Why Obama Will Win Iowa

Speculation runs rampant as we approach the final hours until the Iowa caucuses.

While campaigns spin their respective cases, candidates crisscross the state, volunteers canvass neighborhoods in sub-zero temperatures, and commercials flood the airwaves in an attempt to pick up the final few votes that might make the difference in what most believe to be a statistical dead heat between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards.

While no one, of course, can predict the actual outcome until the results are reported, there are some pretty suggestive signs---a bit less obvious than Mike Huckabee's "Christmas cross," perhaps, but significant nonetheless---for those who look a bit beneath the surface.

I have been arguing for over a year that most polls and pundits are either missing or dismissing what will be the deciding factor in this election: the youth vote.

Most young voters are never called by pollsters. We have cell phones, not land lines; we are first-time voters; we are independents turned democrats. Therefore, we are mostly unrepresented by the polls and invisible to the news media. We are the voting bloc that is consistently written off. We won't show up. We are apathetic. We'll be watching football. This is the way it has been in recent history, and this is the way it will always be. So the argument goes.

Yet if this is the conventional wisdom, the American establishment is in for a rude awakening on January 3 when the headlines go worldwide that a former community organizer, an African American with an unusual name and the most improbable of stories, is on his way to becoming the next president of the United States.

The reality for those paying attention is that Barack Obama has inspired a movement among young people that is broad, deep, and real. For the past year, we have been organizing, blogging, donating, recruiting, conferencing, mobilizing. The Obama campaign has empowered us and we have responded in an unprecedented way.

The respected and historically accurate Des Moines Register confirmed this reality in its most recent poll, when it was found that an overwhelming 56% of young people ages 18-34 are supporting Senator Obama, compared to just 11% for Hillary Clinton and 16% for John Edwards. These numbers, it should be noted, are among "likely caucusgoers."

This evidence confirms what those of us on the ground have been seeing for the past year: hundreds of thousands of previously turned off young people suddenly seriously involved in a political campaign for the first time. This movement, unlike any political campaign since the excitement and participation generated by Robert F. Kennedy before his assassination in 1968, is described from its participants' own voices in a book I helped put together this past fall. While each story was unique, the theme was clear: Barack Obama resonates for our generation. His post-partisan, grassroots, idealistic, yet practical message makes sense to us. And most of us are more cynical towards politics than naïve. We grew up with the scandals and excesses of the Clinton years and the corruption and myopia of the Bush Administration. For us, Obama doesn't represent a savior; he represents hope.

So we have gone to work for a cause we believe in. We have donated from what little money we have; we have volunteered at the expense of our studies or jobs. We have been an active and crucial part of this movement every step of the way.

Is it likely after the countless hours we have put in that we will suddenly disappear on caucus night?

This is what the pundits would have people believe. This is the cliché that is heard endlessly on CNN and other mainstream media networks. Because it didn't work out for Howard Dean, it won't work out for Obama.

But if the Obama movement has proven anything, it is that it has gone far beyond Dean, Bill Clinton, or any other youth-appealing politician in recent history. It is a movement that has set record after record, from crowd sizes to donations to volunteers.

It is a movement that began in earnest when over 17,000 people braved the freezing cold weather in Springfield, Illinois to see a different kind of politician stand in front of the Old State Capitol Building and declare his unlikely run for the presidency.

It is a movement that grew a Facebook group of over 350,000 people within weeks. It is a movement that has generated more small donations than any campaign in history. It is a movement that has seen crowds in the tens of thousands in Texas, California, New York, and South Carolina.

It is a movement characterized not by passive gazing-on, but active participation. The Obama movement is organized, educated, and ready to be mobilized. In the oft-used chant of the campaign, it is "fired up and ready to go."

Over the past several months we have been overlooked, but beginning January 3 young supporters of Barack Obama are ready to send a long-anticipated message:

We're here. We count. And we will be the difference in Iowa and beyond.

Comments

[Edmonsky]

Obama is the candidate that will be easily defeated in the general election. I am laughing to such an extent falling out of my seat. I bet Hilary Clinton and her campaign thought as much and less than 36-hrs, they will receive their January presents. The taste of the pudding is in the eating. Please sir, stop comparing Senator Obama to President Bush. Senator Obama is a self-made man who got to where he is by sheer dint of hard work. Not only that Obama was the First African American to become President of Harvard Law Review but also he came on top of his class in academic achievement.

President Bush was considered a write-off, who spent most of adult life having fun and enjoying himself until he got involved with his present wife, sweet Laura Bush. It is after become a “born-again-Christian” that he started thinking what he would do with his life. Bush was an average student who could not have gone to Yale or Harvard but for his family political connections and wealth (he has native intelligence but he is not intellectually curious).

[ikebona]

Joe, I dare to say, the reason you're able to write with such impressive truth and knowledge is because the MSM and pundits haven't boiled hope out of you.

No one. I repeat, No one polls Iowa better than Ann Selzer of the DMR.

[PulSamsara]

Well, We Love IOWA !

Barrack Obama is about to WIN in Iowa !

Good for Iowa !

Good for America !

[MPeter]

Thank you for writing so succinctly about the youth, the movement and the determination. It is time to prove the MSM and the beltway talking heads wrong. Put them to sleep. TYThey think they own the process. Good job. I enjoyed reading it.

[hankandted]

Good post, because it clarifies that it is hard work, door to door, in the streets, phone calling. It is about gettin out your vote tomorrow.

I beg to differ in one respect---bloggers really don't have much to do with winning elections.

[SeanGardner]

I agree with you Joe. Unlike Howard Dean's outreach to young people (which did not have the substantive mobilizing and canvassing), Obama's campaign really understands the youth vote.

Like you, and a great HUFFPO poster named genmalia, I have been apart of the unprecedented "organizing, blogging, donating, recruiting, conferencing, mobilizing" effort to place Obama at the footstep of IOWA Caucus history.

I am happy you wrote this above: "Obama doesn't represent a savior; he represents hope." You're absolutely right. No candidate is a panacea for the ills of society. And, no candidate can represent EVERY SINGLE THING you want enacted on the watch of a sitting president.

I don't want perfection out of my president...I want the great qualities that Obama brings to the table: a good listener; a global visionary; an adept organizer; a constitutional lawyer and professor; and a public servant of unimpeachable political experience.

Two other compelling things apply to him:

(1) he believes that it is not wrong to have BLUE STATE credentials and RED STATE credibility. In fact, to presidential win elections, this is a necessary thing. You're not sacrificing your beliefs; you're simply reaching out to voters who you may not be agree with philosophically on EVERY ISSUE.

(2) he believes that it is nothing wrong with working to understand both the color specific differences that make us unique , and, the color-neutral commonalities that bring us together. In a country of latino, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans, Caucasian-Americans, African-Americans, and many others, this is a necessity.

Obama is a candidate who has the record to stand on: undeniably strong on reproductive rights for women, international relations, civil rights, gay rights, and other issues.

I'm happy to say I am apart of something so grand. The IOWA Caucus is just the beginning!

Thanks for a great post Joe.

[StephenDedalus82]

I actually think Obama will win Iowa. I think it's still a big stretch to think he'll go on to capture the nomination, though. The media likes to buy into the momentum idea, but amidst all of the focus on Iowa, the fact that Hillary still polls so high in the rest of the nation is not unimportant. Given that the primary season as a whole is much more frontloaded, I don't see Obama surviving the big primary days, especially once the media starts to put its critical eye on him (finally) should he win the first contest.

[kishaaann]

Some people can't handle the truth. Obama will win tomorrow. Ok we can hope...

[Qbear]

"We're here. We count. And we will be the difference in Iowa and beyond."

a co-opted LGBT chant

We're Here
We're Queer
Get Over It

btw. Human Rights Campaign and Stonewall Democrats are BOTH making major pushes to have the MOST LGBT delegates in History.
I would recomend LGBT caucus attendees become UNCOMMITTED delegates, wouldn't it be a nice CHANGE to have candidates EARNING our support.
Oh, like a Hate Crime Bill blue dog Democrats don't cowardly kill in conference, or an inclusive ENDA.

[Qbear]

As for students voting in the Democratic Caucus

They are both LGBT and straights were raised in the Will and Grace generation.
A candidate who hired McClurkin to SPIT on them and their friends....won't be getting their votes.

[inflector]

We've been on the ground filming a documentary on the 2008 Barack Obama campaign which we just released at:

http://www.thestatewerein.com/2008/01/02/documentary-hope-for-change/

I am 43 and represent the oldest of the post-boomer generation. My partner Jen is 28 and represents the younger generation. We both came to be Obama supporters for different reasons but are now equally passionate.

Our documentary focuses on the crowd reactions and the voices of people rather than pundits.

We followed Obama in New Hampshire, New York City, South Carolina, and Iowa and have no doubt that the polls are underestimating Obama's support because the present is NOT like the past and most polling expects that it will be.

I've seen the passion first hand and I expect a huge turnout and much better numbers for Obama than the polls indicate.

Thanks for a great post!

- Curtis

[SCharb]

Youth support for Howard Dean was ephemeral at best... Dean was little more than just another old white guy. In the end, the choices all seemed to blur together. There was no sense of urgency, as all the candidates would have produced the same outcome.

Obama's level of support should not be underestimated. This is a unique candidate with real, tangible support. He will definitely get the youth vote... but will the college kids be back from Christmas break in time to caucus?

[Desiderata]

What happened to all those "young" caucuse voters in Iowa back when Howard Dean was overwhelmingly supported by them?

Any candidate that places too much faith on them actually showing up clearly will find history repeating itself.