow. That's not just showing up in line and punching or putting an X next to somebody's name in a ballot. This is like a serious commitment. But yet somewhere between 150 and 250,000 people are going to be willing to do this.

That's right. And so Democrats are expecting a large turnout. The record that they have is about 240,000. They are expecting that to go up this time in part because of the interest of Democrats, but also because of the large number of candidates as well. But we should also stop and note that it's not just Democrats that are caucusing. Republicans are caucusing also.

And unlike in some other states, the Republican Party in Iowa has not canceled its events. It is keeping them open. And so there will be Republican caucuses, too. They certainly won't be as well attended as we would see if there was a competitive race. But they do still have party business to conduct, and they will still take that preference poll that they always do.

And just so that people who may be listening in Iowa know, you can change your party registration on the day of the caucus. So if you're a Republican who just says, you know, I really want to vote Democrat this time, you don't have to let your party registration be a bar. Unlike a primary, you can show up in that living room, that caucus meeting place in your neighborhood and say, hey, I want to be a Democrat. And they'll switch you over on the spot.

That's right, because we're a closed state. And not only can you change your registration, but if you're not registered to vote, you can register at your caucus site as well. And this is really useful in Iowa because a plurality of voters in Iowa actually are registered. It's what we call no party.

And so those are those independents that some campaigns will seek to turn out. Other campaigns may not. It depends on their strategy. But certainly there is a free movement possibility that you have with the caucuses because of the way our registration works in Iowa.

There's been a lot of speculation that the impeachment trial is going to hurt the sitting senators, Warren, Sanders and Klobuchar, who haven't been able to get out and house those events and meet those volunteers and press that flesh in the last 10 days. And it doesn't look like they're going to be able to get out until the like the weekend before the caucus. Has you seen any impact of that on the race or have they been able to surmount that through the use of surrogates and video?

I think they've largely been able to surmount it because everybody knows who's active, knows what's going on in Washington, D.C. This can be the thing. If you know your candidate is not going to be able to appear, it may even spur some of those volunteers to be more active, going out, knocking on doors, for example. And that's effective typically.

But we also see the surrogates. You know, I know that Elizabeth Warren has sent her husband and her dog out to do events. And so some of the campaigns are getting a little bit creative in terms of how they're still seeking to hold events, even though the senators may not be physically there, but still get their people excited and still get somebody there to talk about the candidate to get people excited.

Well, walk the listeners through what caucus night looks like. I know it starts at 7 o'clock. Is it 7 o'clock Central Time or 7 o'clock? It's 7 o'clock Eastern Time. It's 7 o'clock Central Time. Central Time. So it's 8 o'clock Eastern Time. And what does a caucus look like? Because it's not like a typical voting experience. How will the evening unfold in each of those 1,678 locations?

Well, most of those locations are going to be in places like schools, gymnasiums, those kinds of things. It's not going to be the same place most people vote. So, again, there's part of that organizational challenge. The doors are going to open at 6. And if you are someone who needs to change your registration, it's advised that you go early, for example. People will be there to help with that paperwork. New for the Democrats this year, they did a preregistration program.

period of time. So you could pre-register to skip the lines, kind of like a fast pass is how they're billing it. But that closed on January 17th. So there will be some people who will have that. They can probably show up a little bit later. There oftentimes are lines. There may be locations, too, where there's more than one precinct gathering. And so it's important that voters know what precinct they're going to and where those precincts are, because there might be a mix of precincts meeting in any one location.

So, you will check in, and then you will—we will gather in these rooms, the voters will, and once everyone is there, the caucusing starts at 7:00. If you're in line at 7:00 and you haven't been processed yet, they will still let you caucus. So if there's really large crowds, it could—you know, things could be delayed until everyone is in, because they do guarantee that if you're in line at 7:00, you are still able to caucus.

There will be a temporary precinct chair. This is somebody the party lines up to conduct the caucus.

There's a formal then vote. It's usually going to be the same person that the caucus votes in to conduct the meeting. There's an ability of campaigns to have someone talk very briefly about their candidate. There's an alignment period in that first alignment period where you will find the precinct captain for the candidate you're supporting. We should note here that you don't have to be supporting a candidate. You can go in as uncommitted as well.

And you will literally gather in groups. Then there will be a period of time where the groups will be counted. They'll have to calculate the viability threshold, which again, in most large precincts, that's going to be 15%. And then any group that's under that 15%, they're deemed not viable. And so there's a period of time, about 15 minutes, where those people can realign. They can go to uncommitted. I mean, they could even leave potentially.

And then there's that final alignment. Also new to the Democrats this year, they're going to be having voters write down their first preference or their first alignment. They're going to be, if they have to realign, they get the opportunity then to write down who they're going to in the second alignment.

And that's going to provide a paper trail for the Democrats in case they need one. And it is something that's new. It's also going to be reported that's new as well. So what the Democratic Party typically does on caucus night in the past, they reported what they call state delegate equivalents. And the media sometimes doesn't exactly know what to do with those because it's a calculation in terms of what they think each candidate supports going to be at the state convention.

And so these cards then, it will also be reported the support that is there for a candidate on the first alignment. Second alignment will also be reported. So you'll have three numbers this year coming out of the Democratic caucuses. And it could be that you have different people on top of those different metrics.

The party's pretty clear that they think the metric that's most important is the standard delegate equivalent metric, but they're still going to be reported. But this does provide an opportunity for a candidate who might have won on the first alignment but then didn't benefit from the realignment and maybe goes to second. It allows for different people to create their own narrative in some ways in terms of how they did. And so you could have multiple people claiming wins out of Iowa. And

And we should also note here that a win in Iowa doesn't necessarily always mean you're on top, because expectations is an important thing here. And so oftentimes we will look at someone who might have won but maybe not as done as well as expected. That can be a detriment to them.

Someone who does better than expected may get a lot more media attention, even though they weren't on top of the polling numbers. And so the dynamics of an Iowa caucus, again, complex, democracy at its finest in one sense, and a lot of different things coming out of the state.

So tell me, what will you be looking for on election night as the Iowa Democratic Party releases these results? They're not all going to be released at once. What sort of places or what sort of trends will you be looking for that will give you a good idea of what's going to happen?

Sure. So we'll be looking at various different counties, or this is what I look at anyway, that might give us kind of an indication of what a larger picture looks like. Some counties report, some precincts will report faster than others. You know, some of the counties I look at, Johnson County is one. Johnson County in Iowa is sometimes called the Republic of Johnson County. It's probably the most progressive county in the state. It's where the University of Iowa is. But

Bernie Sanders won that by 60 percent in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. And one of the real questions coming out of the caucuses is, how will that progressive vote be split up, potentially between Sanders and Warren, for example? So I'm curious to see what Johnson County looks like as it comes in. Polk, of course, is the largest county. Clinton won that by about 53 percent in the previous caucus. And it's, you know, again, the largest county. We can kind of see what's happening there in terms of delegates.

I'm interested in Dubuque County. Dubuque County is one of the counties that was for Obama in '12, for Trump in '16.

typically a Democratic stronghold, but very blue-collar and also very Catholic. And so I'm interested to see what's happening there as well. We've got Dallas County that's a suburban county of Des Moines that has grown dramatically, and looking at some of the results there as well. And then one county in western Iowa—western Iowa is fairly Republican, but Woodbury County

Also, one of the top ten biggest counties in the state is one of the western counties I'll look at. Sanders won it as well. So I'll be looking at how these results compare to what happened in 2016 and see if we can gauge anything about the kind of lanes of candidates that we have, the progressive candidates, the moderate candidates, and who seems to be rising to the top.

Well, knowing that the prognostication is always fraught with peril, do you have any prognostications you want to leave us with?

I don't, because I think we'll see four on top. I think you'll see Sanders, Biden, Warren, and Buttigieg. Klobuchar is poised to do better than expected, I think. I think the real question is, there's a potential for this caucus to look like, much like the 2004 caucus looked for the Democrats, where you had Howard Dean peaking, probably peaking too early. He was going in, in some ways, being seen as a

a strong contender. He ended up finishing third. And John Kerry came in, in part, I think, because there were some establishment Democrats that got behind Kerry. And Kerry, of course, went on to get the nomination. So I think you might have seen a situation in Iowa where Pete Buttigieg might have peaked too early.

The question is, do we see Sanders on top? Do we see Biden on top? I think Warren's in a similar position. She might have peaked too early. There's a lot of people, because of the quality of candidates, the number of candidates, a lot of people going in even to caucus nights saying they're going to look at the lay of the land in the room when they get there, see what it looks like before they decide. And that's pretty unusual. Iowans do tend to decide late, but usually not on caucus night. We got some of that going on this cycle.

Wow. Sounds like it's going to be a late night for you and a wonderful night for political junkies everywhere. It's fun. Donna, thank you for joining me on the horse race. You're very welcome.

The undercard. That's the next segment. And this is where each week I'll discuss not the presidential race, because that's the top of the card, but the gubernatorial, senatorial, state legislative and congressional races that are every bit as important for the future of our country, but don't get as much national TV.

This week, I'll be talking about Maine's Senate race. Maine's Senate race is going to be one of the top ones to watch because it pits Republican Susan Collins, who will be running for her fifth term, against Democratic House Speaker Steve

Sarah Gideon. Now, Sarah Gideon has contested primary, but no one doubts that she's going to win because she's already been endorsed by all the leading Democratic groups. And she's raising millions of dollars, whereas her opponents in the Democratic primary are only raising a few hundred thousand.

How many million? Well, she reported in the most recent quarter filings raising over eight and a half million dollars in that quarter alone. That's astronomical sum for a Senate candidate, particularly from a state as small as Maine. She's reporting two point eight million dollars cash on hand. So that means she spent a lot of it already, which suggests that she's been doing a lot of expensive direct mail advertising as well as maybe pre buying some television time.

Susan Collins, though, isn't a slouch. As of the third quarter, she reported having $7.1 million cash on hand. And even though she's been spending a lot on early television ads to define herself, no one thinks that she will be trailing her challenger when the final figures are released later this week.

This is such a tough race for Collins, not because of her own track record, because she has won four consecutive statewide races by ever-increasing margins in each race, topping out at a 37-point blowout win in her 2014 re-election. Rather, it's a tough race because this is a Democratic-leaning state.

Republicans have not won Maine at the presidential level since George Herbert Walker Bush won in 1988. And Democrats have won it by margins ranging from between three points and 21 points every election since.

So how is it that this isn't a shoe-in for the Democrats? Well, a couple of reasons. One, Collins has always been able to portray and actually execute an image and a reality that is more moderate than the typical Republican senator.

Collins is somebody who, when you look at her vote rankings, almost always ends up in the middle. She has tried very hard to ensure that she works on local issues. She doesn't represent many of the values or take many of the priorities of the party's right wing. And that tells people who are moderate suburbanites or moderate voters on the shore of

and the shore of Maine that she's not the typical Republican. They can feel good about supporting for her. The other thing that makes it a race is that three-point win that I mentioned. That happens to be the margin Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by. Yes, Donald Trump did the best relative to the Democrat of any Republican in 30 years, and that's because he did massively well in the blue-collar areas in California

the formerly prosperous but now downscale Maine rural areas. That while Maine was never a big industrial state with car factories or iron factories, they used to be a nation's leader in things like pulp paper mills and logging. And that industry and those industries have been in downturn for decades.

Trump's message of I've got your back and we can make America, i.e. you and your communities great again, resonated massively with these voters and they abandoned the Democrats in droves.

This was kind of presaged by the 2010 victory of Paul LePage, the Republican governor from 2010 to 2018, who also did very well in these areas. And while not quite as ostentatiously rude as Trump, is somebody who also had a very unconventional background, unconventional way of speech, and a somewhat confrontational approach with state legislators. There's something about that persona that appeals to the main back

or the Maine waitress who's working in a diner in the back out area of Maine. And these two things, Collins' longtime appeal to moderate suburbanites as well as the movement among moderate downscale immigrants

Backwoods rural dwellers in Maine make this a much more tight race for Republicans and simply looking at the presidential figures would have you believe Democrats have it in for Collins not only because they need the seat in order to retake control of the Senate but because despite her moderate reputation she ended up voting

to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. They declared war on her as soon as she declared that, and that's one of the things that Sarah Gideon is raising money off of nationwide and why she will compete with Susan Collins in cash.

Maine is a small state. It does not cost a lot of money to advertise here. So when you're talking about each candidate spending $15 million or so apiece, which they likely will, you're talking about people who will be saturated in television, radio, digital, mail, you name it, they will see it. People will not lack for information about these candidates.

One final note about the Maine Senate race. Maine introduced a law called the instant runoff voting law last year. And that means that if somebody doesn't get 50 percent, candidates who voted for a third party candidate can preference who they prefer out of the major candidates. So if Collins doesn't get 50 percent, the fact that there are independents who are running to Gideon's left

or one Green Party candidate and another LGBTQ activist, that could very well mean that Gideon will trail on election night. But when these ballots are counted, she will end up prevailing. This is going to be a tight race. Don't put it past Collins to win her fifth turn. But if you're taking a look at control of the Senate, don't forget Maine. It's going to be one of the most important states in America on election night 2020.

This week's guest on Trump Talk is Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Bill Galston. Bill, welcome to The Horse Race. Good to be here. So, Trump has gone through an interesting week. Yeah. What do you think stands out to you as either low points or high points? Well, I think it's a good question.

The president is clearly trying to be presidential in at least one respect, and that is that he's trying to highlight presidential activities, indeed presidential wins. And obviously the new trilateral treaty with Canada and Mexico and the United States, son of NAFTA, is a significant accomplishment. Mm-hmm.

And, you know, after many years of waiting, the much-awaited in some quarters Middle East peace plan was released in tandem with a visit from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two have a lot in common, it seems to me. Netanyahu is under indictment. President Trump is under threat of removal from office by the Senate. So I'm sure they had a lot to talk about. Yeah.

Yeah. And Benny Gantz was there to kind of be a fly on the wall and say, hey, hey, I might be prime minister in a month, Mr. President. Well, he might well be. Yeah. And, you know, for what it's worth, you know, for the listeners interested in Israeli politics, I think there's a serious question as to whether the voters in Israel will decide enough is enough. Yeah.

I don't think they're going to go to a fourth election. Three is surely the charm. And so they're going to have to figure out what to do about this. And I think ultimately the deal is that Prime Minister Netanyahu gives way. That seems to be the one that makes the most sense. It's also the one that he and Lacoude seem to be least willing to entertain. But

That is a month from now, and Israeli politics make ours look like a church choir. So those would be things that would normally be, hey, you know, wins for the president. Positive press coverage, got something done that's important, even if you don't think that the Israeli peace deal, which I liken to a real estate transaction in my column recently, is going to go forward.

And yet the 10,000-pound gorilla in the room is what you mentioned, which is impeachment, removal, witnesses, the Bolton revelation or purported revelation of a purported thing with respect to what he said is said to have said to have seen.

On balance, do you think the president is hurt by these things or is this just more inside the beltway stuff and people have generally made up their minds one way or the other? Well, for sure, people have generally made up their minds one way or the other. And I'm really struck by the fact that since the very beginning of October, the needle has barely budged in one direction or the other. On impeachment. On removal from office. Yes, on removal from office. Now—

With regard to another very topical matter, namely the calling of witnesses, public opinion has evolved very significantly in the past few days. And the most recent survey...

you know, has 75% of Americans in favor of calling witnesses, including nearly half of the Republicans. And if you average the surveys done over the past 10 days, you have 38% of Republicans now in favor of calling witnesses. So I have to imagine that,

that there's a reason why Senator McConnell deliberately announced yesterday that he did not, per end, yet have the votes to block the calling of witnesses. There must be a lot of senators in his caucus who are looking at the same numbers that I'm looking at, and they're experiencing some heat back home. And a very substantial portion of the Republican Party now entertains

two thoughts simultaneously. Number one, the president should not be removed from office by the Senate. And number two, the Senate should hear from witnesses. And I don't think that's an example of F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous test of intelligence, the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one's mind at the same time and continue to function because there's no contradiction between those two things. Right.

It's kind of like doing your due diligence. Exactly. Make sure that there's nothing out there that might change your mind. Balance of statements suggests one way to Republican voters, but they're not willing to close the door and appear to be unfair. Yeah, I think that a lot of this has to do with the kind of implicit analogy that people draw to an actual but ordinary trial. Right. You need a very good argument to.

to exclude otherwise admissible evidence. And the argument that the president's private lawyer, Mr. Sekulow, is making that this is, quote, not admissible is, well, I won't characterize it for myself, but let me just say that the bulk of voters and even almost half of Republicans don't agree with him on that point.

So in the midst of this, you know, we've been hearing about impeachment in Ukraine and new evidence and so forth. And over the weekend, Trump's job approval rating hit a new post inauguration high. It's now gone back a little bit, but it's still sitting at about 45 percent on the real clear politics average, which is low by historic standards, but by Trump standards is positively enormous.

What do you think about why his approval rating has improved over from where it was at the end of October or the beginning of October, sorry, where he was at about 40 percent? And why do you think whenever he seems to get up to 45, he bounces back down? Well, yeah.

This is the president in my lifetime with the smallest gap between his ceiling and his floor. Yeah. Barely enough for him to stand up in. Like a CIA cell before they were transferred to— That's kind of like the genie or the genie says in Aladdin about the bottle. You know, immense power but itty-bitty living space. And I think—

That he's going to have a very hard time in the general election getting much more than the share of the popular vote that he got in 2016 for a very simple reason. He has made no effort to reach out to the people who didn't vote for him in 2016. He's given them no reason to.

And so I think that he is now pretty close to his ceiling. And the amazing thing is that with the public perception of the economy steadily improving, which is one of the reasons I think but not the only reason why his job approval has gone up somewhat in the past couple of months, that it is remarkable –

that his job approval is only in the mid-40s. Anybody else with this economy would be in the mid-50s. Yeah, and anybody else with this economy and the country generally being at peace would be looking at, everyone would be saying, it's time to measure the drapes. You're going to win re-election, barring, you know, certainly in a polarized age, not a landslide, but we have not had a president.

uh, with this sort of peace and prosperity running for reelection, uh, probably since Clinton in 1996, you know, that Bush had modest degree of prosperity, but not peace because we were in Iraq and Obama was recovering. Uh, so he had peace, but it didn't really feel like prosperity to a

President Clinton, for whom you served in his administration, was experiencing 55 to 60 percent approval ratings at that time. Does Trump have it in him? I know this is kind of playing couch psychologist here, but does Trump have it in him to change? Can he look at this and say once the trial is over, whether it's

on Friday like his defenders want or if it's after witnesses are taken and so it's a month from now, does he have it in him to turn around and say, you've had your shot, you've done it, you've tried to take me down, and I'm going to rise above it? Or do you think that we're just going to see a vindictive Trump turn and remind people in mean-spirited ways throughout the entire campaign that that's the party that did that, tried to do that thing to me?

I check box B. And I'm not saying that invidiously. I just think if you look at the evidence of his conduct since he was elected and not to mention the 2016 campaign, it is really hard to predict that he will have a sudden burst of uncontrollable magnanimity. Right.

I don't think he has a magnanimous bone in his body. So it's the reverse of, you know, Churchill said in victory, magnanimity and defeat defiance. So with Trump, it's defiance, defiance, defiance all the time. Yes. And I think I'm not going to play play armchair psychologist about a man I've never met. But everything I see, you know, suggests that he personalizes everything.

And once somebody has offended him or even opposed him in a matter that he found offensive, that he will bear that grudge indefinitely and give voice to it continuously. Well, on that very cheery note for our future.

What do you think is likely to be in the next week, knowing what's coming up? What do you think might be the thing Trump does over the next week that we'll be talking about next Wednesday?

Well, if memory serves, the State of the Union address is February 4th. Which would be Tuesday, yes. Right? So I confidently predict that next— You're usually, you know, giving me tougher questions than that, Henry. So if we're not talking about the State of the Union next Wednesday, it would be remarkable. And—

I think that there is a clearly advantageous template for the State of the Union next Tuesday. Whether he will follow that template is anybody's guess. But if I were writing the speech, it would be on the theme of promises made, promises kept. And I would start with the economy, but I wouldn't end there. And just – I would –

I would remind all of the different factions of the Republican Party what he's done for them in furtherance of the implicit bargain that he made very systematically with each of the party's building blocks back in 2016. And I would put just enough of a consensus-building, forward-leaning agenda on the table to convince people that he has one. So if I were doing that—

I would talk about drug prices. I would talk about— Bringing them down because high ones are bad. Yeah, exactly. I would talk about infrastructure.

I think people have gotten a little bit cynical about it, but I've been spending a lot of time with mayors lately of both political persuasions and God knows they could use some help at this point. And I wouldn't emphasize anything divisive in my forward-leaning agenda. I would say, look, American people.

I haven't been everybody's cup of tea, but I do want to focus on things that we all pretty much agree need to be focused on and we can save the other stuff for another time, like the day after I get elected. Yeah.

But, you know, that that it seems to me is his best raw political play. It was those two things, promises made, promises kept and a consensus building agenda for the remainder of 2020 and beyond. Well, Bill, I wouldn't bet against him giving a speech like that.

But having thought similar things and seen those speeches approached or said in some way, 96 hours later, I'll be surprised if he's still on topic. Well, that is, of course, another point. He has in the past given sensible and reasonably presidential speeches, which he has proceeded to undercut because something set him off the day after the speech, sort of wiping out

the temporary effect of the speech. Well, there's never, we are never at a lack of things to talk about and psychoanalyze with the 45th president of the United States. Bill, thank you for joining me on The Horse Race. My pleasure.

Now let's turn to this week's ad of the week. Each week, I dissect one political ad that's running in one of the key states and explain why it works or, in some cases, why it doesn't. This week's ad of the week is from Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, and it's called Transform This Country. Let's listen. ♪

Take a look around you and find someone you don't know. Maybe somebody doesn't look kind of like you. Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you're willing to fight for yourself? If you and millions of others are prepared to do that, not only will we win this election, but together we will transform. I'm Bernie Sanders and I approve this message.

This ad's voiceover, the speech that Sanders is giving, isn't particularly noteworthy. It's very positive. It's very uplifting. It strikes a lot of good tones. But what's really noteworthy is, unfortunately, what you can't see, and that's the visuals. These visuals are stunning, and they're smart in contacting and focusing on exactly the people that Bernie Sanders needs to talk about.

You see pictures quickly coming across of young people who are excited to be campaigning door to door for Bernie in Iowa's snowy streets. People of color, both Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans. You see a lot of women in these pictures and you see a lot of big crowds. There's a couple of times when they shoot away to Bernie talking either on the banks of the Mississippi River with thousands of people in attendance or in a big auditorium, again, with thousands of

This time, really cheering people in attendance. So you get the sense that here's people who are smiling, they're happy, they're enthusiastic, and they're for Bernie. There's lots of Iowa shots here, not just the ones that I mentioned where you've got the big panoramas, but shots of people in and around snowy, small-town Iowa, the sort of places where you can see people.

places that are nondescript, but any Iowan would recognize as being authentically Iowan. One of the big shots comes, it's a two-second clip, but it's

superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bouncing with energy across the stage at what appears to be a Bernie rally, subtly reminding progressives that the biggest star in progressive politics is an endorser of Bernie Sanders. And there's lots of people from low-income and working-class backgrounds. You will look at this ad, and you won't see many people, if anyone, over the age of 60 or

Bernie's core supporters are people who are 45 and under. You won't see much of any people who are living in wealthy areas or seem to be running businesses. Again, Bernie's supporters are the sort of people who are making less than $50,000 a year, not the sort of people who are making more than $100,000 a year.

And you see the excitement and the non-traditional dress. You've got one part where you show pictures of what can only be called Bernie bros who are dressed in T-shirts and with sweater caps on, or, you know, the knitted caps on. Again, people who are for Bernie will likely recognize one of these people or one of these groups as representative of themselves. And it pushes you to

Continue that enthusiasm, continue that excitement and move forward. And then gives you the uplifting message that not only can you make yourself feel good, not only can you help elect Bernie, but you're part of a movement. You're going to transform this country.

In one 30-second ad, you've looked at the Bernie Sanders constituency, you've heard what makes Bernie attractive to his supporters, and they've channeled them in an Iowa-specific way to take specific action so that he can win this all-important First in the Nation caucus. That's why Bernie Sanders' ad, Transform This Country, is this week's Out of the Week.

That's it for this week's Horse Race. Next episode, I'll look at the New Hampshire primary and how impeachment is affecting President Trump's political chances. So join me next week in the winner's circle on the Horse Race with Henry Olsen. Ricochet. Join the conversation.