Your man in Des Moines

Here I am in Iowa, a month before the caucuses on January 3.  It sleeted all day, and they closed the airport after a plane skidded on the runway.  This wreaked havoc with various candidates' schedules, and I hope it doesn't do so with my return tomorrow. 

I'm here to get a first-hand look at the candidates and the process, a month before the Iowa caucus, at the Heartland Forum, an event planned by the Center for Community Change -- funded by the two foundations for which I have worked, and whose dynamic and visionary director, Deepak Bhargava, is a good friend, along with a number of his terrific board and staff members -- and a great Iowa group, Citizens for Community Improvement.  The idea is to bring together low-income people from around the country to ask questions  of the candidates about issues of concern to them.  Simple, but profound, when you consider the bloviations of Wolf Blitzer and the pundit/journalists who usually dominate the questions at these things.  Five of the Democrats will participate.  They invited Republicans, too, but none accepted before the deadline.

Arriving at the Hy-Vee Center for the forum – where, funnily, a dance competition that has filled the other half of our hotel is also taking place,  as it’s a big convention center, I'm struck what an amazing thing it is to bring off, logistically – technology, press, stage management, busing 3,000 people from other parts of the country, five candidates and their entourages.  It was a very impressive undertaking.  A gospel choir warmed up the crowd, and at a certain point Deepak and I, with our “all access” passes, get led down a series of corridors and stairs to the holding area.  When we get word a candidate has arrived, we – and several other CCC staff and board members – go up to the back door of the Center to greet them and their entourage and escort them down to wait their turn.

First to show up is Kucinich, with three or so long-haired guys who look like Woodstock veterans in tow. Though Edwards, not yet there, is meant to go first, so it means a lot of hanging around for Kucinich, clad in a dark overcoat in contrast to his funky aides. As we were walking him downstairs, I remembered that I actually voted for him in the 2004 New York primary, as I was pissed off at Kerry and Edwards for their triangulating about gay marriage. He turns out to be a kind and thoughtful person, holding doors open for people, going out of his way to shake the hands of kitchen staff, etc. Later on, when we were all waiting with Obama for him to go on, Kucinich showed up again (they were in the same holding room, but he was expected to be long gone by the time Obama showed up) because one of his aides left a bag there.

Once installing Kucinich in the holding room – where there was a live feed of the event going on upstairs – we went back up to meet Edwards, who seemed thinner but also a bit less plastic than the last time I encountered him, in a small meeting he asked to have with OSI staff attending, as he was, the American Constitution Society Convention a year or two ago. An experienced Iowa candidate, Edwards was impeccably suited but wearing hiking boots for the sleet. I only saw his performance on the monitor, but he hit almost every question out of the park, as well he might, since he is running on a number of issues of greatest concern to poor people.  I like that, and by all rights, like a few of my friends, I ought to be for him, since anyone who wants to run on poverty deserves all the support he can get.  Yet he turns me off for some reason, and the voice he has found now, while it may be his real one, was missing the last time he ran, and indeed in his brief Senate career.

The format of the Heartland Forum is unusual.  The stage had about 50 seats for community leaders – black, brown and white organizers from around the country, including some from Iowa.  Cathy Hughes, the radio host, moderated, and each candidate faced a few panels of leaders, one of whom starts off with a story, and the other two of whom ask a question.  They’re grouped by theme – race and immigration, the economy and predatory lending, and so on.  Every questioner is eloquent and moving, and a number choke up while telling the stories of family farmers being driven out by polluting agribusinesses in Iowa, racial profiling of Muslims in Chicago, communities decimated by incarceration in South Carolina.

And I realized, hearing them, that the chief value of a forum like this is not in what the candidates say, and whether they pledge, as all did, to meet with a delegation of community leaders in their first month in office.  It is what they are required to listen to, and hopefully hear.

Chris Dodd showed up with his wife Jackie – she and their two young kids have moved to Iowa for the duration of the campaign – and hung around for a while before speaking.  He seemed relaxed, as well he should be – he has nothing at stake in the campaign, really.  He gets to a diversion from his long Senate term – like Joe Biden – and opportunities in every debate, at least until he drops out, probably after New Hampshire, to have almost as much time as the “serious” candidates.  Then he goes back to his normal life with a higher profile and speaking fees.  In various debates and candidate forums, including those today, people often say, of Kucinich, he’s the closest to my positions, of course, and of Biden and Dodd that they were very impressed.  And indeed these two long-term and generally effective Senators ARE very good in these forums.  What makes the difference between their universally-dismissed candidacies besides money (though that's a chicken-and-egg thing) and the others is  hard to say.

Hillary Clinton was stuck in Washington, so after protracted negotiations she participated in the forum by phone.  I didn’t catch it all on the monitor in the holding room, but she was clearly at a disadvantage by not being there (through no fault of her own), but also by not being the favorite of this very progressive crowd, who connect with Edwards and Obama more. 

More than any other candidate, Clinton is running with an eye to the general election.  So when she failed to promise to introduce immigration reform in her first 100 days – a bow to the conventional wisdom pushed by Rahm Emanuel that the issue is toxic and shouldn’t come up again for a few Congresses – she was roundly booed.

Obama’s arrival provided the most drama of the day.  The other guys showed up at the back door of the Hy-Vee with a few aides, brushing the sleet off their coats and scraping their shoes (Dodd’s very scuffed, I’m not sure whether it was because he is not a clothes guy or he wore old ones for the weather).  We got word that Obama was arriving in a few minutes, so went to the back door, and suddenly a giant garage-type door that I hadn’t noticed before went up and in drove two immense SUVs.  Obama got out, handed his coat to an aide, and started shaking hands.  He was followed by half-a-dozen Secret Service agents and various other aides and attendants.  If he had come down in a helicopter or even a spaceship it could not have been more of a show, and the contrast with the other mortal candidates was enormous.  It was as if he was already President.  And indeed, he has that air about him.

We had a lot of time to talk with him – for readers of this blog, he yet again did a good job of appearing to remember me, but when we talked about mutual friends, he had me in some meeting I don’t recall attending – and he ranged over a number of issues, clearly getting the role of organizing in low-income communities, since that is what he chose to do when he got out of college.  When we walked alongside him to the hall, just before he was introduced to great cheers, Deepak leaned toward him and said, “Senator, it would be good if you said a word about organizing.”  Obama smiled and replied, “Do you think I’m stupid?”  And went on to nail that and other issues with a crowd that was well-disposed to like him.  Clintonesque, Kennedyesque (more Bobby than John), you name it – he has the touch, that’s for sure.

Dierdra from Springfield, Massachusetts, with her daughter Alexiana at her side, talked about her daughter’s eye ailments that threatened to blind her, causing her to take time off from work, losing her job and health insurance. Cathy Hughes took Alexiana by the hand and brought her over to Obama, who leaned his tall lanky self over and talked quietly with her for a minute.  A 73-year old activist from Des Moines who had to come out of retirement to make ends meet says that she read that Wall Street investment bankers and the like will take home $38 billion in bonuses this Christmas, while thousands of low and middle-income people are losing their homes to foreclosures.  That’s pretty stark.  As one questioner put it, “Some things aren’t right, and some things ain’t right, and that ain’t right.”

Also went to the Black-Brown Forum tonight, where all the candidates -- Hillary's plane got in and Biden drove seven hours from Chicago, arriving midway -- were, and which was an actual debate. Too tired to write about that now, though.

Comments

[Chad]

I like Obama although I'm really Curious to see who he would pick as his VP. I think his downfall will be his inability to pick a great cabinet.

[ludovic]

good to see you there. it was definitely an amazing event!

[Robert Elliott]

I have a question: Which of the candidates is learning to speak Arabic?