Bleeding Heartland readers, I would be interested in your views on how the Iowa caucuses might have turned out differently.
Let’s assume that Barack Obama runs the exact campaign he ran last year in terms of strategy and execution, and has the same monetary resources he had available.
What, if anything, could other candidates have done to beat Obama in Iowa? Keep in mind that both Clinton and Edwards executed their strategies pretty well in Iowa (in my opinion), with
both of them getting more than 70,000 people to stand in their corners on January 3. That “should” have been enough to win, even if turnout had been “only” 50 percent greater than the previous record for Iowa Democrats.
Given the Obama campaign’s excellent strategy and execution, as well as their virtually unlimited monetary resources in Iowa, what could other candidates have done to win the Iowa caucuses?
These are examples of the kinds of questions I’m interested in:
Should Hillary have used Bill more, or used him less?
Would it have helped Clinton or Edwards to go negative on Obama?
Were there better methods Clinton could have used to identify and turn out supporters?
Was there anything Richardson could have done in the summer to build on the bump he got from his television commercials in May?
Would Edwards have done better if his stump speech and advertising had focused on different issues?
Should Edwards have spent some money on advertising in the summer, when he slipped behind Clinton in the Iowa polls, rather than keeping his powder dry?
Feel free to post your insights about these and similar questions on this thread.
Alternatively, if you have thoughts you’d rather keep off the record, please e-mail them to me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com, or e-mail me your phone number and I will call you to chat. I will keep your views confidential.
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