Nic Bernstein

1612 East Lafayette Place

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202-1023

414-277-8442

Copyright © Nic Bernstein, 2004 All rights reserved

Preface — A note to the reader

What follows is a journal, not journalism. No attempt is made at objectivity, this is an inherently subjective piece of writing as it is entirely about my own experience. Aside from the prologue and epilogue this was written contemporaneous to the events described. The prologue and epilogue have been added to help provide some context to the journal itself.

I also wish to apologize, in advance, for the inevitable mis-attributions, mis-spellings of names, and other errors of commission or omission resulting from the frenetic atmosphere within which this was written. I also want to thank all of the wonderful people I met during the events described herein.

Wednesday and Thursday, January 14 and 15, 2004 — Prologue —

From: GERALDINE <>

Subject: Some good news!

Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:18:20 -0500

To: Nic Bernstein <>

I'm going to Iowa!!

Yes, I am going to be a part of Dean's perfect storm for the Iowa

caucus.

The good news for you is, that I have a FOUR HOUR layover this Friday

in Milwaukee!! The time will make your eyes water, but, I arrive there

at 7:35 and don't leave until 11:35.

Let's do breakfast and the NY Times!!

g

This is how it starts. I have known Geri for nearly thirty years, but this note was unexpected. I have been getting more and more wrapped up in the campaign as the Iowa caucuses approached, and here is my chance to do something about it. I read this message at 8:30 in the morning, and I immediately want to go along.

Now let me get this out on the table right away: Yes, I am a Dean supporter, but I am not a "Deaniac." I first saw Dean on a candidate forum on ABC News, and I thought that he came across as a little full of himself, but I liked a lot of what he said. Then I had seen him one-on-one with Charlie Rose. When my wife and I last visited with Geri and her husband in Northern Virginia, shortly after those events last Spring, she asked what I thought of the different candidates. My summary of Dean was that he had good ideas but was the only person I had seen out-smug Charlie Rose. I can still stand by that analysis.

Last June I was invited by some friends to go see Dean address a rally of his supporters prior to the State Democratic Party convention and straw poll. The people who invited me are people whose political sense I trust, but I was still skeptical of Dean. After seeing him speak, however, and experiencing how the crowd reacted, I was won over. I came home with a sign and put it in the window.

I am not sure just when Geri caught on to Dean, but we were soon exchanging calls and messages on a fairly frequent basis about his campaign, and she had committed herself to get him elected.

I write back:

From: Nic Bernstein <>

Subject: Re: Some good news!

Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:34:32 -0600 (CST)

To: GERALDINE <>

Yes!! This sounds like fun! What are you going to be doing in Iowa?

Can I come (we could drive from here)?

Looking forward to seeing you!

-nic

Within a minute or two of me pressing "Send," my phone rings. "Are you serious?!?" Geri demands to know. "Yes, I am. I need to check with B, but I really want to do this, as long as I can be helpful."

In the day and a half between getting Geri's note, and picking her up at the airport, we made contact several times to make arrangements. She got us a hotel, I arranged for Internet access, etc. etc. It was a whirlwind of activity, and the whole time we were squaring things with our respective families so that we could up and disappear for five days.

Oh, and I bought some warm boots and sweaters. Iowa can be very cold this time of year.

Friday, January 16, 2004 — Day One — I See Dean People!

It is four in the morning and I am finally able to sit down to journal. We are staying on the Northeast fringe of Des Moines - far enough removed from the action and the campaign headquarters to find some respite, but in Iowa, on caucus weekend, there is no escaping the campaign. The media buys are immense, every voter we interact with is already so weary of the process...

The ride in was talk, all talk. I haven't spent this much time with Geri in years, and we both relished the opportunity to just yak about stuff. Geri is in an "All Dean all the time" mode right now, and given what we are doing that is just as well. I am up for the adventure, as we drive across Illinois and Iowa, but I also question how up to the task I am.

Let me explain that comment. I have campaigned before. Granted it was a long time ago (32 years) and I was only a pup then (9 years old) but I campaigned with vigor and conviction. Here I am, in my forties, and while I have been a Dean fan since I saw him speak in Milwaukee some 7 months ago, I don't feel that same rabid conviction within me that the real "Deaniacs" have. I don't even know his farms policy, and here I am, driving into the rural heartland.

We talk about our knowledge of the issues, and our lack of it. We talk about our own personal strengths and weaknesses, and we just talk. The background to this is Warren Zevon, John Hiatt, and Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks. From 8:00 till 1:30 it is just a normal clear day of driving across the Mississippi Valley and into the Great Plains.

Then comes the rain. A drizzle, that keeps building. We are attending what the Dean campaign is calling "The Iowa Perfect Storm (Caucus Weekend)" in Des Moines, the finale to a steady buildup of out-of-state volunteers flooding into Iowa. The irony of the rain is lost on no one.

As we approach Des Moines the rain, like the tension, just builds. By the time we roll into H.Q. — the "Storm Center" as the campaign calls it — there is a steady rain which feels as though it has settled in for the duration.

The Storm Center is an old warehouse building, with a modern glass front stuck on it, a mile and a half west of the State capital. Next door is Iowa for Dean headquarters. Between the two large buildings is a large banner which reads "I See Dean People," a slogan crafted by Tony2501, a blogger from D.C.

Welcome to Iowa! (image courtesy of RedPeg.com)

Kerry's HQ is just west of us, and Edwards's is to the east. As we pull up to the Center we see swarms of people wearing bright orange "Storm Chaser" hats huddling in the cold rain. If they are chasing a storm, they have found it.

Once inside the Center, Geri immediately starts to recognize and be recognized by other people. She has been active on the East coast for some time, publishing first "Bloglines" and then Dean Essential - sort of windows into the Dean campaign's phenomenal success using blogs (web logs) to journal the campaign. The blog has let their readers in on the background of the campaign, the day-to-day ups and downs, in a way which has made the readers feel somehow privileged insiders - and in a very real way, that is what they have become. First Bloglines, and more recently Dean Essential has served as a way to bring the grass roots enthusiasm to those people who either don't have Internet access, or are not inclined to read the blog directly. Geri selects and edits to produce a several page pamphlet which people can then download, print and distribute to others.

Anyhow, she is known within the campaign, and her many friends, on-line and in-life, are here, and glad to see us.

We get checked in to the campaign, we are issued our orange hats and wrist-bands and then its off to orientation and training. How to canvas, etc. "Find your personal story, tell the voter why you are here, what has driven you to uproot your life and come to Iowa, that will make you human to them..." is advice Joe, the trainer, gives us. I start to reflect on that...

"Hi, I'm Nic and I drove down from Wisconsin to volunteer for the Dean Campaign here in Iowa because my friend Geri was and I had nothing better to do..." That isn't really it, but that is how I feel, surrounded as I am by these very committed people. I start to try to remember what it was that inspired me about Dean way back in June. I try to see back through the fog of my own cynicism to remember what the optimist deep inside of me sees in this.

And it can't just be about anger or outrage, there is a positive side to this.

Geri is a videographer, working professionally in Washington for a decade before starting her family 13 years ago. She logged many campaigns in her time, congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial. She worked on Hart's presidential campaign.

Orientation video (image courtesy RedPeg.com)

Geri and Joe get to talking, and he recruits her to help him with his training and documentary projects.

Things are starting to move fast.

After training, we are starting to feel the fatigue of our journey. It is still raining, and our bodies are tired. I started the day early, with only four hour's sleep. Geri started earlier, and with no sleep (she was up all night finishing a 30-second commercial featuring a 10 year old boy who is an avid Dean supporter). We tell the organizers that we would be glad to do phone work, but, please, no canvassing today.

We are dispatched to the Iowa for Dean HQ where the phone banks are. They are full up, but will be setting up a new phone bank in an hour "Go take a walk and come back then" we are told.

There is a Starbucks a few blocks away. Other Dean people are there, folks from California, Nevada, all over.

When we come back I go in to get trained for the phone bank, and Geri settles in to read the manual for her new camera (here's a funny thing: Her camera arrived the day before she left, and she knew she needed to bring the manual along if she was going to be able to get the most out of it. But the manual is huge. So she tears out all of the foreign language sections so that she can fit it into her shoulder bag without blowing out her shoulders!)

I am still trying to find my "own story" (see above) and don't focus well during the phone training.

"Hi, I'm Nic and I drove down from Wisconsin today to volunteer for the Dean campaign here in Iowa. I think it is important to support Dean because..."

The process of setting up the phone bank is interesting. This isn't like the old days, where that meant bringing in dozens of phone lines. After all of the paperwork is in order, someone shows up with a box of cell phones and starts handing them out. This makes sense, I guess, but it is still very strange in a way.

The calling is hard. This being the end of the campaign they are down to the bottom of the list. My call sheet is entirely retired union members, most in their late sixties, seventies, eighties. The voters we call must all be classified according to a numerical system, from 1 (support Dean and will caucus) to 6 (leave me alone I won't even vote!). All but a few were already committed (5) to or leaning towards (4) another candidate the last time they were called, just a few had been undecided (3). I try to formulate what I will say. We are given a script, but told we have to find a way to make it our own.

Great, I have been so effective at that.

As is so often the case in life, the answer comes from my wife, B. Not that she tells me, but she inspires me. "Hi, I'm Nic and I drove down from Wisconsin today to volunteer for the Dean campaign here in Iowa. I think it is important to support Dean because my wife has been working and teaching in our public schools for over fifteen years, and I think it's time we had someone in the White House who was as proud of that as she and I are. I think that Dean has shown the vision and the common sense, and demonstrated the courage of his convictions, to get all the way to Washington. And I think that his straight talking style and innovative campaign has drawn in and truly involved so many committed people to this process that he can beat George Bush in November and take back our country."

Okay, so the inner optimist has the inner cynic on the ropes a bit here, but this is what has to happen internally if I am going to be able to contribute here in a meaningful way. This is the conditioning I need to do, to get that "smile-in-my-voice" that is necessary to win people over, or at least keep them from shutting me down.

Geri comes into the room and sits with me. "Joe is out there." she tells me, "Joe Trippi." Joe Trippi is the campaign manager, not just for Iowa — the National campaign manager. "He doesn't have a car, so I told him we could give him a ride if he needs it."

Trippi is regarded as highly as Dean among the campaign faithful. Geri has met him at various grass-roots organizing events over the past year, and he likes her pamphlets. He is happy to see the turn out, and the familiar faces.

Geri helps me work my script into something useful, and then drifts back to the lobby as I start calling.

The calling is very demoralizing. People are just sick and tired of the campaigns - all of the calls, ads, mail, etc. Many of the people I call are die-hard Kerry or Edwards supporters (5s), others just hang-up, some say something nasty first - and these are senior citizens!

It slowly dawns on me that I am not really expected to win anyone over, this is more like a poll. The campaign needs to identify the strength of support that the other candidates have in all of these communities so that they know where to focus their energy and manpower during the caucuses. Which areas will need the most effort to get the voters to the caucus locations to win as many delegates as possible. This is very esoteric stuff, and we are not expected to get it, hell we are not even told, but I think I understand it properly.

This helps a bit.

The table in our hotel room

This makes me feel better, and the phone banks are behind me.

I'm starting to understand why I am here.

Up in the hotel room we get ready to step out for some food. We are both buzzing from too much caffeine, too little sleep and too little food. Geri's phone rings, it's Trippi. He is about to have dinner with Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, from NBC News, but he wants to check in to schedule an interview with Geri. What a trip this is!

Joe & Geri discuss the "Blogger's Breakfast" to be held tomorrow at the Botanical Gardens. Geri is very excited about this event as it is hosted by "Darrel in Iowa," one her favorite bloggers. "He makes great jams and stuff, he's a wonderful guy!" she tells Trippi, and me, in an emphatic voice. She has to call H.Q. to get specifics and directions. Breakfast is at 7:30, we want to get there early to get set-up shots and things like that.

After dinner we check out email, and check the Dean homepage for the latest news, then to bed, to sleep, to get up again early in the morning.

Saturday, January 17, 2004 — Day Two — A'Canvassing we go

The day begins early. We get to the bloggers breakfast just as it is starting to come together. In the parking lot we are already meeting friends, old ones whom Geri has known on-line or in-life for some time, and new ones. The atmosphere is exuberant. As I am soon to find out, exuberance is not in short supply when this many bloggers get together.

I am soon pressed into work mixing home made apricot jam into cream cheese. This is some of Darrel in Iowa's famous jam, there are a dozen jars or so, several different flavors. I finally get to meet Darrel, a charming middle-aged gay man from Mason City, in Northern Iowa. I shake his hand and tell him that I am enjoying getting to meet the people that Geri has been telling me about, and whom she has liberally excerpted in her publications. He is producing this breakfast on his own nickel (donations are requested, and are amazingly plentiful) to the tune of over a thousand dollars. This would surprise me had I not already witnessed so many acts of selflessness in the short time we have been here.

Yesterday we met the California Train People. This is an eclectic group of nineteen folks from around California who came by train to Omaha, where they were picked up by a bus the campaign had sent. On the way, in Salt Lake City, a young man name Jyml (pronounced Jaymil) had boarded. He was on his way to Pittsburgh to attend art school. By the time they got to Omaha, though, he was hooked on the California folk, and their infectious enthusiasm. He said he would love to join them, but had already spent all his money, and couldn't afford to change his ticket. Within three minutes he had the necessary funds: $110. He would spend his weekend in Iowa to help the campaign!

Now the inner cynic is eating this up. What kind of schmaltz is this? But, the inner optimist is eating it up even more. The optimist wins, hands down. I don't expect you to understand this, but seeing these people in person, and hearing their stories first hand, it is truly, deeply moving! What makes the whole thing even more amazing is that, by the time we meet these people, they have been out canvassing in the cold rain for hours. I would not have blamed them one bit if they had been terse and bitter, but they were inspirational.

I can tell it is starting to get to me...

So, back to the breakfast. Darrel is great, the people are wonderful. Within a couple of minutes I am meeting Pat from CA and Gini from NOVA (North Virginia) and Brandon from NC (who looks to be about 15 years old). and on and on it goes. Within the context of a blog, every one is So-and-so from Such-and-such; within the context of a breakfast they are walking talking people. This is not an easy transition or some to make. A comment I heard more than once goes like this "I am meeting so many people I already know so well, and some of them are nothing like I imagined. It's kind of weird, don't you think?"

One of these people is Pat from CA, she is a 62 year old retired school teacher from Freemont, and most people seemed to have thought that she was a man based her blog postings. This is just one of many eye-opening meetings which will happen today.

Gwen Graham, Sen. Bob Graham's daughter, addresses the bloggers (photo courtesy RedPeg.com)

In an atmosphere that I can best describe as that of a really large family reunion, well over a hundred people have soon gathered. Speeches are given, but, this being a meeting of bloggers, a very non-traditional dynamic soon manifests. Rather than one person making a speech, as one may find at a typical political gathering, this is more of a series of statements, musings, sermons, inspirations, etc - from first one person, then another. Not a conversation, more like a correspondence, but at a rapid clip. This is a blog, in the flesh.

This is really starting to get to me...

At one point Darrel stops the vocal-blog to introduce Congressman Boswell, an Iowa representative. The 72 year old Democrat had been targeted by (House Majority Whip) Tom DeLay (R - Texas) as a vulnerable seat. Zoe Lofgran (D - California) notified the Dean campaign and they issued a call to arms, on the blog and throughout the donor network, and funds rolled into Boswell's coffeers: $50,000 the first day alone. The Congressman was grateful and he came to thank the bloggers for their part. He has not endorsed Dean (he is not endorsing anyone) but he was blown away by the organization which had rescued his campaign seemingly from nowhere. This was a rare sight — a humble politician!

Rep. Boswell thanking the crowd (photo courtesy RedPeg.com)

To truly understand the feeling around this breakfast room, you need some insight into the blogger and blogs. In its simplest form a blog is a daily diary of one's thoughts, etc., but it is a public diary, on the web. This is Pepys writ large, often and fast. Many people write frequently throughout the day, and many write without any significant editing. It is often very bare emotions which stand out the most on a blog, and voyeurism is a big part of the draw to the readers of these missives.

But it doesn't end there. Blog entries are augmented with links which allow interested parties to contribute their take on each entry, and to reply to the thoughts of others. Thus, every entry can become a discussion thread, branching out in ways, and into territory that the original author never imagined.

Many people merely lurk, reading the logs, but rarely, if ever contributing. Some "Lurkers" have their own mystique, entering into discussions seemingly always at just the right time, with just the right words.

Others choose to disrupt or harass the blogs of those they disagree with. These "Trolls," as they are known, can be the bane of bloggers, especially political ones.

Given the nature of what these people do, that thing which all of the people at this breakfast had in common — blogging: publicly pouring out their thoughts for others to read and comment on in near real time — you can imagine that the emotional level is high. Bloggers wear their hearts on their sleeves, that is their M.O., and when amongst their own kind they conduct themselves with as much openness and as little editing as they do on-line.

I take a break to walk in the cold drizzle in the Iowa herb garden outside the hall. So far I have been filmed, interviewed or simply greeted by NHK (Japanese TV), Agency Presse France, The Washington Post, CNN,

"Terri from Tokyo" gets interviewed by NHK television (image courtesy RepPeg.com)

Norwegian TV ("He's from Lappland" the talent says of the cameraman), HBO Independent Films, and the list goes on. That doesn't even include the countless American network affiliates crawling all over Iowa. Oh, and then there are all of the video-loggers: people like Geri who have brought to bear their talent and equipment to do in video what their compatriots are doing verbally.

The group gradually breaks up. There is a lot of hugging, as those in attendance realize that after this brief venture into the corporeal world their very real relationships will slip yet again into the more fungable world of Cyber-Space.

Everyone remembers why they are here, though, it is not for a reunion (as nice as that has been) but to get Dean elected. There is work to be done, and we are already over an hour late getting a start on the day.

Back at the Storm Center, the storm, as the campaign meant it, is in full force.

Over three thousand people have come to Iowa from out of state, just for the Dean campaign! The other campaigns have their own out of state forces, though not as many, and not at the grass roots. Gephardt has strong union support, and unions are historically strong organizers in Iowa. Kerry has some troops on the ground as well, but Dean has (by the last good count we heard from HQ) over 3300!

The Storm Center is WILD!! People are swarming. We are there with Pat from CA, and we need to find one other person to join our team, and then we will be given a canvass packet and sent out into the Iowa chill to drum up support for the Governor. There could not be more people in the chaos that is the Storm Center, and yet this is organization!

The storm in action (photo courtesy RedPeg.com)

This is how it is done, and it is done with an efficiency and miraculousness which is truly breathtaking. Seemingly out of nowhere groups of two, three, four, whatever coalesce and head out to places they have never been, with people they have never met, but they are all friends and they will soon be telling the locals of some small city, village or township that they should listen to people from out of state when they tell them that their candidate is the best one and many of these people will listen they are just so amazed that someone would travel from Virginia or California or Wisconsin (they are kind to their neighbors here) or Japan!! to tell them this.

Wow! This is how it works here, and it is a TRIP. On the phone you get the sense that the good people of Iowa are just sick and tired of the whole thing, and just wish that all these strangers would leave their state and leave them alone. That is true of some, but there are many, many people in Iowa who really love the attention. Canvassers are frequently invited into people's homes, given cookies, coffee, cocoa, etc.

There are reasons that Iowa keeps its first event of the season standing, after all. One is economic. The Democratic campaigns have spent a combined $9 million on television alone, so far. Add in direct mail, phone, canvassing, office rent, staff food, housing, not to mention the economic impact of 3300 out-of-state Dean supporters - hell, even the $1,200 or so that Darrel spent to feed the bloggers this morning.

This is big business.

But there is more than that, of course. Iowa needs a way to be remembered, by politicians and the parties, for those long spells in between the Presidential primaries.

It is thick. It is thick and dense and heavy and tall and you just can't get away from the animal which is politics this weekend. On Tuesday morning it will all be over. People will pick up the pieces that remain from the night before, but by then they will have changed. They will no longer be working on the Iowa caucuses. They will, whether winner or loser, pick up and move on or move back or simply leave town.

No one that is working these campaigns will leave unaffected by the experience - inner cynic be damned.

I know. It is happening to me, and I am helpless against it.

It isn't all bad, either.

We leave the Storm Center, Geri, Pat from CA and I, along with Jim Garrison, from Marin County, CA. Jim is a pleasant, affable guy who is on a book tour promoting his latest book "America as empire" which he describes to us as being about the need for a Rooseveltian style leader in this country. I ask which Roosevelt, Franklin is the answer.

He is explaining this to us as we drive through downtown Des Moines looking for a department store so that Jim can buy a new overcoat. He left his at the airport in Albuquerque. We then drive up to the town of Perry, in Dallas County, about 40 miles Northwest of Des Moines.

The canvass is more work — just drudgery — than anything else. There is confusion, organization, disorganization, interpersonal conflict, blah blah blah. We knock on a lot of doors. Most people are not home, there are several who are (and they know that we know that they are) who don't answer. But, all told, a bit fewer than half do come to the door. They are polite, they are patient, and more than we expect they support our candidate. We have been hearing bad polls and bad news and it is a pleasant surprise to find that there really is some support out there after all.

"You're preaching to the converted" one particularly nice woman tells me the moment she opens the door and sees my Dean stuff. She had been marked as undecided the last time anyone asked. This is what a canvasser lives for! I install a lawn sign in her front yard, the political equivalent to an animal marking his territory, and move on - a little lighter in my step.

By the time 5 p.m. rolls around we are out of campaign literature and have completed about 70% of our canvass. This is good enough for us for today. The light is fading and we are as well.

In the car on the way back to the Storm Center, Geri tallies up her sheets. She knocked on 66 doors and 27 were opened. She counted 12 Dean supporters. This is a pretty good rate. I don't do a count, but I think I have three or four certain caucusers who are solid for Dean. I have no idea how many doors I knocked on, but I am fairly sure that I didn't get as many people who answered as Geri did.

As we walk up to HQ we run in to Joe Trippi on the street, the omnipresent CNN camera crew in tow. He asks us how it went. "It was wonderful!" Geri responds. "I knocked on 66 doors, 27 people were home, I got 12 Dean supporters - leaning or strong support!" "How many of them are certain to caucus?" ask Trippi. A deflated Geri realizes that she hasn't counted that. Trippi, the gears in his head in constant motion knows exactly what the numbers we bring back from Dallas County will mean, and we haven't given him that precise number he needs to make the rocket-science calculations which an operative like him can make on the fly.

When we enter the Storm Center we are greeted with sustained applause. This is how it goes, as each canvass returns from the field they are greeted as though they have just scored a touchdown. Thank god there are no end-zone dances!

We drift back to the car amid rising chatter of a celebrity among us. While we were busy finishing our paperwork we just missed Jeneane Garofalo. Oh well, we met Iowa, we could get by without Jeneane.

Tomorrow morning will bring the Des Moines Register's definitive "Iowa Caucus Poll." This is the only poll which has figured out how to actually measure how a caucus might turn out.

We'll see.

Oh, and the weather report is in. The high tomorrow will be 20. On Monday, at caucus time? 10 degrees.

Sunday, January 18 — Day Three — The Tattooed Ones

I have gone to bed by midnight, but Geri is out working the journalist crowd. This is her natural element, in a way, she spent so many years in the Washington Press corps that she can identify with them, and vice versa. She had asked at HQ where to go for a nice meal, not just bar food. The guy there recommended the Raccoon River Brewery, about five blocks from the Storm Center. Turns out he had an ulterior motive for this: the Raccoon is adjacent to the Hotel Fort Des Moines, which is where the National and International press corps are staying. HQ tries to send as many Storm Chasers over there as possible, so that the press is surrounded with them.

It's a good strategy, it is starting to effect them.

Jeneane Garofalo is in town, as is Joan Jett. They are doing a show, kind of an Iowa Perfect Storm USO show to thank and bolster the Dean faithful. Seems that just one floor up is a meeting of the Young Republican's Caucus Organizing Committee. You have to ask yourself if the facility scheduler had thought this through or not. Anyway, once the YRs find out that the Dean people are downstairs they take a vote of the organizing committee and have a unanimous vote of seven yeas (I'm not making this up, the head of the organizing committee boasted about it on TV) to go down to the Dean rally and do what they can to disrupt it!

Jeneane Garofalo addresses the crowd (photo courtesy RedPeg.com)

This is unreal, these guys have taken compassionate conservatism to a whole new level! They head down to the rally, armed with Bush/Cheney campaign signs (so there is no doubt who to blame...) and start trying to inspire a melee. The Dean folks simply block the B/C signs with their own, not a tough task given the numbers involved. There is a large contingent of Planned Parenthood folks and "Stand Up for Choice" there as well, which further skews the balance of power.

No one is taking the bait, however, no one is rising to fight, nor do anything other than try to block the B/C signs. Then, Joan Jett starts to play the National Anthem. This is apparently too much patriotism for the YRs and much like the effect of Slim Whitman music on the Martians in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks, their heads simply start to explode.

Well, okay, not exactly, but it's almost the same thing. One of the more compassionate conservatives decides to give Ms Jett a really good shove, while she is playing. Our portly protector of family values seemed to have misjudged his target, however, as Joan (about one third this guys size, and more than twice his age) shrugs off his shove and then comes back swinging. She manages to land a few good ones before Dean people separate the two.

Joan Jett immediately after the altercation (photo courtesy RedPeg.com)

This is all captured by several TV cameras, including that of Joe Jensen, the guy who trained us on Friday. This is a lead story on all of the local news. You just can't make this stuff up!

Okay then, the gloves are off in the Republican camp at least.

Meanwhile, back at the Raccoon, Geri gets a call from Joe Trippi for her interview of him. She has been asking Storm Chasers and other Dean people what she should ask him. She goes to have a sit-down with Joe, and just a few minutes into their discussion, before she has started to roll tape, he gets a call from the Planned Parenthood people, and he has to go. Shit!

One thing that Geri learns before the discussion ends is that he knows the results of the Des Moines Register "Iowa Caucus Poll." This is the poll that everyone waits for, the only one which has any track record of accuracy, and he has the numbers hours before they are published. And the numbers are not what Dean people would like to see.

Let me digress for a moment to fill you in on something of a subplot which has been going on since we got here on Friday. Last week Dean and Gephardt really started to go at it with negative ads. Not just at each other, but that was the fiercest. It soon became apparent, from the tracking polls and man-on-the-street interviews that this was just hurting both of them and helping Kerry and Edwards. Now, if it were only helping Edwards it might not bother the Dean people, as he is not much of a threat down the road, in New Hampshire for example. But Kerry is another story. Kerry has had to infuse his campaign coffers with $6.5 million in personal funds just to compete in Iowa, and must do well here and in NH to keep fighting.

Helping him here will just strengthen him for NH.

Anyway, the big news story on Friday is that the Dean and Gephardt camps have reached a truce, they will both pull their negative ads. For reasons no one can understand this story has legs, and is covered for two news cycles.

Gephardt soon has a new ad on the air showing him in front of a crowd on Prozac at campaign headquarters while he carries on about the message of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Dean, meanwhile, hits the airwaves with his own new ad. This one has him sitting in a light blue dress shirt in front of a neutral colored background addressing the camera about how important this election is. His delivery is as beige as the background.

The Dean faithful are not happy with this development.

Geri gets back to the hotel after I am already asleep. I am awakened, however, at 3:28 a.m., hearing her saying "Are you up? Can you hear me?" Thinking she is talking to me, I raise my head to respond. I see that she is under a tent of her bedspread, much like a kid reading after bedtime. I figure out that she is on her cell phone. The conversation continues: "You have to understand that we aren't going to win with ads like these! We need ads that really move people. This campaign is known for its dynamism and your ads are flat! You and your partner have fumbled the ball on only one aspect of this campaign, and that is the ads..." and on it goes for a couple more minutes.

When she finishes the call, she addresses me, "Sorry about that, I just had to call Joe [Trippi]." After she rants to me about this I ask his reaction. "He has to get up at five for a live interview .... I just had to call him, these ads suck!"

Geri never really gets back to sleep, though I do. She ends up sitting in the hotel lobby flipping between CNN and C-SPAN and getting wise advice from the nice lady who works the graveyard shift at the front desk.

Later that morning we flip on Fox News (fair and balanced) just in time to hear Chris Wallace address a Kerry campaign manager: "I'm going to ask you the same thing I asked Joe Trippi just now, and that is `are you getting enough sleep?'" I shoot Geri a look, and we both crack up. I wonder what Trippi's response had been.

Then a commercial comes on, its a negative ad from Gebhardt, the one that claims that Dean wants to slash Medi-Care and Social Security, the one that he had supposedly pulled.

Oh well.

Geri has hatched a scheme during the night. When she was passing nominating petitions, back in Virginia, she spent many fruitless hours at a farmer's market. Leaving after a disappointing day she drove by a Unitarian/Universalist church. It dawned on her, this is where to find support. And, indeed, it worked like a charm. Her plan is to go to the Storm Center, pick up a few car loads of Storm Chasers and some literature, and head to a Unitarian Church to canvass the congregation as they come and go from services.

The temperature is in the single digits when we leave to head downtown, yet there are already a fair number of people at the Storm Center. No one is going out to canvass, yet, because that just isn't done on a Sunday morning in Iowa. Geri walks right in and says I want to do this, and they say Okay, and before you know it we have 14 people in three cars. We meet some resistance from some campaign staffers "Well I called several ministers yesterday and they don't want us to do this" one of them starts to say. Geri will have none of this talk, however, and the staffer backs down "Not that I'm telling you that you can't..." she says.

Off we go, getting there before the first service of the day. By the time we return to the Storm Center we have identified 50 people who are firmly committed to Dean and definitely will caucus. "Tattooed Ones" in canvass speak. Five of these that I know of were either undecided or had been supporting another candidate. This is a great result, and back at the Storm Center we are legend (word of our success preceded us, it seems).

Me, Garrick, Geri and Alan at the Unitarian Universalist church

Geri was on fire during this process. The rest of us seemed like shrinking violets in contrast to her. She had spent her sleepless night perfecting her persuasive "spiel" and it was very effective. At times the rest of us - Alan and Garrick from San Francisco, Greg from New Jersey, myself and some others whose names I have failed to recall - seemed more like the Pips to her Gladys Night. Geri would approach someone and start out "Hi, I'm Geri and I came here all the way from Virginia on my own dime because I feel it is so important ..." and at some point she would gesture back to us and say "And these folks came from:" and we would call out "California," "New Jersey," "Wisconsin" etc. The Iowans were moved. Many were already supporters, but were unsure about caucusing. They wouldn't get a hug from Geri until they committed, and as Geri commented later that day during an interview "I came back with fifty hugs," not a bad day!

The guys from San Francisco say, with conviction, "Whatever you two are doing next, we want to stick with you!" These two had just arrived from the airport when we took them to canvass the church, and they have already won over caucus goers. They are lucky, some will canvass for hours and not get a single "One."

It has happened to them, and they didn't even have time to unpack.

Dinner at the Raccoon. "How many?" the hostess asks. "Do you have a table full of people in orange hats?" asks Geri. She brings us to a table full of Dean People, mostly from Seattle and mostly LGBT. We have a great evening chatting policy with them while spying on the representatives from the other campaigns.

There is an interesting divide. The Dean folks are proud to wear their orange hats, buttons, etc. The Kerry people look like they just got a day pass from Andover. The Edwards people are laidback (and not in great abundance). The Gephardt people are nowhere to be seen, but their union supporters are plentiful, down to earth folks.

We meet James, a dyed in the wool liberal from MA. He worked for Nader in 2000, and probably would again if he runs. He points out all of the Kerry staff to us, and fills us in on the operations of a Mr. Wouley whom he refers to as "The South Boston Mafia." It is Wouley's forces who are organizing the get-out-the-vote effort for Kerry, and they are legendary. This goes a long way towards explaining the recent surge in support for Kerry. The $6.5 million that Kerry loaned his own campaign hasn't hurt, either.

Geri chats with a group of organizers from AFSCME and Planned Parenthood, and regales them with her latest slogans and lines of persuasion. They are impressed, and one of the AFSCME guys wants to help with organizing in VA.

We leave, just as tony2501, a blogger from D.C. enters. He looks as tired as I feel.

After dropping me off at the hotel, Geri returns to the Iowa HQ to wait for Trippi to return from a bus trip with Dean and Judith Steinberg (Dean's wife). Her surprise appearance on the campaign trail (she hasn't campaigned since Dean's announcement event) dovetails beautifully with the morning's Plains, Georgia events along side Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. There has been some nice symbolism today, in spite of what the polls say.

Geri and Trippi had spoken a few times while he was on the bus with Dean and his wife, and agreed to try once more for her to interview him. But, by the time the buses finally roll in to HQ, Trippi is too dragged out to do an interview. Geri finds him in the lobby of the Hotel Fort Des Moines sharing beers with a colleague from the Edwards campaign and comparing hypothetical outcomes to the caucuses. She spends half an hour, basically in fly-on-the-wall mode, and calls it a night. Before she leaves Trippi tells her "I don't have say on those ads, that isn't my call."

Monday, January 19 — Caucus Day — They See Dean People

The day starts off early and cold. Our first event is "Visibility": standing on a busy street corner in South Central Des Moines, from 7:00 - 9:00, with two dozen or so other Storm Chasers and lots of Dean signs. From our corner we can see a bank thermometer. It reads 0.

Except for when it reads -1.

The orange hats are proving to be a masterstroke, and they are warm, too! People have heard enough about them on the nightly news that the Dean signs are hardly needed. The weather is so cold that every half-hour or so a group of four or five people drift off into the Hardee's on one corner, so we have high visibility there, as well. Hardee's didn't seem prepared to do so much business.

"Visibility" takes on a new meaning when you can see your own breath!

The Iowans we holler to and wave at are uniformly wonderful. Even those who don't support Dean are good sports. All in all a good event.

From there its back to HQ for me to get training on being a caucus night driver. It will be my job to ensure that two ladies in the town of Colfax get to their caucus location on time. They live in a trailer court just less than a mile from the elementary school where they caucus, but that is about thirty miles from Des Moines.

It may not seem terribly efficient for me to drive from Milwaukee to make sure that two nice ladies in Colfax get to the caucuses, but we hope that this sort of thing is what gets us the win.

To make sure that there is no hitch in getting them there on time, I must make a dry run. It is a welcome bit of peace in the middle of my day.

While in Colfax I see a white sedan with a "Steelworkers for Gephardt" sign on the side. I hope that guy is only taking one person, then I'll trump him with my two!

It really does come down to this.

I return from my test drive and clean out the car. An amazing number of partially empty water bottles (all frozen now) and used Kleenexes (thankfully also frozen) have accumulated, and I think it best to clean them out before picking up my caucus dates.

At 5:30 or so I will drive up to Colfax, pick up the ladies and drive with them to the school. They will go to the art room to caucus and I will find some other room to wait the hour and a half to two hours it takes for them to finish. After taking them home I will repair to the "Watch Party" in a ballroom in West Des Moines.

While they are caucusing I am not to step foot into the caucus room. Though it is legal for me to do so, the campaign is ultra-paranoid about even the slightest hint of impropriety. Dick Gephardt recently claimed that out of state operatives within the Dean campaign were planning to slip in and register to caucus (though there is no proof of this), so now the Dean team is very careful. Those who must enter the room, to assist an elderly person to a chair, for example, are under strict orders to not even speak while they are in there.

It's crunch time, and we cannot afford any errors.

The astute reader may notice that the inner dialog has grown hush. This is not coincidental, this is, in all respects, my campaign now. Any previous doubts I had about my usefulness or suitability or commitment are gone. Today is what this has all been about, and I feel a purposeful sense of peace about things.

We saw Mark Halperin, Chief Political Analyst of ABC News walking down the street on our way to lunch, he was wearing far too light a coat and looking stressed, talking on his cell phone while waiting for the light to change. After lunch we ran in to Senator Tom Harkin (D - Iowa) and had a very nice chat with him. We thanked him for the support that he and his forces have provided to our campaign. He asked where we were from, and thanked us for the work we were doing.

He is cautiously optimistic. Geri has been getting very hyped up, her mental math is telling her Dean by 10%. Harkin laughs and says that in an Iowa caucus a landslide is 3%. He expects no more that a 1 or 2 % spread between the top finishers.

If Gephardt loses, he has already said he is out.

If Kerry loses, a loss in NH could finish him.

If Edwards loses it is still a win, since he has improved so much.

If Dean loses, Clark may get a boost in NH, but our field operation is pretty strong there, and the campaign is up and running in all fifty states.

I am in the home stretch of the first leg of the race, and I am pretty much exhausted. Though I expect that there will be fresh meat to take up the task in the states that are yet to come.

More after the caucus. Trippi expects to have the numbers by 9:15 tonight.

The party starts at 8:30.

Hopefully it will last a good long while.

Tuesday, January 20, 2004 — Epilogue

The news has no doubt reached you by now, so there is no point in me discussing how the caucuses turned out. Instead, allow me to wrap up a few loose ends from the journal above.

My caucus ride ladies stood me up! I drove up to Colfax, arriving right on time, but they were nowhere to be found. I waited until caucus time, and left. Oh well, my great contribution to democracy was not to be.

I drove back to the Iowa for Dean HQ and found that just about everybody was crowded into one of the call centers with a large screen T.V. tuned to C-SPAN's live coverage of a caucus in Dubuque. It was a wonderful thing to watch, all of the horse trading and delegate promises, etc. Great cheers and boos went up as various developments came and went. Ultimately, the numbers returned there were pretty equivalent to the rest of the state.

We left as the caucuses closed and went to the Val Air Ballroom, in West Des Moines, a 1930s beauty of a hall. This is where the official "Watch Party" was to be held. The air was already fairly somber when we got there, but the size of the crowd was impressive, none the less.

There were several hundred people when we arrived, and I feel confident in estimating that close to a thousand were there at the peak. One entire end of the ballroom was given over to radio and print media, with separate reporting and filing sections. A large platform jutted diagonally through the middle of the floor, to provide video camera positions. And the large stage on the side of the hall (where groups such as the Glen Miller Orchestra once played) was reserved for use for stand-ups by media anchors and reporters.

At one end of the hall, opposite the print media, was a modern stage, and it was upon this stage, at about 9:30 p.m. that first Senator Harkin and then Governor Dean addressed the assembled audience. Harkin warmed the crowd up with a rousing speech about not losing the faith and looking forward.

Sen. Harkin introducing Gov. Dean

Then Dean takes the stage and delivers a blustery speech about carrying on the campaign to NH, MI, CA, etc. with members of the crowd going crazy, hollering up names of their states to him while his own voice grows louder and louder building to a roar. He is smiling as he can tell he is achieving the most important task he faces right then — making sure that his young supporters, those who have never been involved in a presidential campaign and the ups and downs that go with it, making sure that they leave the party with a renewed sense of power. He is having fun with his crowd, and they with him.

His growl takes a turn for the absurd when his voice cracks. This is the sound bite that the media will play over and over again in the coming days. Without the context of the crowd rallying and calling to him, with only a tight shot on his face and his voice cracking, it looks as though his head will explode. And, indeed, that is how he is depicted on the Letterman show the next night.

After the speech, the crowd turns to the task of winning NH, and the next state, and their own states. Within five minutes, a group of Missourians has assembled eight or ten people to start organizing, planning how to leverage the lessons they have learned here in Iowa to the race back in their own state (now in play, since Gephardt will likely drop out).

Geri finally gets her interview with Joe Trippi, albeit a brief one, and she also gets to buttonhole Steve McMahon, Trippi's partner. She is relentless with them over the issue of ads and their use of the media. She is not the only one. McMahon tries to claim refuge in focus group research — an absurd claim for a campaign which has eschewed them in all other realms.

Geri interviews an unnamed Deaniac

Geri proceeds to interview several people around the hall. Many of them speak of redoubling their efforts. We see people from Alaska, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and on and on. We also grieve and shed a tear or two. One cannot invest as we have and not grieve over a loss.

One of the more interesting conversations of the evening come when Geri and a gentleman from I don't know where get into a conversation with a reporter from The New Yorker magazine. He has been covering the campaign for several weeks, and seems very eager to share his insights and just plain talk with people who have not been inside the same cocoon as he for so long. He talks about the strengths and weaknesses of the various major candidates and their organizations. This is real "Inside Baseball" stuff, as Geri calls it, and it is truly fascinating.

New Yorker reporter talking to Deaniacs (Geri's head)

Eventually, however, the evening must come to a close, and we head back to the hotel one last time. The next morning we return to our normal lives, and the candidates are all in NH long before the sun rises.

John Nichols, writing in The Nation (January 26, 2004), has made a very interesting observation:

Rather than marathons, nomination contests are actually fifty state relay races. Momentum surely matters, but not as much as backing from local politicos and activists who take responsibility for winning state after state for the candidate who has secured their support. If Iowa or New Hampshire really were definitional, Estes Kefauver, Gary Hart and Dick Gephardt should have been Democratic nominees, while Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and John McCain should have carried the GOP banner. They all secured high-profile victories in New Hampshire primaries or Iowa caucuses only to find they lacked the support they needed in the other forty-eight states. Former California Governor Jerry Brown, who made three runs for the Democratic presidential nomination in three different decades, argues that it is this "state-by-state combat" that decides nominations, not showboating wins in Iowa or New Hampshire. "All fifty states send delegates to the convention," says Brown. "When you start counting delegates, you understand that they all matter."

We shall see, moving forward, just how effective the Governor is in this pursuit. Right now he is back home, licking his wounds, and trying to shake the press off of that image of his head exploding.

***

I spoke to Geri this afternoon. "Isn't it strange Nic, getting back to the real world?" Indeed it is!