Republican Presidential Candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Simpson College on Jan. 14 in Indianola, Iowa. Tomorrow Iowa Republicans will be the first to select their party's nomination for the 2024 presidential race when they go to caucus.Alex Wong/Getty Images
In the Federal Writers’ Project of the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration, the Iowa volume notes in its very first sentence that the state possesses “a shape somewhat similar to that of the United States.”
In Monday night’s caucuses, that eight-decade-old characterization gets one of its most vital tests. And it may reveal important hints about the character of a country riven with divisions and haunted by questions about the durability of democratic values.
To indicate their presidential preferences, Iowans will be crowding into the American Legion hall in Brunsville (population 127), the high school in Alburnett (672), the Old Parish Hall in Akron (1,552), the Pub restaurant in New Hampton (3,416) and hundreds of other spots, where the cornfields and hog pens have been blanketed in snow from a weekend assault of heavy winter weather and wind.
The U.S.’s first electoral event of the year is set to take place in a state whose fertile soil has been a proving ground for both progressive and conservative movements.
More than a century ago, Iowa was the staging area of robust efforts to regulate the railroad industry and to work for women’s suffrage. Carrie Chapman Catt was the only woman in her graduating class at Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) and succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
The state also was the home of Jonathan Dolliver (member of the House of Representatives, 1889-1900, and the Senate, 1900-10), known for saying that “Iowa will go Democratic when hell goes Methodist.” For decades the state has fought over abortion, with Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, a strong backer of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, last year signing legislation to ban the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy, a measure that an Iowa judge temporarily blocked in July.
Already, this year’s Iowa caucuses have defied predictions and expectations. The event is known for winnowing the political field, an apt metaphor for a farm state where the economy depends on quality grains being separated from chaff. But this campaign, the winnowing began before the caucuses, not after. The struggle began with 13 candidates; only five remain.
Iowans pride themselves on a clean brand of politics, and yet this year’s campaign has included brutal personal attacks. Former governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Mr. DeSantis called each other liars in last week’s Republican presidential debate. Former president Donald Trump has raised questions about Ms. Haley’s legitimacy as an American citizen and thus her eligibility for the White House.
The critics of the caucuses complain that the agricultural nature of Iowa warps the debate; it has more acreage of cultivated corn crop than any state and the highest overall corn production. But this time, there was scant discussion of agricultural issues and, in the last televised confrontation, conducted in Des Moines, there were only glancing references to plant-based energy, with fossil fuels getting more airtime than ethanol.
Iowa prizes personal campaigning, and the top alternatives to Mr. Trump have cultivated voters on a one-to-one, one-by-one basis, with Mr. DeSantis visiting all 99 counties of the state – a measure of devotion to local traditions begun by former governor Terry Branstad and Senator Charles Grassley, both Republicans. But Mr. Trump, the candidate favoured to win the caucuses, campaigned primarily in large halls when he wasn’t transforming caustic Washington and New York court appearances into virtual campaign events.
Customarily, political professionals play down the importance of Iowa’s caucuses, which, especially in Republican presidential politics, can be unreliable guides to the future course of the nomination fight. The campaigns of the last three winners of contested GOP caucuses – governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas (2008), former senator Rick Santorum (2012) and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas (2016) – fizzled after they left the Hawkeye State.
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This time, important changes in the demographics of American politics render the caucuses more relevant. The latest Wall Street Journal poll showed that about three out of four rural Republicans, who tend to be white and without a college education, support the renomination of Mr. Trump. He is a safe bet to win Iowa in the November election, but his appeal to rural voters here could be indicative of his political power in three important swing states – Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – even as evidence mounts that the former president is making inroads among college-educated voters.
In his campaign appearances in Iowa and elsewhere, Mr. Trump has been an avatar of national negativism, complaining about the 2020 election, the policies of the Biden administration and so-called “woke” impulses, producing a dark portrait of the country and its future.
Mr. Trump’s views both have fortified and reflected the national mood. The 73 per cent of Americans who told an NBC News poll that the country is on the wrong track represents the highest figure since the survey began 35 years ago. Seldom – during the dozen years of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and for a brief time during the Barack Obama years – has a single political figure so dominated the national conversation as Mr. Trump does today.
As a result, the 2024 election is shaping up as being more about a political figure out of office than about an incumbent president. In two recent contests involving a president seeking re-election, voters said that the occupant of the White House (George W. Bush in 2004, Mr. Obama in 2012) was more important an element in their political calculations than the challenger (former senator John Kerry and former governor Mitt Romney).
This time the figures are reversed, with the NBC News poll showing that voters believe their decision will be guided by their views of Mr. Trump (57 per cent) rather than Mr. Biden (37 per cent). As a result, the caucuses, and perhaps the general election, have been transformed into referenda on the former president.