IOWA — Some observers refer to the eastern portion of the state
that follows the Mississippi River as the blue-collar basin. It’s a
union heavy region, dotted with that great monument to lost jobs,
the riverboat casino. It is here that Representative Dick Gephardt
seems very at ease.
At meetings in Davenport, Bellevue, and Dubuque, the union
members respond warmly to Gephardt. Granted, he throws them a lot
of red meat: NAFTA represents “a race to the bottom trade policy,”
and results in “human exploitation.”
None of the events look at all like the excitement of a Howard
Dean event, yet there is a palpable, if quiet, enthusiasm that
permeates all of the crowds (in most cases standing-room-only) that
come to these events. These are Gephardt’s people.
Little wonder then that recent polls in Iowa show Gephardt has
regained the lead from Howard Dean. However, the former minority
leader is expected to win in this state, so a victory in the
caucuses won’t be any surprise. The question is whether the
Gephardt campaign can command a large following beyond the ethanol
state.
Bill Burton, Gephardt’s spokesman in Iowa, is optimistic that it
can. “We’ve got some good union states coming up right after New
Hampshire, including South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Michigan,” he
says. When asked about AFSCME’s and SEIU’s endorsement of Dean,
Burton seems nonchalant: “We’ve got 21 union endorsements, far more
than any other candidate. Among those we have the United Auto
Workers and the Teamsters, which is very good for us in
Michigan.”
And he has a point. If union members elsewhere respond as well
to Gephardt as they do here, it will certainly give him a leg up in
many of the states that follow New Hampshire in the primary
season.
But Gephardt’s union appeal may not be enough to help him emerge
as the serious challenge to Dean. A woman named Karen at the event
in Davenport hit on some of the limitations of Gephardt’s union
support. Describing herself as a stay-at-home-mom Democrat, she
said she was “shopping around for a candidate.”
Thus far, she was most impressed with Dean and John Kerry,
although she criticized Dean’s approach as “kitschy.” Karen
attended the Gephardt event because she wanted to see if he “could
appeal outside the unions. You can’t win with only union people. He
has to generate a message that is broad enough.”
On Saturday Gephardt was definitely trying to broaden his appeal
among primary Democrats. The Dean-style Bush bashing was on
display. To wit:
• “I’ve served with five presidents. He’s by far the
worst. I’m nostalgic for Ronald Reagan. It is that bad. I’m not
exaggerating.”
• “The only way Leave-No-Child behind works is to leave
George Bush behind.”
• Bush “is arrogant. He’s a cowboy.”
• “If you’d been meeting with Bush every week since
September 11, you’d be running for president too.”
Gephardt is at his best when talking about health-care and
trade, but he seems increasingly comfortable with his anti-Bush
shtick. If it gets even better (i.e., harsher and more shrill) than
it was last Saturday, he could steal away some of Dean’s hard-core
anti-Bushites. That, combined with his union support, and he could
easily give Dean heartburn.
The CW among pundits is that if Gephardt could win in the
primaries he would be a much better candidate than Dean for the
general. But Saturday didn’t do much to support this belief. It is
likely at this point that Gephardt would hinge his general election
campaign on his lavish health-care plan.
“I’ve had business people come up to me and say this plan makes
sense,” Gephardt claimed. “It is an expensive plan,” he concedes,
“and we’d have to get rid of the Bush tax cut to pay for it.” That
the voters would be willing to endorse a tax hike for more
health-care benefits seems dicey at best. Oregon — not exactly a
hotbed of right-wingers — offered its voters this choice last
November, and they defeated it by a near 3-to-1 margin.
Gephardt will also have to offer a plan to combat terrorism, and
it is here that he seems rather uncomfortable. In Davenport he only
mentioned the war on terror in his stump speech at the end; in
Dubuque and Bellevue it wasn’t in the speeches at all, although he
did talk about it in the question-and-answer period.
He vacillates between supporting President Bush and sounding
like a '60s-style liberal. On the one hand he said, “I think we’ve
got to do everything in our power to prevent further acts of
terrorism. That’s why I voted to deal with Iraq; it’s why I voted
to deal with Afghanistan.” On the other, “We need to go at the root
causes of terrorism like bad governance and poverty.”
He faulted Bush for not getting U.N. and NATO support for the
invasion of Iraq. How would Gephardt get their support? “You have
to talk to them. You have to listen to them.” Using sociological
terms and proposing what sounds like a group-therapy session isn’t
likely to convince many voters that he’s got what it takes to deal
with the threat of terrorism.
However, that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Gephardt has to win
the nomination before he can move on to the general election, and
sounding a bit more like Dean on foreign policy is not a bad way to
appeal to primary voters.
Gephardt appears to be playing well the hand that was dealt to
him after Dean came along and stole the deck. Bill Burton remarked,
“After New Hampshire, it will probably be just Gephardt and Dean.”
Here’s betting he’s right.
