DES MOINES — On the eve of the Iowa Caucuses I had the crazy idea to swing by five rallies on a single night. I was more interested in getting a sense of the crowds and the enthusiasm, because I know what the candidates are going to say. (Ron Paul is for the Freedom Agenda, Hillary Clinton wants to return to the 1990s, Mitt Romney wants to turnaround Washington, Barack Obama wants to change politics, and John Edwards wants to publicly behead all corporate executives.)

I saw Ron Paul speak to a veterans group to a crowd of 650 or so, then I went off to a Mitt Romney event, and it didn’t seem like his crowd was that much larger than Paul’s, though it’s always hard for me to do crowd estimates when everybody is standing. As I described in my article on the main site, John Edwards drew a huge crowd for his event with John Mellencamp, which was probably the largest event of the evening.

I was running late to the Clinton rally, and had to park several blocks away and I jogged over in the cold. I was looking for the media entrance when I saw some people entering through this loading dock on the side, so I followed them through a hallway. Suddenly I found myself in this holding room, standing about ten feet away from Hillary Clinton, Tom Vilsack, and Hillary’s mom Dorothy Rodham. I was kind of startled, and was wondering how a really good reporter would take advantage of the situation.

So I was just standing around, until a security guy finally notices I’m kind of out of place.

“Wait, who are you?” he asks me, stunned.

“Uh, I’m looking for the press entrance,” I said.

“Well this is not it,” he told me. “Go around the front.”

I found it odd that even though Hillary has Secret Service protection, a member of the vast right wing conspiracy was able to get so close to her.

She pulled out all the stops at the final rally–Bill, Chelsea, and her mom. I still don’t think she’ll win here.

I left the Clinton party like it’s 1992 event while Hillary was speaking, and headed over to an Obama event at a high school on another side of town. Unfortunately, by the time I found parking, the event had ended.