I remember being in Iowa seeing the AFL-CIO trucks rolling into Des Moines on Caucus Eve 2004

zulchzulu

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Tue Aug-28-07 08:45 PM
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I remember being in Iowa seeing the AFL-CIO trucks rolling into Des Moines on Caucus Eve 2004

Edited on Tue Aug-28-07 08:53 PM by zulchzulu

It was the night before the caucus was going to happen. I remember it being cold and rainy, not snowy and blizzardlike as I thought it would be. A bunch of us were heading out for a couple brews and some grub after canvassing and phone-calling all day. There was a lot of work to do and the feeling on the streets was electrifying.

Months had gone by and the grassroots efforts, political ads, political calculations, swerving polls, pricey political brochures, rumors and innuendo, hours and hours of speeches by all the candidates and passion on all sides was riding high. It all came down to this final episode. It was overwhelming to think about and beautiful to imagine people so dedicated to Mother Democracy.

However, Iowans were exhausted of the whole thing and wanted tomorrow to be over. Answering machines were full of messages from phone bankers, mail boxes were bloated with campaign literature, doors were knocked at odd times doing campaign canvassing and the radio and TV were vomiting out political ads at every commercial break with the usual overpromising and demonizing of other candidates.

We were all walking in downtown Des Moines, a surprisingly modern town for this current Bay Area Californian, and decided to hit some glorified burger joint. It was starting to get misty and a chill was in the air.

As if out of some Star Wars movie, about 50 huge tractor trailor trucks rumbled from a distance and slowly made an intimidating processional parade by us. "What the hell?", I remember hearing myself say to the others.

These monstrous trucks all had big signs mounted on the side "Gephardt For President 2004" on them. There was an AFL-CIO logo seen as well. These trucks were decked out and seemingly ready to rumble.

After they parked in a couple rows like great dinosaurs around a lake, we went in the restaurant and pondered what we saw over dinner and some pool.

The next day, the caucus was to happen. Doing all of our appointed duties before going to various caucus locations to be a witness to the event, we finally saw the finishing line getting near.

As the night came, it was obvious that Kerry pulled out a surprise victory. I was standing next to James Carville when he said something about being happy that Dean lost in some Cajun analogy. Morton Kondrake even came up to me (mistaking me for someone else) and asked how I knew Kerry was going to win. I forget what I said. I was smashed at that point, so I probably told him to f*ck off.

What was very memorable that night (besides the Kerry victory party and the Dean party we crashed later) was when we ran into Al Franken in the Kerry Party. He said it was great to see Kerry win, but he had to go over to the Gephardt campaign headquarters to commiserate with those folks. Gephardt was going to drop out of the race that night with a dismal showing. His poll numbers had been in the lead and slightly behind Dean for much of the race up that night.

What the big union trucks did to be a big presence but not really make a difference hit me. With the next union endorsements about to come soon for all the candidates by the management in most cases, I'm not sure what difference their endorsement means in the end. In Iowa anyway...