I attended the Polk County Democrats' women's event tonight, featuring Michelle Obama. Unfortunately, I had to leave before she finished speaking so that my toddler would not disrupt the proceedings.

But wow, she did a great job. I don't have a transcript or notes. The gist of her speech was first, to talk about the tough balancing act women have, and put this in the context of problems we need to solve in this country. Then, she talked about how these issues affecting women motivated her and Barack Obama to pursue a political career instead of taking an easier path (like teaching).

She said she knew what we were all thinking–why should we support Obama when there is a talented woman candidate in the race? (Well, I wasn't thinking that, but there were plenty of Hillary supporters in the crowd.) She hit repeatedly on the “change” theme; I can't remember the exact words, but the main point was that we need to totally change the direction in Washington, not just replace this administration.

I think this is good rhetoric for Obama to use against Hillary; electing her would bring just superficial change–we need to turn the page.

I noticed that Edwards has started to hit on this theme as well. Today he condemned the merger of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and the Wall Street Journal. He also challenged Democratic presidential candidates not to take money from News Corp execs and to refund any contribution they've already received from them. 

Obviously, this refers to Hillary, the Democrat Rupert Murdoch's minions desperately want us to nominate. She's taken in more than $20,000 from News Corp execs.

Links are here:

http://www.mydd.com/…

http://www.johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20070802-media-consolidation

The sad truth is that even if Hillary were electable, another Clinton administration would give too much influence to the Washington and corporate insiders who have too much influence today.

Democratic voters are hungry for change, and Hillary will not deliver the bold change we need. We'll be hearing much more on this theme from Obama and Edwards in the coming months.

Not only is it good political rhetoric, it has the advantage of being true. 

To my knowledge, this is the first Iowa caucus poll by Washington Post/ABC. They found:

Obama 27 percent

Clinton 26

Edwards 26

Richardson 11

Biden 2

Kucinich 2

Dodd 1

The link is here:

http://www.washingto…

Not surprisingly, Obama does best among younger voters, but most caucus-goers are likely to be older:

Obama's hope for winning in Iowa appears to depend heavily on his ability to turn younger voters out on caucus night. Iowa's caucus process demands far more of voters than do presidential primaries. Participants must spend several hours at a caucus, and there are no secret ballots. All voting is done in public.

Among Iowa voters younger than 45, Obama has the advantage — 39 percent, compared with 24 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for Edwards. Among those age 45 and older, Clinton and Edwards were tied at 28 percent, with Obama trailing at 18 percent. Four years ago, these older-than-45 voters made up two-thirds of all caucus participants.

In this poll, 31 percent of likely caucus-goers said the upcoming caucuses will be their first. Half of those younger than 45 said this would be their first time out. Converting interest into commitment among younger voters is one big challenge facing Obama's team.

If Obama can mobilize tens of thousands of new voters to come out and caucus, more power to him. I'd love to see that. My hunch is that many precincts just don't have a lot of Democrats under age 45, though.

Recent Iowa polls have been all over the map, which confirms that it's tough to poll the caucuses. My advice to everyone is ignore the polls and work your heart out to GOTV for your favorite candidate.

Over at Iowa Independent Dien Judge reports that “We haven't seen the end of the Clinton-Obama diplomacy feud.”

The chairman of the Democratic Party in Monroe County (southeast Iowa) got a phone call from PSA Interviewing, which conducted a message-testing poll for Clinton in Iowa earlier this year.

Most of the poll questions were about Hillary, and they concerned both policy matters and electability. The survey specifically asked about the CNN/You Tube debate question about whether the president should meet with foreign dictators, and under what conditions.

There's been a lot of debate in the blogosphere over who was helped by this dispute. If Clinton tries to keep this story alive in her speeches and/or campaign ads, it's a safe bet that her internal Iowa polling showed it was a winner for her. If she doesn't bring it up much in the future, we can assume that the polling showed most Iowans agreed with Obama.

ARG, which has shown Clinton leading in Iowa all year, released a new poll today with similar findings. Details and a spirited discussion of this poll can be found over at MyDD. Here are the key findings:

Clinton 30 (down from 32 in last ARG poll)

Edwards 21 (down from 29 in last ARG poll)

Obama 15 (up from 13 in last ARG poll)

Richardson 13 (up from 5 in last ARG poll)

These numbers just don't ring true to me. I don't believe Clinton leads Edwards in Iowa, and certainly not by that kind of a margin. All year ARG has had Clinton around 30 percent in Iowa, and I can't remember any other pollster finding her with support that high.

ARG's new numbers for Republicans in Iowa are also at odds with recent polling by other firms. ARG finds:

Giuliani 22

Romney 21

McCain 17

Undecided 15

Fred Thompson 13

Gingrich 4

all others 2 percent or less 

What do other people think about this poll?

I guess when other firms release their results we'll find out which is the outlier: ARG or the latest KCCI Iowa poll conducted by Research 2000.

On Iowa’s airwaves you’ll start seeing a new TV ad titled “Take It Back” touting reform efforts his campaign has taken to get rid of the influence of Washington lobbyists and PACs by not accepting donations from them to his campaign as well as highlight his work in the Senate on ethics reform efforts.  For some reason, I can’t find a version of the ad that I can embed here on Bleeding Heartland, but you can view the ad by clicking here.

It is a good ad that follows on the same theme/guidelines established in his first two biographical ads that went up on the air in Iowa, as in they help to keep telling the “Barack Obama story.”

What interests me about this ad is the highlighting of ethics and campaign finance issues as the primary focus in what is Obama’s first true issue ad in Iowa.  Will the issues really resonate with Iowans at this point?  I’m not sure.

Ethics and government reform were major Democratic campaign platforms in 2006 and were even considered to be one of the deciding issues in 2006 (right behind the catch-all issue of Iraq).  But now with House passing really comprehensive lobbying reform legislation (that will likely be passed in the Senate as is and sent to the President’s desk) it seems like Democrats are already taking big efforts to fully push through reform.

Maybe I’m just naive or way to focused on other issues like Iraq but to me the clean campaign Obama is running just makes logical sense and should be what all the campaigns are doing, and then other issues should become the real focus.

Either way, it is just a TV ad, and a good one.

I was thinking that it would be helpful to have a box somewhere listing all of the Iowa politicians who have endorsed presidential candidates this year. I know Chris Woods has been keeping track of those, but I don't have a comprehensive list. Even if I did, I am not able to redesign the page.

What do people think? Is this a feature you'd like to see at Bleeding Heartland? Might be useful as a reference.

Speaking of which, has Patty Judge endorsed Edwards? Someone told me yesterday that she has, but I don't remember reading about it, and I couldn't find a link on the Des Moines Register website. 

Howard Dean was at the top of the polls in Iowa leading up to the 2004 Iowa Caucuses. Richard Gephardt was polling well, but trending down. Gephardt had placed all his bets on Iowa and had to find a way to win. So Gephardt started running ads going after Dean. Dean countered back with ads attacking Gephardt.

While Gephardt's and Dean's ads turned Iowans off from their campaigns, John Kerry and John Edwards kept focusing on the issues and organizing. The night of the caucuses saw Kerry and Edwards come out on top with Dean and Gephardt coming in 3rd and 4th. Iowa was witness of a murder-suicide of the Dean and Gephardt campaigns.

After this week's spat between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I can see this scenario happening again. It is important for Clinton and Obama to finish ahead of the other one in Iowa. As the Iowa caucuses approach, whoever is behind is likely to air ads attacking the other. There is a good chance Clinton and Obama will do exactly what Dean and Gephardt did and we will see yet another murder-suicide scenario.

So with Obama and Clinton mainly focusing on beating each other and seemingly willing to do whatever it takes to do so, there is an opening for other candidates to have big victories in Iowa.

Originally posted at Century of the Common Iowan. 

**Update**
It was brought to my attention that David Yepsen had a post yesterday that had basically the same connection to the Dean-Gephardt attack ads back in 2004.  I had not read his post nor had heard about before posting mine.  I got the idea from reading Joe Trippi's book, The Revolution Will Not be Televised about the Dean campaign last week.

Judging from the low number of undecideds, they pushed leaners too hard, but for what it's worth, here is the latest KCCI Iowa poll conducted by Research 2000, conducted July 23-July 25:

Edwards 27

Clinton 22

Obama 16

Richardson 11

Biden 3

Kucinich 2

Dodd 2

Gravel 1 

Undecided 16

It's good news for Edwards that there was no “Bubba bump” for Hillary–on the contrary, she was down 6 points compared to the last Research 2000 Iowa poll in May. Not good news for Obama at all. But the movement is not far outside the 4 percent margin of error for this poll. I still believe that around half of Iowa Democrats are undecided.

On the Republican side:

Romney 25 

F. Thompson 14

Giuliani 13

McCain 10

Gingrich 6

Huckabee 2

T. Thompson 2

Tancredo 2

Brownback 2

Hunter 1

Paul 1

Undecided 22 

How depressed would you be if you were Tommy Thompson, Huckabee, Brownback or Tancredo? Clearly the GOP base is unhappy with the crop of frontrunners, yet these second-tier conservative candidates can't get any kind of traction, despite spending lots of time in Iowa.

I don't know what is going to happen on the GOP side. It looks like everyone is unelectable to me, but someone is going to emerge from the primaries. Please, let it be Gingrich! 

Over at MyDD, Todd Beeton put up a thread linking to a Newsweek story about the brand messaging of major presidential candidates, based on their bumper stickers.

Click the link to the Newsweek story and scroll down to see a designer's expert analysis. He liked Hillary's branding, thought Obama's design looked good, and considered Edwards' use of a green trail off a star “crazy and daring.”

I had to go look at my own bumper sticker; not being a visual person, I hadn't even noticed there was any green on the Edwards sticker.

On the Republican side, he thought McCain had the worst logo and didn't like the militaristic star. Rudy's logo looks like “a brick wall,” and Mitt Romney's sticker looks like it belongs to “someone who's not going to win.” 

I also encourage you to read the comments below Beeton's post, because several MyDD readers had interesting things to say. For instance, Hillary's bumper sticker is apparently too tall to fit on old-fashioned chrome bumpers–only would work on newer vehicles. 

Several commenters also agreed with me that while McCain's logo may not be great, Romney's is by far the worst. McCain at least has good branding if he wants to appeal to the veterans' vote, which is important in GOP primaries.

What do you think about these and other bumper stickers? Have you seen many lately? Driving around town, I've just seen a few Edwards and Obama stickers, plus one Hillary sticker and one for Ron Paul.

I wasn't able to watch because of the kids–will try to catch it later.

Who did well, who missed opportunities, who stole the show?

UPDATE: If you missed the debate, check out the great liveblog  over at Iowa Independent.

I haven't found all of the candidate-submitted videos in one place. I liked the Edwards “hair” video–the music and the visuals make it quite memorable.

Earlier this month, 4 more people from Swift and Co. were arrested on immigration charges, including Braulio Pereyra-Gabino, who is vice president of Local 1149 of the food and commercial workers union.

“This is the first time a union employee has been charged in an immigration case,” Cashen said. “We're concerned and we're anxious to get all the information to make sure he's not being held accountable for things that are not his responsibility. We don't hire. We're not required to check immigration status.”

The Des Moines Register had a special editorial yesterday on Pereyra-Gabino's arrest.

Union representatives or citizens have no duty to report someone they suspect isn't legally in the United States, according to immigration attorney Lori Chesser of Des Moines.

“Union officials typically do not hire workers, so they don't have the employer-employee relationship that requires them to ask, 'Are you legal or not?' ” Chesser said.

To the contrary, unions believe they are bound by law to represent all workers in the Marshalltown Swift plant.

“As elected representatives of the workers at Swift and elsewhere, we are legally responsible to represent those workers,” Cashen said. “We can't discriminate. We can't pass judgment on who we will or won't represent.”

It would be interesting to ask all of those presidential candidates that are visiting Iowa about this case.

After having 1,200 workers nationwide arrested on immigration charges last December, Swift and Co. has yet to be fined or charged with anything.

Originally posted at Century of the Common Iowan. 

My dad was a Rockefeller Republican. He was disappointed by the turn the party took in the 1980s and 1990s, and though he died before George W. Bush was selected president, I've always felt that he would have definitively made the break from the GOP during this decade.

At the same time, I've felt that the number of disenchanted Rockefeller Republicans (liberal on social issues and supportive of things like progressive taxation and the estate tax) is not big enough to cost the GOP much in the electoral arena.

Tonight I ran into a former colleague of my father's, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. It was an eye-opening conversation to me; the circle of Republicans who are disgusted by their party's standard-bearers is broader than I had realized.

More after the jump. 

Which bookstore will you be visiting at midnight tonight? Would you be surprised to learn that only one presidential candidate has played the Harry Potter card so far?

Either way, here are some updates from around the 50-State Blog Network, brought to you this week from Minnesota Campaign Report‘s Joe Bodell.