Yesterday my husband & I drove 1.5 hours to the Bernie Sanders campaign office in Council Bluffs. The sent us 30 minutes farther east to tiny Oakland, IA to canvass. We were given two "turfs", or listings of potential supporters, and spent a lot of time using our GPS on snowy muddy country roads outside town. It was a beautiful sunny 40F day, but the only person we found at home said some one from the campaign had just been there 1 hour before. Lots of houses already had Bernie fliers in the doors.
In town we ran into much the same thing. The people we we did talk to had already made up their minds about whether they would caucus, and who for. In a couple cases I was able to answer their issue questions (both times about gun control) by pulling up the website Feelthebern.org on my smartphone. Since I rarely use my phone on the Internet, I was grateful for the easy to navigate site.
Several people told us they planned NOT to caucus due to the impending snowstorm. The media keeps saying turnout is everything, and high turnout should favor Sanders. It was so discouraging to hear people insist they would not caucus, especially when they were Bernie supporters. I'd say, "My husband and I drove 2 hours from Nebraska to encourage you to use the power we don't have!" That's right, I resorted to guilt. Because this matters.
At one house I peeked through the door window when nobody answered, locking eyes with a heavy-set young woman sitting on her couch. She shrugged and got up, reluctantly listening to our spiel and insisting on being completely noncommittal about everything. At another door a 50ish woman told me her kids and grandkids all were caucusing for Bernie and that she and her spouse supported him, but they would stay home Monday night. When I asked why, she muttered something about how one granddaughter might have a sports event. The caucus was at the local high school, I told her. They could stop in and it would probably not take more than 1/2 hour. “Do it for your children and grandchildren!” I said. She just shook her head.
WTF with people? Here in Nebraska, Democratic voter turnout is low because no one in our state believes their vote matters!
I didn't try the guilt trip when we spoke to a 95-year-old woman, however. She was sharp as a tack and walked without assistance. She told me she simply did not go out at night anymore, ride or no ride, and I couldn’t bring myself to argue. When my husband asked who she supported, her face completely lit up as she said, "Oh, I'm for Bernie Sanders. I LIKE the way he looks!" Adorable. I so wished I could have gotten that on video.
One 60ish couple told us they were caucusing for Trump. When I expressed surprise that they were on our list they explained that Sanders was their second choice. What?! This started an interesting conversation. This union family perceives very little daylight between Sanders and Trump on the issues that matter most to them: labor, pensions, social security, removing corporate tax havens, taxing the rich instead of the middle class, and most of all, not being a political puppet to the big money donors. Their preference for Trump over Sanders was based on their belief that he could make better deals with foreign countries than Sanders, who has limited foreign policy experience. The man had joined us on the porch from some dirty project he was working on in the garage, but the woman appeared to be wearing a flimsy pink robe and held the entire conversation with her head poking at an angle out the door she held open while hushing a little dog. I was astonished by their adamant beliefs, frankly. I thought, "Wow, here we are talking to actual crazy people."
After we left my husband said, "Did you hear what they said about just wanting to make sure that Hillary didn't get elected? I should have told them caucusing for Bernie would be their best way to do that, because Trump has a far better chance to win in Iowa than Bernie has." I honestly don't think that would have mattered. The couple had admitted that a Trump/Sanders race would really give them pause about who to support, and it was clear they didn't want that. Bottom line, they just wanted Trump. And, I suspected, it may have had more to do with his racist views than they were willing to admit.
Sadly, these people were not alone in their cluelessness. One elderly man appeared well informed until he asked us if the Iowa caucuses were a new thing. “Is this the first year they’re doing this caucus thing?” he said. “I’ve never heard of it before.”
At another door we encountered a Hillary supporter. Nonetheless, she thanked us for doing what we were doing because she had taught high school civics and couldn’t believe how many people she knew who actually resented all the attention their proud “first in the nation” status gave them every four years. She pointed out the economic value of the Iowa caucuses as one benefit everyone in the state should appreciate. But she was still mystified by any Iowan’s indifference to the power of their civic involvement. Bernie was her second choice, and she was concerned that too many people just didn’t care enough to understand the difference between socialist and communist. “They think it’s the same thing!” she said. I told her those were probably the same people who hadn’t paid attention in civics class.
The turf listings show the age and party affiliation of the person you are asked to canvass. Whenever we knocked on the door of a young person our hearts lifted, and we were usually not disappointed. Every young person we talked to was all in for Bernie, knew where their caucus location was, and was determined to be there. It reinforced our reason for getting involved with the Sanders campaign, because that kind of enthusiasm for a candidate can set a young person on the path of civic engagement for the rest of their lives. And if there’s anything we need in the US, it is higher civic engagement among informed voters.
We ran out of time to finish our turfs, but the area had clearly been canvassed heavily already. Back at the office they told us the canvassing was now essentially cleanup work to hit the ones who were not at home before. They apologized for overlap among canvassers. We got the idea that the campaign was now at the point of milking the Iowa electorate for all it was worth.
I've been in a lot of campaign offices over the last 10 years. The last time I worked out of one in Council Bluffs it was for Howard Dean. Bernie's office there impressed me as different from any I'd seen in Iowa or Nebraska. For one thing, it was crammed full of scruffy young people. Many of these looked like they had been putting in very long hours, but that could just be my middle-aged dress code bias. I looked around in vain for some one whose appearance announced that they were running the place, expecting that person to be identifiable by tidy hair and clothing, perhaps even a suit. Silly me.
Few people seemed to be making phone calls, however; most were on computers and cell phones. The mood was very serious.
The office also had the best assortment of (mostly high carb) food I've ever seen. We paid ourselves for our efforts by snacking through lunch and supper, hoping we wouldn't be feeling the wrong kind of burn later. They also had a very good assortment of campaign materials, most of which was customized for Iowa. When I asked about this cornucopia I was told the materials were very carefully allotted, and the food was all volunteer-provided. Indeed, we had found it difficult to find a free outlet for our own crock pot of vegetable beef soup on arrival. The woman in charge of food said that although the amount was impressive, the consumption rate was even more so. "We go through massive amounts of food every day, but we didn't get a budget for any of this. We didn't get a budget even for petty cash or office supplies," she said. “That's what I like about Bernie, he's thrifty." Recycling was accomplished by setting out bags of aluminum cans for pickup by a homeless person in the area. "It's a very Bernie approach," she said.
Before leaving I had my husband take my photo kissing the giant Bernie puppet in the lobby. "That's being deployed in a high visibility location tomorrow," I was told.
This morning my husband asked me if I wanted to go back to Iowa today and try again. I said no, it didn't seem like they needed us enough to justify the long drive, and besides, we'd only hit even more empty houses on a workday. We watched Morning Joe. One poll shows Bernie up by 3 points, the other shows Hillary up by the same amount. Scarborough summed up the Iowa assessments of more than a half dozen “experts” on his show as "a big nothing sandwich".
The weather reports are now saying the storm won't hit most of Iowa until tomorrow, giving reluctant caucus goers another chance to set the direction of the 2016 US presidential election. We’ll see what they do.