Feelin' The Bern-- From Iowa On

It's not really possible to accurately poll a caucus state, and especially not Iowa. The most recent attempt, by Siena for the NY Times shows a close tie between Elizabeth, Bernie, Mayo Pete and Status Quo Joe. No one else is a factor and chances are good that after the Iowa caucuses, candidates who rolling the dice on Iowa-- like Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock and John Delaney-- will drop out and go back to work or-- in Delaney's case-- go find a job.

A caucus is not anything like a primary. On February 3, participants will sit down at a designated location in each of the state's 1,681 precincts with their neighbors and argue about who's the best candidate. People change each other's minds. This is a description of the Democratic, but not Republican, Iowa caucus:

Each precinct divides its delegate seats among the candidates in proportion to caucus goers' votes. Participants indicate their support for a particular candidate by standing in a designated area of the caucus site (forming a preference group). An area may also be designated for undecided participants. Then, for roughly 30 minutes, participants try to convince their neighbors to support their candidates. Each preference group might informally deputize a few members to recruit supporters from the other groups and, in particular, from among those undecided. Undecided participants might visit each preference group to ask its members about their candidate.

After 30 minutes, the electioneering is temporarily halted and the supporters for each candidate are counted. At this point, the caucus officials determine which candidates are viable. Depending on the number of county delegates to be elected, the viability threshold is 15% of attendees. For a candidate to receive any delegates from a particular precinct, he or she must have the support of at least the percentage of participants required by the viability threshold. Once viability is determined, participants have roughly another 30 minutes to realign: the supporters of inviable candidates may find a viable candidate to support, join together with supporters of another inviable candidate to secure a delegate for one of the two, or choose to abstain. This realignment is a crucial distinction of caucuses in that (unlike a primary) being a voter's second candidate of choice can help a candidate.

When the voting is closed, a final head count is conducted, and each precinct apportions delegates to the county convention. These numbers are reported to the state party, which counts the total number of delegates for each candidate and reports the results to the media. Most of the participants go home, leaving a few to finish the business of the caucus: each preference group elects its delegates, and then the groups reconvene to elect local party officers and discuss the platform. The delegates chosen by the precinct then go to a later caucus, the county convention, to choose delegates to the district convention and state convention. Most of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are selected at the district convention, with the remaining ones selected at the state convention. Delegates to each level of convention are initially bound to support their chosen candidate but can later switch in a process very similar to what goes on at the precinct level; however, as major shifts in delegate support are rare, the media declares the candidate with the most delegates on the precinct caucus night the winner, and relatively little attention is paid to the later caucuses.

"We're not going to get there with Medicare-for-Some."-- AOC

In 2016, Hillary was polling way ahead of Bernie. The final January poll, by Gravis, showed Bernie at just 40% to Hillary's 53%. But on caucus day Hillary wound up with 49.84% of the vote and Bernie essentially tied her with 49.59%. Enthusiasm is a better measure of how candidates are going to do in the caucus than polling is. And that's why no one-- including Biden's own campaign-- thinks Biden is going to do all that well. Yesterday, small papers all over the state ran a piece about crowd excitement by the Des Moines Register's Nick Coltrain. AOC was in Iowa for the first time in her life, campaigning with Bernie, drawing "the largest crowd in the state so far in the 2020 cycle. More than 2,400 people filled an Iowa Western Community College arena to hear Ocasio-Cortez, a political celebrity who recently endorsed Sanders’ presidential campaign, and Sanders himself."

The crowd exploded when Ocasio-Cortez walked onto the stage Friday, and erupted again when she greeted them with “Who here is ready for the revolution?!” Ocasio-Cortez credits Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, with inspiring her to seek elected office.

“We need to stitch this movement together, bit by bit, stitch by stitch, and that’s how we’re going to win,” Ocasio-Cortez said, following a call to “stitch together” a cross-class and cross-demographic coalition. “… That’s not just how we’re going to win a Bernie Sanders presidency, but that’s how we’re going to win our future back. That’s how we’re going to win our country back. That’s how we’re going to win it all.”

“I love her,” Hannah Cook, a 20-year-old student from nearby Glenwood, Iowa, said after the event, slumping her shoulders and rolling her eyes up for emphasis. “I was so excited when I saw that (she was going to be here).”

Cook and her friend Kelsey Pavelka said they both probably would have come out regardless of Ocasio-Cortez's presence. But the freshman congresswoman, and youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, brought a new energy, they said.

Pavelka said Ocasio-Cortez comes across as authentic on social media, and seeing her in person helped build on that connection. Pavelka and Cook, a daycare worker and nanny, respectively, said Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez spoke to their specific concerns with health care and child care.

The Friday rally was the first of three campaign events Sanders was to hold with Ocasio-Cortez, with two more scheduled Saturday. They were to travel from the western edge of the state, hold a “climate crisis summit” in Des Moines midday Saturday and end with a rally in Coralville.

My pal Roland is visiting his family in Maine this week. He texted me today and told me his mom is voting for Bernie. She had been a Hillary backer in 2016. I asked him what made her change her mind. He said the whole family hates Trump but the reason she's backing Bernie is because she understands his economic agenda now and how that would impact her and her family. "She wants Bernie to soak the rich," said Roland. Maine is also a Super Tuesday state. Will she really go vote, I asked Roland. "The whole family is going to vote; they're disappointed that [Rep. Jared] Golden turned out to be such a stiff but they're still into it," he said. "They're all feelin' The Bern."