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The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
Game on!
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Unit
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Not quite barbershop: The quartet of what polls say are the front-runners today in Iowa's so-tight caucuses woo their supporters.
Story Tools
| ON CNN TV | 
Watch CNN for ongoing live coverage of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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VIDEO
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CNN's Bob Franken on the candidates' big push for the caucuses.
CNN's Candy Crowley on Howard Dean, his wife and Jimmy Carter.
CNN's Mike Yardley on how Dick Gephardt counts on experience.
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| DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES |
• Delegates at stake in Iowa: 45
• Delegates needed to win Democratic national presidential nomination: 2,161
• Events ahead of July 25-31 national convention: 56 (36 primaries, 20 caucuses)
• Biggest primary day: March 2 (1,151 delegates at stake)
• Second-biggest primary day: February 3 (269 delegates at stake)
Compiled by Robert Yoon and Mark Rodeffer
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SPECIAL REPORT
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DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- It's quite fitting that the Iowa caucuses fall on the observed birthday of one of the nation's most skilled political organizers.
While '04 Dems may give Martin Luther King Jr. only passing kudos today (exception: Wes Clark, in South Carolina is to praise King and slam Charles Pickering), the slain civil-rights leader would be impressed to see the intense GOTV (Get Out the Vote) drives unfolding across the Hawkeye State.(Gallery: Candidates all smiles in 11th hour)
• Dick Gephardt and his union friends are offering child care to caucus-going parents.
• Howard Dean's "Perfect Storm" campaign organization is providing Spanish-language translators for Iowa's small Latino population (although wife Judy Steinberg "Dean" has returned to Vermont after her appearance last night at a rally).
• Some 800 veterans are calling 20,000 Iowa veterans for John Kerry.
• As for John Edwards, well, his camp is knocking on lots and lots of doors.
We've got little to do today but wait for caucuses to begin at 6:30 p.m. "Centro" time, and that's 7:30 p.m. ET. (Main story: Candidates push Iowans to caucus Monday evening)
So let's take a minute to deconstruct this so-called Edwards boomlet.
We're not foolish enough to predict tonight's outcome. (We barely understand how to determine a viability threshold.) (Interactive: How the caucuses work)
But we do think the "four-man race" coverage in the media was perhaps too kind to the senator from North Carolina. In one breath, media types cited polls showing Edwards's big mo'.
But in the next, they dismissed the polls as unreliable and declared Edwards' organization would prove no match to his three main rivals. (Contentious caucuses: Hot races on a cold night)
Art Sanders, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, put it bluntly in an interview with Knight-Ridder: "Edwards has the weakest organization."
Even the Edwards camp acknowledged it faces an uphill challenge to get one of the three tickets out of Iowa. "If you put our staff organization up against them, I think we kick their asses," Edwards communications director David Ginsberg told the Grind.
"But there's no question we're going up against three campaigns that have unlimited resources at their disposal, whether it's the unions [for Dean and Gephardt] or Kerry's breaking the spending caps."
In other words, we are most likely looking at a three-, not a four-man race.
So who's doing what, where, to whom? (Latest CNN Election Express Line dispatches)
Dean aides still maintain they're on top, noting that they've already ID-ed some 50,000 voters who say they plan to vote for him. If they can produce them Monday, they could easily dominate the caucuses, where turnout is expected is hover around 110,000.
Dean has 2,000 volunteers from across the country, combined with organizers from AFSCME, SEIU, and IUPAT working in all 99 counties and all 1,993 precincts, according to a memo circulated by Tim Connolly, Dean's field director in Iowa.
"At a time when voters tire of TV, radio, phone calls and lawn signs, we are getting through to our supporters and undecided voters with a personal contact at their door -- the most powerful persuasion method known," Connolly said in the memo.
"This weekend alone, our supporters are knocking and putting door hangers on more than 250,000 doors in Iowa. By Monday, this campaign will contact every registered Democrat in Iowa, as well as every independent, to inform them of the location of their local caucus. Households that don't receive door-hangers have been sent postcards."
Connolly shared other vital statistics from the Deanies' GOTV effort: Vehicles rented: 119. Cell phones distributed: 345. Beds given out: 1,530. Water bottles for this weekend: 16,000. Days until caucus: 1. Second Chances to be first in the nation: 0. (Audio Slide Show: Bill Schneider on what the Iowa outcome may mean)
Rival camps predicted Dean's much-touted Iowa organization would prove all sizzle and no steak. "You can wear orange hats and tell people you're doing well, but that doesn't mean you're getting people to caucus," said a rival '04 Dem operative, referring to the highway orange ski hats worn by Dean supporters in Des Moines and other towns last weekend. "It means you're, well, wearing orange hats."
For his part, front-runner John Kerry (that's almost as bizarre to write as "Gov. Schwarzenegger") will meet with caucus-goers today in Norwalk, Boone, Waukee, Ames and Urbandale.
Kerry is relying heavily on his appeal among veterans, working off research showing that as many as 90,000 of them expressed interest in the Democratic race.
The Kerry campaign has been running an automated phone bank since Thursday for veterans, in which the veteran voter can press "1" to speak to an actual vet. If they do so, they are connected to veterans in a phone bank who will deliver Kerry's military-centric pitch.
Despite Gephardt's flagging poll numbers, his union organizers express as much optimism as they did two months ago, when he led Dean in the Iowa Poll by 7 points. (Analysis by Jeff Greenfield: Gephardt then and now)
Gephardt today will rely on more than 2,000 volunteers, from as far as Texas and Delaware. The Alliance for Economic Justice, the coalition of 21 unions backing Gephardt, was targeting 1,800 of Iowa's 1,993 voting precincts for contact, because those precincts have more than five union members living in them.
Meanwhile, we prepare for the prospect that all four Democrats will emerge with support in the 20-percentile range. In which case they'd all board planes to New Hampshire tomorrow and confront the real winner of the Iowa caucuses: Wesley Clark.
