I’M for Iowa made the announcement today in a mass e-mail:

For too long, Iowa’s airwaves have been dominated by Rush Limbaugh, Jan Mickelson, Steve Deace, Glen Beck and Michael Savage. Well, we have great news: times are changing!

Beginning Monday, September 21st, we will host our own talk show from 7:00 – 8:00 pm, Monday through Thursday on 98.3 WOW-FM. It’s called “THE FALLON FORUM” and can be heard from Fort Dodge to Chariton, from Grinnell to Carroll, and can be live-streamed at http://www.983wowfm.com. We hope you’ll tune in, and you can join the conversation at (515) 312-0983.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for those of us concerned about pressing economic, social and environmental issues. We want to offer true “talk” radio, as opposed to the “shock” radio dished-up by those on the far right. In fact, THE FALLON FORUM replaces some of the airtime currently given to Michael Savage, the guy who recently recommended making “the construction of mosques illegal in America, and the speaking of English only in the streets of the United States the law.”

We’ll kick off the show on Monday with Dolores Huerta. Dolores helped found the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez. At 79, she remains an energetic, outspoken advocate for many important causes, including marriage equality.

On Tuesday, we’ll dig into Iowa politics.

Zach Mannheimer with The Subjective Theatre Company joins us on Wednesday to discuss the merger of the artistic and corporate worlds. We anticipate a spirited exchange on the new sculpture garden set to open in downtown Des Moines.

On Thursday, we want to hear your thoughts on America’s historic health care debate . . . providing you keep it civil and based on fact. We’ll pull the plug on any caller who insists the legislation before Congress pulls the plug on grandma.

Thanks, and we hope you can join us on the show next week!

Ed and Lynn Fallon

Speaking of the Fallons and Iowa politics, I wonder how many primary challengers they’ve recruited in certain Iowa House districts.

John Edwards has a new campaign website for Iowa, and I found details about these upcoming events there:

Edwards Town Hall Meeting

May 15, 2007 – 11:15 am

Des Moines Central Library

1000 Grand Ave., Des Moines, Iowa

If you plan to attend, go to this page where you will find a link to click to RSVP.

Or, you can RSVP by phone at 515-288-0766.

Update: Polk County Democrats have just sent out an e-mail saying that Tuesday’s town hall meeting is going to focus on “issues important to women.”

Second Update: Edwards campaign press release says the candidate will make “a significant new announcement about the organization and strength of the campaign in Iowa and discuss his detailed plans for improving the lives of women at work and at home.”

In other news, David Bonior, longtime congressman from Michigan who is Edwards’ campaign manager, will be in Dubuque on Thursday:

May 17, 2007 – 5:30 pm

Congressman Bonior will speak at the Dubuque County Democratic Party Hall of Fame Dinner

Happy’s Place

Rockdale Road

Dubuque, IA

If you can attend either of these events, please feel free to put up a diary afterwards. These first-person accounts are often more informative than the media coverage of the event.

The new Bill Richardson “job interview” tv ads are the talk of the blogosphere today. If you haven’t viewed them yet, check them out at his campaign’s website.

Richardson used humor in some of his commercials when he was running for governor, so he’s apparently comfortable trying something out of the box.

I welcome the experiment, because I’ve long thought that humor is an underutilized weapon in political advertising.

The first “job interview” ad is going up on the air in Iowa. The second one has only been released online for now, and the campaign is soliciting feedback.

The merits of the ads were discussed at length in this packed thread at Daily Kos.

Over at Political Animal, Kevin Drum is unconvinced, saying the ads don’t address the problem of people having no idea where Richardson stands on the issues, but his commenters mostly disagree, saying the publicity will benefit Richardson when these ads “go viral.”

My undecided husband who is considering Richardson liked the first ad–funny and memorable. He didn’t think the second ad was effective as a way to communicate the high points of Richardson’s record. If this is any guide, the campaign was smart to hold off on running the second ad on tv for now. It will be interesting to see if they alter it significantly before airing.

They’ve got to do some kind of follow up, because the first “job interview” commercial ends with the words “to be continued” on the screen.

What do you think? Do these ads work? Or will they just attract a lot of attention without building support for Richardson?

John Edwards has put up his first television commercial in Iowa this cycle. The ad uses the same script as an ad his campaign put up in Washington, DC, last week, but it features Iowans speaking.

Noneed4thneed posted a youtube of the ad over at Century of the Common Iowan.

Meanwhile, Essential Estrogen liveblogged a media conference call with Edwards today. Click the link to read how he answered questions about the ad and his stand on Iraq generally.

If you’ve watched the ad, what did you think? I think it’s a good use of his money. Since he has campaigned so much in Iowa before, he has the luxury of not starting his advertising campaign with a biographical spot.

I’m late to the party, but I want to add my voice to those who detested the formats used in the first televised debates involving the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. There were so many questions on so many different issues that it was hard to compare the candidates, and hard for them to answer any question in depth.

I thought most of the Democratic and Republican candidates did fairly well, given the dismal format. A particular tip of my hat goes to Ron Paul, who managed to project the most coherent ideological frame on the Republican side, despite the short amount of time he was given to speak.

How can these debates be improved? David Yepsen takes a stab at answering the question in his latest column, published in today’s Des Moines Register.

These are the points Yepsen makes that I agree with:

1. Hold fewer debates, and schedule them later in the season, when more people are paying attention.

2. Allow candidates to ask each other questions. (I think each candidate could be given one or two questions to ask any competitor.)

3. Limit the topics, so that each debate is focused on one issue area (e.g. foreign policy, economy, health care, environment).

4. Make the debates 2 hours instead of 90 minutes. With eight Democratic candidates and at least 10 Republican candidates, this makes sense.

5. Get better moderators. As Yepsen says,

Debates should be about the performance of the candidates, not the celebrity or actions of the moderator. Each candidate should be asked similar questions, and they should be kept short and simple.

Here’s where I disagree with Yepsen:

1. He wants to hold more radio debates so people will be less focused on how the candidates look. I would prefer debates to be televised and simultaneously broadcast on radio to reach the widest possible audience. Of course, if they do this it would help for the moderators not to ask questions beginning with, “Raise your hand if you think…”

2. He wants to allow opening or closing statements. He makes a valid point that candidates may be more responsive to questions if they know they will have a chance to state their top points in opening and closing statements.

However, I’m going to have to side with the majority of debate organizers who think these are a waste of time, especially with both parties’ fields as large as they are. I also think that candidates will continue to be non-responsive to some questions, because that’s a basic point of political communication: answer the question you want to answer, even if that’s not the question you were asked.

3. He wants to have separate debates for the top-tier candidates. If we had done this last cycle, Howard Dean probably never would have broken into the top tier.

Also, there may be a candidate who is top tier in some early states but not in others.

I think it’s a good thing to force the top tier candidates to make the case about why they are better than all the other alternatives. Let the viewers or listeners decide based on the full range of options.

4. Yepsen calls for using polls “to determine the issues people most want the next president to address, and then the candidates should be asked about those questions. Otherwise, moderators and candidates can easily get sidelined into the latest gaffe or news development in a campaign.”

But we don’t need to take a poll to know the important issues the next president will need to address. If the debate topic is health care, the important questions suggest themselves (covering the uninsured, reducing costs, providing prescription drug coverage, expanding preventive care, etc.). The same goes for the other big issue areas.

All we need is for moderators to show some intelligence and restraint.

Brian Williams and Chris Matthews both did poorly in selecting questions to ask, but that doesn’t mean that professional journalists couldn’t come up with better questions without relying on polls.

I feel compelled to defend Chris Dodd after reading this post on Radio Iowa. (Hat tip Deeth).

Radio Iowa notes that Dodd keeps telling the same joke at every campaign stop about being the only guy in the race who gets mailings from both the AARP and diaper services. After seeing Dodd speak before a group of young Democrats, Radio Iowa had a chance to ask a question:

As Dodd was walking out of the restaurant where he had just given his 20-minute speech, followed by about 20 minutes of answering questions, I began asking about the joke.  “You always tell that joke about the AARP and diaper services,” I started.

“They hadn’t heard it,” Dodd quickly interrupted, referencing his noon-time audience.

“But I’m wondering how a guy tells a joke like that, obviously exhibiting that he has the coin for a diaper service, and how he squares that with his discussion of how the middle class is being pinched,” I continued.

“It was a joke,” Dodd said.  He laughed and walked away.

Cut the guy some slack–every candidate gives basically the same stump speech, including the same jokes, at every campaign stop.

I must have heard Chet Culver’s joke about his daughter and the letter-carriers’ endorsement half a dozen times last year. (Short version: Chet is tucking in his daughter, going through the bedtime ritual of talking about something nice that happened that day. Chet mentions that he got endorsed by the Letter-Carriers’ association. Daughter asks what that means. Chet says it means the people who deliver the mail are going to vote for him. Daughter asks, “Even the guy who delivers Nussle’s mail?”)

John Edwards has talked about being the son of a mill worker so many times that he added a joke to his stump speech about how the audience may have heard once that he is the son of a mill worker.

Now, if Radio Iowa’s complaint is that people in Iowa don’t use diaper services and can’t relate to the joke, that’s partly true, at least concerning young voters. As a mom of two kids in cloth diapers, I can confirm that there are no cloth diaper laundry services in Iowa (only some cloth diaper sellers, like this one and this one).

If Radio Iowa’s complaint is that someone who can afford a diaper service may seem out of touch with middle-class concerns, I disagree. People who remember the days of diaper services could tell you that they were affordable for middle-class families. It wasn’t a luxury service that only the wealthy used.

On the contrary, wealthier people were among the first to start using disposable diapers when they became more widely available in the 1960s. Plenty of parents from an older generation have told me that they couldn’t afford disposable diapers when their kids were babies.

But I digress. Please don’t hassle candidates for telling the same jokes over and over this year.

And if you’ve got babies or are planning to have babies in the future, be aware of the environmental and health benefits, not to mention the cost savings, of using cloth diapers. If you want to learn more, click here for the Real Diaper Association website.

Or, if you live in central Iowa, e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com and I will tell you when and where the monthly “cloth diaper crowd” meets.

I already posted information about Biden’s town hall meeting in Ankeny this morning, Here are more details about his scheduled appearances in Iowa over the next couple of days:

Saturday, May 5

10:30 AM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING WITH ANKENY AREA DEMOCRATS

  Ankeny Area Historical Society
  301 SW Third Street

  Ankeny, IA

1:30 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO ATTEND HOUSE PARTY IN FRANKLIN COUNTY

  Home of Mildred and Ben van Hove
  121 Windsor Boulevard

  Hampton, IA

4:30 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO ADDRESS IOWA BROADCAST NEWS ASSOCIATION’S SPRING CONVENTION

  Best Western Holiday Lodge

  2023 7th Ave. North

  Clear Lake, IA

7:00 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING IN CERRO GORDO COUNTY

  Borealis Gourmet Ice Cream Palace
  316 North Federal Ave

  Mason City, IA

Sunday May 6, 2007

12:00PM  SEN. BIDEN WILL ATTEND A HOUSE PARTY FUNDRAISER WITH STATE SEN. JEFF DANIELSON 
  IN BLACK HAWK COUNTY

  Home of Nick Powers

  3335 Santa Maria

  Waterloo, IA

2:30 PM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING WITH STATE SEN. BRIAN SCHOENJAHN AND  FAYETTE COUNTY DEMOCRATS

  Dancing Lions Dance Hall

  110 S. Fredrick

  Oelwein, IA

5:30 PM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING IN LINN COUNTY

  Longbranch Hotel

  90 Twixt Town Road
  Cedar Rapids, IA

Monday May 7, 2007

6:15 PM  SEN. JOE BIDEN TO ATTEND BBQ DINNER HOSTED BY STATE SEN. JOE SENG

  Home of State Sen. Joe Seng

  901 Treemont

  Davenport, IA

If you attend any of these events, please consider putting up a diary afterwards with your impressions, or just attach your thoughts to the comments section below this post.

The Des Moines Register reported on Friday that Florida’s decision to move its primary to January 29 (the same date that the South Carolina primary is scheduled) may prompt New Hampshire to schedule its primary a week earlier.

Since Iowa and New Hampshire have agreed that the Iowa caucuses will be held eight days before the New Hampshire primary, that means the caucuses would be held on January 7, instead of on January 14 as tentatively scheduled.

As a precinct captain, I hope that this does not happen. You can’t do any serious GOTV work during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. People will be returning home on January 1 or 2, or going back to work, or recovering from holiday stress. It’s a hectic time, and I don’t imagine it being a time that people would welcome phone calls or door knocks from volunteers trying to get them to vote.

My husband pointed out that very few college students would be back in time for the Iowa caucuses if they were held on January 7. That’s got to be bad news for Barack Obama, but possibly also for John Edwards, since he is likely to have strong support on college campuses as well (I expect Ed Fallon to help his campaign with this crowd).

Of course, even on January 14 there may be quite a few college students who are not back from their winter breaks.

I’m sympathetic to Chris Bowers of MyDD, who has advocated this calendar instead:

December 10th (Monday): Iowa

December 18th (Tuesday): New Hampshire

January 19th (Saturday): Nevada

January 29th (Tuesday): South Carolina, Florida, Michigan

February 5th (Tuesday) National Primary

He sees the advantages as follows:

New Hampshire and Iowa placated. They still get to go first–in fact, they get to go a lot earlier relative to other states in the current calendar. There is no way any state moves into a window that includes the holidays.

New Hampshire and Iowa reduced. The two “traditional” states will take place so much earlier than any other state, that whatever “momentum” candidates derive from those states will be significantly muted over five weeks later.

Diverse groups play important, early role. Nevada, South Carolina, Florida and Michigan will effectively function as a second set of early contests to immediately precede Super Tuesday. This will allow for significant, early state voting representation for African-Americans, Latinos, union members, Jews, and ever region of the country.

Frontloading significantly eased. In this calendar, the primary / caucus season lasts for fifty-eight days, instead of twenty-three. This will give voters more time to decide, and give candidates more time to build up a national operation. In 2004, Kerry was severely lacking in nationwide staff after his early victories, including in states like Ohio and Florida, and this deficit might have cost him the election. At the same time, the primary season was over pretty much the same day it began in 2004, but with this calendar, from the start of the campaign until Super Tuesday voters would have a lot more time to make up their minds.

Almost everyone gets a voice: The national primary on February 5th will give more people a real say in determining the nominee than at any nomination process in two decades.

Nominee still decided early. With nine months between Super Tuesday and Election Day, there is plenty of time to rally around the eventually nominee.

This has a lot going for it, except that I wouldn’t look forward to working my precinct right after Thanksgiving. People get so busy in December with shopping, holiday parties, kids’ programs and recitals. I think it would be even harder to talk marginal voters into coming out for an hour on a Monday night.

It’s too late to fix this cycle, and perhaps Iowa will never get to go first again, so it won’t matter. But I would support pushing the start of the primary season way back to mid-February, like it used to be in the 1980s. I don’t like the idea of holding the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary during or shortly after the holiday season.

I hate it when journalists ask politicians stupid questions. No matter what they pick, journalists will try to make it fit whatever script they are pushing about the person (too elitist, too dumb, too wonky, whatever).

However, this was too amusing not to pass along.

The Associated Press asked the presidential candidates what item he or she would most like to have if stranded on a desert island. Political Wire has the candidates’ answers here.

I won’t spoil the punch line, but I have to agree with Kevin Drum, who writes, “Oddly enough, Tom Tancredo gave the best answer.”

I’d put in a word for Brownback’s answer as well.

American Research Group has just released new polls of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina .

Click through if you want to read about the results from the other states. The new ARG Iowa numbers are:

Edwards 27 percent

Clinton 23 percent

Obama 19 percent

undecided 16 percent

Biden 6 percent

Richardson 5 percent

Dodd 2 percent

Kucinich 2 percent

Gravel and Clark, less than 1 percent

You may recall that in December and January ARG released polls showing Clinton way ahead in Iowa. No other polling firm ever found Clinton ahead of Edwards in Iowa.

Now ARG’s results are more in line with the other firms. I don’t know if ARG changed its likely voter screen or if Edwards has just gained a lot of ground on Clinton since January.

ARG notes that Edwards leads Clinton among women in Iowa, 32 percent to 26 percent. This is not at all surprising to me.

The undecided figure still “feels” low to me. I talk to a lot of Democrats, and I think way more than 1 in 6 tell me they don’t know yet who they will caucus for.

Click through if you want all the Republican numbers for Iowa, but the highlights are:

McCain 26 percent

Giuliani 19 percent

Romney 14 percent

Fred Thompson 13 percent

undecided 12 percent

Seems like Romney’s numbers are not moving in Iowa, despite his early tv ads and the DVD he mailed out to 70,000 Iowa Republicans. Click the link if you want to read the Cyclone Conservative analysis of that DVD.

UPDATE: Check out rob’s diary at the right for more info about these polls. One figure jumped out at me. ARG’s sample in Iowa was taken from “600 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of likely Democratic caucus goers living in Iowa (475 Democrats and 125 no party (independent) voters).”

Now, we had a few independents change their registration on caucus night 2004 so that they could participate. But does anyone really think that 1 in 5 people attending the Democratic side of the Iowa caucuses next January will be registered independents?

I haven’t even watched the debate yet–we videotaped it and will watch after the kids are in bed.

If you watched, what were your impressions?

Take the poll and comment.

As you may know, the first Democratic candidates’ debate is tomorrow evening. I just got an e-mail from the Polk County Democrats, who passed along a release from the Edwards campaign:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 25, 2007

CONTACT:

Dan Leistikow

515-288-0766 (office)

515-508-9965 (cell)

JOHN EDWARDS CAMPAIGN TO HOST DEBATE WATCH PARTIES ACROSS IOWA ON THURSDAY

Des Moines, Iowa – As Senator John Edwards participates in a presidential debate in at South Carolina State University on Thursday, April 26th, the John Edwards for President Iowa Campaign will host debate watch parties across the state.

These parties are open for both supporters and undecided caucus goers to watch the debate and discuss the issues facing America.  Afterward, participants will get an update via phone from National Campaign Manager David Bonior.

  The debate will be broadcast live from South Carolina State’s Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium on Thursday, April 26, at 6:00 p.m. CST with live coverage on MSNBC.

  All events are open to the press. For members of the media seeking more information, please contact Dan Leistikow with the John Edwards for President Campaign.

  Details of the debate watch parties are:

  Des Moines

John Edwards for President Campaign Office

712 E 2nd St

Suite A

Des Moines, Iowa

Cedar Rapids

Home of Judy Ahrens

124 24th St SE

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Davenport

Home of Camellia Pohl

1216 N Concord St

Davenport, Iowa

Waterloo

Home of Bill Draper

941 Wendy Road

Waterloo, Iowa

Sioux City

4th Street Bar & Grill

1107 4th St

Sioux City, Iowa

All events are open to the press. For more information, please contact Dan Leistikow at 515-288-0766 or 515-508-9965.

Please post information about other candidates’ debate-watching parties in the comments section.

Sadly, I won’t be able to attend any of these parties, and I won’t even be watching the debate live, because we have a rule about not turning on the tv when our children are awake. So I’ll have to settle for recording the debate and watching it after the kids are asleep.

Barack Obama spoke in Iowa City today before a crowd of several thousand. John Deeth liveblogged the event, and you can read all about it here.

If you’ve got a report about this event, or some other campaign appearance by any of the presidential candidates, please consider putting up a diary. Even if you’re not liveblogging or vlogging, it’s still interesting to hear about the stump speeches, the Q and A, and the reactions of the crowd.

I went down to Valley Junction in West Des Moines today, but their Earth Day event was rained out. I did notice that the Edwards supporters were out there talking with lots of people before everyone packed up their tables and tents, though.

Here’s a link to Trippi’s blog post announcing the move.

And here’s a link to a Daily Kos diary with more background and discussion of this hire.

The former Deaniacs I know in Iowa are largely undecided, with some leaning toward Edwards and others leaning toward Obama. I don’t think anyone will make up his or her mind solely based on what Trippi does, but I think the move sends a positive signal about the change Edwards wants to bring to America.

What are your thoughts, and what have you been hearing from the people you know who caucused for Dean in 2004?