From Iowa to Inauguration (Vol. 3): A Retrospective on the Precariousness of Primary Politics

This post is the third in a week-long series. In an effort to remind people of the absurdity that dictates who makes the most important decisions on planet earth, this week I am publishing my private emails from the time I spent in Iowa last winter while making a video about the caucus process. I went as a concerned citizen who felt marginalized by the process looking for answers. What I discovered was quite complicated: a struggle to preserve grassroots political discourse in a humongous nation versus an inherently exclusive and precarious system. Please enjoy my stories from the road, where antics and adventure were certainly abound for my posse of newly-mobilized millennials. You can read previous posts here and here.

*****************

Dispatches From Iowa (Vol. 3) January 1, 2008

Until the Des Moines Register announced last night in a final poll that Barack was leading at 32% (with HRC at 25% and Edwards at 24%), momentum here was flat and I sensed that Edwards would take the nomination. We've seen a lot of signs for him, and he was shiny and poised at the event we went to in Sioux City on Sunday. Many people have told us that they gravitate towards him because they've been connected to him since the 2004 election.

But today I felt a surge and feel more confident in my guy's chances. (I also saw the number "2" all over the place, which many of you know is a superstition of mine. It was extremely lucky.)

Support for Barack seemed underwhelming initially, for a number of reasons. Foremost, in our first days on the job we were sent to canvass (door-to-door knocking) and phone bank (cold calling) in segments where support was minimal or struggling. Today we focused on people who said they were leaning towards Obama, and that was significantly more fun and refreshing (i.e. no one slammed a door in my face, which happened yesterday. In fact, one lovely zealous Greek man named Kostas, who was wearing his Barack pin while lounging around the house, gave me a hug.) Secondly, we've gathered that the area we're staying in (the western part of the state near Omaha) is like our Orange County; it's speckled with liberals and the pie is split fairly evenly. The bulk of Barack's support is in the eastern part of the state. He also has a strong presence in Des Moines. We've made it up there a couple times and I'm going again tomorrow to shoot some video for the web documentary.

Our outreach effort has been a great experience for us. It's tedious and frustrating to do the actual work, but results are gratifying. Today Jill and I met one woman who told us she really wanted to caucus for Barack, but didn't know where to go; we were able to provide her with the information. Simple, but crucial.

Barack came to Council Bluffs today and spoke in a high school gymnasium to a crowd of about 1,000. It was an exciting moment for Jessica, because she'd made a massive (pretty!) poster this afternoon listing information about caucusing by region, and it was proudly on display. (She got a great pic of Barack standing right in front of it during his speech.) Spoiled as I am to have seen him so many times, I thought the speech was a little flat. I'd had high hopes for seeing him in Iowa, and was wondering if there would be a variation from the stump; there wasn't. There was a little burst of excitement, however, because I was hanging with Kal Penn (eat your heart out, Corinne and Co.!) and he is just the coolest UCLA alumni ever. He phone banks and passes out fliers and is a really hard worker. *Note: I was able to restrain myself from telling him that I'll forever worship him for singing Wilson Phillip's "Hold On" in Harold and Kumar.

It's hard to believe that the caucus will take place in two days. I've been waiting for this all year, and now that I'm in the thick of it I'm not really aware of how truly big it is. Because things are so close, we're all scrambling and waiting with muted expectations. We're trying to decide if we'd like to spend Thursday with our team in Council Bluffs or in Des Moines so we can hear BO's big (hopefully) victory speech. We're quite torn because we've bonded with the people in the office, but to be in the arena and hear Barack speak is too big a moment in history to miss.

I have tried hard to consume media only at the end of each day, an attempt to preserve a semi-blank canvas with which to distinguish what I'm seeing from what the media is reporting. As an ex-journalist, it is interesting to observe the angles that are being plucked out as newsworthy. All the time spent on David Axelrod's comments on the Bhutto assassination, for example, seemed like a non-issue here among the general public. Likewise, the people are buzzing, but they're also very burned out and annoyed by the production of it all. ("Yes, I do support Obama," one woman told me today, "but I've asked you people to stop bothering me.")

I was saying to my parents today that I can't remember the last time I spent nine straight days with another person. We're always in our tiny Mazda 6 or itty bitty hotel room. But the laughter keeps on rolling. We were especially pumped today because we got a new CD at WalMart. (The running joke has been, "Justin or John?" since the radio stations all blow and we've only got the John Mayer Trio and Future Sex/Love Sounds with us. I never thought it would be possible to burn out on JT, but we knew we were having a collective malfunction when we all started clapping it out to "Losing My Way" on the ride home tonight. Yikes! Now we're rocking Paul Simon.)

I have so many other thoughts and anecdotes to share; I'll try my best to do them justice in subsequent dispatches. It really has been the trip of a lifetime. No matter what happens, I'll always be proud that we were a part of it.