Bleeding Heartland readers, I would be interested in your views on how the Iowa caucuses might have turned out differently.
Let’s assume that Barack Obama runs the exact campaign he ran last year in terms of strategy and execution, and has the same monetary resources he had available.
What, if anything, could other candidates have done to beat Obama in Iowa? Keep in mind that both Clinton and Edwards executed their strategies pretty well in Iowa (in my opinion), with
both of them getting more than 70,000 people to stand in their corners on January 3. That “should” have been enough to win, even if turnout had been “only” 50 percent greater than the previous record for Iowa Democrats.
Given the Obama campaign’s excellent strategy and execution, as well as their virtually unlimited monetary resources in Iowa, what could other candidates have done to win the Iowa caucuses?
These are examples of the kinds of questions I’m interested in:
Should Hillary have used Bill more, or used him less?
Would it have helped Clinton or Edwards to go negative on Obama?
Were there better methods Clinton could have used to identify and turn out supporters?
Was there anything Richardson could have done in the summer to build on the bump he got from his television commercials in May?
Would Edwards have done better if his stump speech and advertising had focused on different issues?
Should Edwards have spent some money on advertising in the summer, when he slipped behind Clinton in the Iowa polls, rather than keeping his powder dry?
Feel free to post your insights about these and similar questions on this thread.
Alternatively, if you have thoughts you’d rather keep off the record, please e-mail them to me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com, or e-mail me your phone number and I will call you to chat. I will keep your views confidential.
2 Comments
I love this kind of stuff!
Here’s a few “game-changers” I see that would have helped each candidate.
Edwards:
Edwards should have somehow (not that I know how) balanced out his fiery populism with more of the “sunshine candidate” optimism of 2004. I think those commercials where he threatened to take Congress’ health insurance away seemed a little too militant for some people’s taste. I also would have liked for him to hit the economy theme harder, sooner.
Strategically, I think he should have spent more time in west and south-west Iowa and worked some of those poorer rural counties that went Clinton.
Clinton:
I think if she’d have tried to do a 99-county tour earlier she might have picked up enough stray delegates to win. She also needed to work harder in college towns where she got absolutely crushed by Obama. More joint Bill/Hill appearances might have helped.
Obama:
Did nearly everything right. Perhaps the only way he could have done better was to do more retail-level events in smaller towns as opposed to the massive mega rallies he’s so fond of. It might have swayed some Edwards voters in the south who didn’t get/want to go to the big city rallies.
american007 Mon 17 Mar 9:56 PM
Obama
Had a massive web of net supporters, also had a high youth turn out. Edwards really appealed to the blue collar democrat and a lot of independants.
I think Hillary could have used Bill a little bit more. Not in the South Carolina way of course, but local functions, group meetings, town hall meetings, many small ratio meetings. This would have effected more voters than a huge event.
Edwards was also able to pull out a second place finish because of the many politicans that supported him on the state level, most notably Ed Fallon.
Vote Fallon!
http://www.equalitygiving.org/
secondtonone Thu 20 Mar 11:45 AM