Question for Iowa Caucus participants

[radfringe]

was wondering about the overall "mood" of the people and the "tone" of their discussions

hot button issues? concerns?

was support for a particular candidate because they thought their candidate had the "best" plan for direction of country - or because they thought that their candidate had the "best" chance of beating bush*?


on edit: side question - were there any "newly" registered Dems that were previously Repubs? what was their "mood/tone"?

[terryg11]

1. overall mood was pretty relaxed

and yet there were some pockets of "excitement". I think the majority of the people I talked to (especially Kerry supporters) thought that their candidate had the best chance against Bush. That's not saying they didn't believe their man's message either in fct, a few Edwards supporters really thought he had the best agenda and just liked their candidate a lot. Anyway, it was relaxed but everyone was fired up, excited you could tell they were ready to kick W out of the office. Another thing, all the stuff we've talked about here at DU, anything from Bush being selected (instead of elected) to Rove and others really running the government, most I talked to brought it up, not me! they believe the same things and we are talking about a wide and diverse (as diverse as you can get in small town Iowa) group of people. It was truly heartening. I think we got a chance come Novem\ber

[DU9598]

2. The telling moment

Last night when the Kucinich people alligned with a lot of the Dean people, they started shouting No War, No War! The Edwards people immediatedly starting yelling Beat Bush, Beat Bush! Everyone joined us in the chant. For three minutes there were 250 people yelling Beat Bush! It was awesome!

Go Edwards!

[Slippery_Hammer]

3. The biggest hot button issues at my caucus were

1. Getting rid of the Chimp! who they rightfully perceive is distroying our country. (electability)

2. Health care costs. Everyone seemed to think "their" candidate had the best health care plan. We did not have much time to debate this issue. Most people had already made up their minds and had broken up into groups. As the only Kucinich supporter in attendance, this is the issue some groups attempted to entice me to join them with. I replied that Kucinich had the vastly superior health plan and they should join me but they hit me over the head with the -electability- issue.

3. Jobs. Iowa has been hemorrhaging jobs for many years. The Edward's people tried to convince me that he had the best plan in this area (although they could not seem to describe just what this plan was). As everyone seemed to be anti NAFTA and GAT, I replied that Kucinich had the vastly superior jobs platform but, here we go back to -electability- again.

As for "newly" registered Dems. I only saw four or five people out of the 60 attendants filling out registration forms. The crowd seemed to be previously registered but "motivated" Democrats. Some could have been disenfranchised Repukes crossing over but I had no way to tell.

Living close to a collage like I do I was expecting a larger turnout of younger people for Dean but that was not in evidence. The largest group of (bring along a friend) younger people was a group of about 6 for Dick Gephardt.
The Edwards group had a few young girls in it that described him as "cute".

All in all the overall "mood" was a lot like an average night "close to election time" here at DU.

[terryg11]

4. where did you caucus at?

i was in Kalona, just south of iowa city

[Slippery_Hammer]

5. I'm on the left coast of Iowa

I caucused in Sioux City. :hi:

[Skidmore]

6. Howdy neighbor and all other fellow Iowans...

we're over in Amanas and our experience was pretty similar to Hammer's. Top of the list was getting rid of Bush. Issues were pretty similar. No bickering and a lot of goodwill in the room. People applauded statements by all candidates, not just their own. I was impressed with the unity, given the range of candidates. We even had 3 supporters for Clark.