Exclusive Iowa Coverage: Bernie Draws a Crowd

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA - The first time I saw Bernie Sanders speak was in 2016 in a tiny, cramped union hall in Marshalltown, Iowa. The space held maybe two hundred and when Sanders walked out I was stunned by how unkempt and unpolished he seemed. It was like somebody had wandered from backstage and hijacked the microphone. He grabbed the podium like preparing for a car crash. At one point his voice grew so loud as he targeted millionaires and billionaires that a speaker shorted out. As somebody fixed it, he continued uninterrupted, as if he hadn’t noticed.

Somehow, Sanders carried the same air Saturday night as he strode onstage and addressed a lively crowd of thousands. His speech was more or less the same as it’s been the same for years now. He hit the same notes, focused on economic inequality and the cruelty of the modern economy. With each line the crowd roared and chanted his name. It was like somebody had picked the man out of the union hall four years earlier and just put dropped him in front of a movement. Miraculously he didn’t skip a beat.

The Saturday before the Iowa caucuses is a day fraught with anxieties and excitements, often a vacillating swoon between the two extremes. Today the Biden campaign wrestled with the possibility that their frontrunner had not only lost his pole position but possibly control of the race in totality. Fingers were quick to be pointed. Staffers cited a lack of focus in the Hawkeye State, a reliance on an antiquated organization system. They admitted the feeling in their circle was something akin to doom. Or, at least, tired concern.

Sanders’s campaign, in comparison, is floating on air. Talk about the state is that Bernie is expected to take the state and possibly in a walk. When The Des Moines Register announced tonight it wasn’t releasing its vaunted final poll, there was hardly an eye that went unrolled. As disruptors, they expected foul play, something or someone to interfere. At this point, interference meant there was something to interfere with. Nobody, after all, has to undermine a failed candidate. But the narrative maintained that Sanders would survive any malpractice, particularly as his support was so strong and so widespread.

That’s not to say there isn’t some concern.

The thousands in attendance tonight were inflated by out-of-state volunteers who had descended on Iowa to knock on doors and get out the vote. It’s been nearly impossible to walk outside in Iowa and not trip over a Sanders volunteer. They’re everywhere and they’re very vocal and very enthusiastic. Sometimes that turns off Iowa voters who are as likely to get in line with the momentum as they are to sneer and shift their support elsewhere out of spite and exhaustion.

But Iowans also love sticking their thumb in the eye of the Democratic establishment. They don’t like being told who to vote for, who to fall in line behind, and Sanders strikes a compelling mix here of the outlier and the frontrunner, especially when considering his socialism and pro-labor stance plays well among parts of the population. There’s speculation that Sanders could defy critics who claim he’s incapable of building the movement necessary to capture the presidency, much less radically alter the country.

Nothing is for certain in Iowa. It’s a baffling, confounding state and its caucuses are chaos personified. No one has any clue what’s going to happen Monday night, but one thing is sure: Sanders has come a long way since that chilly, chilly day in Marshalltown where he seemed cast permanently as an outside with no hope of fighting his way in.