The Iowa caucuses can be seen as a great way to show your campaign's grassroots and organizational muscle. However, it can also take a whole lot of man hours, and crucial handshake time from other primary states. So, it depends on which side of the polls you are on for you to be able to say what is most important. Do you think showing your strong grassroots organization in Iowa is more important than showing your face in South Carolina more often, or shaking more hands in California?
Obviously the answers to the questions differ from campaign to campaign. If you are Howard Dean then you see Iowa as your rocket to the Democratic nomination. Right now, Dean is neck and neck with Gephardt, and he shouldn't be. As the Washington Post reports, it would be hard for anyone to compete with "Gephardt's 15-year history of building relationships in the state." Gephardt should be leaving everybody in the dust. He is from neighboring Missouri, and he won Iowa when he ran in 1988. So, what's the problem? The problem is Dean. Dean has not just showed a skill for organization and grassroots-style campaigning. His campaign has proven to be so good at it that they did in a matter of months what it took Gephardt 15 years to do. Dean is working extremely hard, and spending a whole lot of money to make Iowa his in January, and I think he will get it. If he does, then this makes him the front runner. Because Iowa is the first big primary, and it gives him serious momentum going into New Hampshire. It also gives him the headline on every national newspaper and his face on the cover of every weekly news magazine. And what do you think all these stories will be saying about Dean? Yep, they will be gushing about how magnificent his grassroots organization was in Iowa.
On the other hand, we have Clark and Lieberman, who have decided to pack up their things and leave Iowa for greener pastures. They are on the side of the polls, the low side, that tells them that a caucus is a lot of money and a lot of missed handshakes in other, more winnable, states. So, it is a good idea for them to get why the getting is good.
For Lieberman, it was clear long before his decision to leave that he had very little chance to win Iowa. Most, Iowans that go to caucuses are pretty liberal, and, well, let's just say that it is a stretch to call Joe a liberal. Joe gets booed louder at Democratic events than Michael Moore did at the Academy Awards. So, I don't think he was counting on Iowa to fall into his column this time around.
Then there is Clark, and quite frankly, he was just too late. You can't go to Iowa in October and expect to organize overnight. Clark's campaign spokesman, Matt Bennett told the Washington Post, "We have made the decision that we don't have the time or the money to compete there." He is absolutely right. The Dean campaign will be the first campaign to have visited all 99 counties in Iowa during this race, and it will have taken them nearly a year to do it. The Clark campaign would have made themselves dizzy if they tried to do that. However, the dizziness wouldn't have been the worst part. The worst part would have been all the face time you would have to miss in other crucial states. Clark needs to spend time down south. If he gets the nomination, that is where he will get it. He wouldn't have gotten Iowa, and its a plus for his campaign that they saw it early.