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NEWS FROM CNN

Countdown to Iowa

Aired January 14, 2004 - 12:37   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Iraq is the talk of Iowa. The Democratic presidential contenders focusing on the conflict as they try to win over voters ahead of Monday's caucuses.
Joining us now from that battleground state, two guests: Ron Brownstein, he's a CNN political analyst and a political columnist for the "Los Angeles Times," and Joyce Russell. She's state capital bureau chief for radio station WOI radio in Ames, Iowa.

Joyce, Ron, thanks very much for joining us.

Sunday morning, Howard Dean, the Democratic presidential candidate, is going to go to Plains, Georgia, to meet with Jimmy Carter. The Carter people have just put out a statement, we just got it over here in our computer. Let me read it to our viewers, and then I want Ron, you to pick up and give us your explanation of what's going on.

"I look forward to meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on Sunday and to attending church and Sunday school with him in Plains." That would be Plains, Georgia. "This meeting is not an endorsement of his candidacy, but an opportunity for me to learn more about the candidate and his views."

"I met with Governor Dean previously, and also with General Wesley Clark. These meetings were arranged at the request of the candidates. As in the past, I welcome meetings with any Democratic presidential candidate."

What's going on behind the scenes here, Ron?

RON BROWNSTEIN, "LOS ANGELES TIMES": Well, if Jimmy Carter rented out an airplane to have a banner trail behind "I am not endorsing." He could not really have made it more emphatic than that.

I think what's going on here, Wolf, is that the Dean campaign over the last few weeks has tried to create the impression that the Democratic Party is consolidating behind him, even before the race begins. He's had a number of high profile endorsements, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, the contestants from 2000, Tom Harkin, the Democratic senator from Iowa, a number of members of Congress, really transforming him from the outsider insurgent that he began as something of a hybrid with a lot of support from insiders.

A question is whether this is proving counterproductive for him and sort of complicating and confounding, in some ways, his message. It is a fact, a kind of a strange fact that both in Iowa and New Hampshire, he's dropped in the polls, come closer to the field, since this wave of high profile endorsements.

BLITZER: Joyce, you're there, you live in Iowa. You're there all the time. Give us your assessment of the lay of the political land right now.

JOYCE RUSSELL, WOI RADIO: Well, there's a tremendous amount of excitement here. And I think that that bodes well for turnout on Monday night.

The candidates are drawing huge crowds everywhere they're going, even out in the rural areas of the state, in the small towns. It's not uncommon for 200, 300 to turn out to see these candidates.

So there's a lot of interest, as might have been expected. And certainly this comes as no surprise to folks here. Once it got closer to the caucuses, people started paying more attention. So it is not surprising to us that the polls started -- the candidates started closing in on each other in these final days.

BLITZER: Ron, given the unique nature of the caucuses, it's a very complex voting system. You don't just go into a booth, spend 30 seconds or a minute in there. You spend a couple hours meeting with your neighbors and talking about it, fighting about it. It's a very complex business, with 15 percent minimum thresholds that you need to get some votes.

How reliable should we take these polls to be?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, that's a very good point, Wolf, because the polls are measuring voter preference. And what is reported on election night, Monday night, is slightly different. It's the share of the statewide delegates that the candidates receive. And usually there is a difference between the walk-in, and, in fact, entrance poll that the networks do, and the way the delegates are allocated.

Now, that doesn't make a difference when you have a race that is wide open, one candidate way ahead of the others. But here, it's likely that we're going to see the four major Democrats contending, clustering together fairly closely in the end. I mean, they've all put a lot of time and money in the state; they're all attractive politicians. They all have very high favorability ratios with the Iowa Democrats.

So the likelihood is that you're going to see candidates close together in the polls. And these small changes of who makes threshold, how their support is distributed, whether they can maximize the number of delegates based on the number of voters, all of that will matter probably in determining the winner and the order of finish.

BLITZER: Joyce, have you looked, historically speaking, at the polls going into previous Iowa caucuses, how good they were with the actual result that emerged?

RUSSELL: Well, in the last Gore-Bradley contest four years ago, I believe it was four percentage points difference between how people actually said they were going to vote when they went into caucus and then how the delegate count actually came out at the end. And that's a function of what Ron is talking about, about the complicated formula that they use for designating that.

But I would also add to that that it's been pointed out many times but deserves being pointed out again, that going to caucus is different than popping in and out of a voting booth. You have to get out, no matter what the weather's like, and you have to go at 6:30 at night, and you have to be there on time, and you have to stay for awhile.

And what some people are pointing out is that -- for example, with Howard Dean, with his support with young people on college campuses, for example, how reliable are they going to be in coming out and spending an evening, as compared to the kind of rank and file Democrats who are union supporters of Gephardt, for example? Or just the rank and file Democrats who have signed up with John Kerry and John Edwards? Those are the things that are harder to predict.

BLITZER: Let's get to some e-mail, Ron. This is for you from T.C. Let's see if you can handle this. I know you can.

"When Dean had a large lead, most of the others targeted him with just plain dirty politics. Now that Wes Clark is making a surge for the lead, they're targeting him. With all this infighting, I am afraid that there will not be a survivor with enough left to beat Bush."

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I actually thing that, historically, that there isn't an intense correlation between the level of combat in the primary and the ability of the candidate to win the general election. Paul Tsongas in 1982 went after Bill Clinton pretty hard, so did Bob Kerry. And Clinton was able to come back and beat George H. W. Bush.

I don't really think that is the relevant variable in terms of the ability to win in November. But it is no question that what you are seeing is a very tough race at this point. I mean, as the person who wrote the e-mail suggested, the other Democrats have targeted Dean in their speeches and debates for weeks.

Dean is now responding on television. Very rare event in the history of the Iowa caucus, a Democrat television ad attacking other Democrats by name over the war. It began airing yesterday. And that may be the best sign that we've seen that they are concerned about where the polls are going.

They think that is their strongest argument, attacking the other Democrats as Washington Democrats. And it's one that he's really probably going to emphasize as well on the stump in the final days.

BLITZER: We're showing the ad right now. Maybe we could queue that up and play it for our viewers who haven't seen it. We ran a little bit during Bob Franken's report earlier.

Let's try to listen to that ad right now. And Joyce, I want you to weigh in the aftermath. Go ahead. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NARRATOR: Where did the Washington Democrats stand on the war? Dick Gephardt wrote the resolution to authorize war. John Kerry and John Edwards both voted for the war. Then Dick Gephardt voted to spend another $87 billion on Iraq. Howard Dean has a different view.

HOWARD DEAN (D), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I opposed the war in Iraq. And I'm against spending another $87 billion there. I'm Howard Dean, and I approved this message because our party and our country need new leadership.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Joyce, what does that ad say to you about the mood in Iowa right now and the stance of the Dean campaign?

RUSSELL: Well, I think it's a significant change for him to turn around and start to put this really strongly negative ad on. So far, he has stayed above the fray. Of course, his opponents here that I talked to yesterday when this ad came out, his rivals in the race said -- were trying to make hay out of this and say that this shows he feels desperate.

Of course, that's kind of a predictable thing to say. But I think it is a significant turn on his part. I think he does see himself, you know, falling a little bit in the polls.

I would like to say, though, that on the war issue, as that's playing out here in Iowa, John Kerry in particular I think has been very effective at making this war issue not hurt him. He's a Vietnam veteran. And he has had especially good turnout at his events in the last few days.

And I was at an event where he got big cheers. And he actually targeted the Iraq issue and said, we will never again go to war for oil. And he got big cheers for that.

So I think that he and some of the other candidates have been able to overcome that issue. And I think it's really interesting that Dean is trying to bring that issue back up now.

BLITZER: All right. Ron, stand by, because we're going to take a quick break. I want to pick up that thought with you also.

The whole issue of Senator Edwards seems to be making a surge of his own in Iowa right now. We'll have much more with Ron Brownstein, Joyce Russell.

Remember, this is a good time for you to call us. You can send us your e-mail at wolf@cnn.com, or call us, toll free, 1-800-CNN-1896.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BLITZER: The Democratic presidential contenders are entering the home stretch in Iowa, with just five days until the caucuses Monday night. I've been talking about that tight race with Ron Brownstein. He's a CNN political animist, a columnist for the "Los Angeles Times." And Joyce Russell, she's NPR's state capital bureau chief for Iowa and a news producer at WOI radio.

Ron, what's with senator John Edwards? Am I right or wrong? He seems to be gaining some momentum in these past several days.

BROWNSTEIN: In fact, both Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry, if you look at the polls and the crowds, are doing well. Look, John Edwards has carved out a very distinct niche for himself in this race over the last few weeks. While the other three major candidates have been intensifying their fire on each other, he's decided he's going to go in the opposite direction and say, I am the candidate being positive, I am the candidate who isn't sniping.

And in my conversations with undecided voters, he's clearly struck a chord. He is also attractive as an outsider, someone who hasn't spent a lot of time in Washington.

Conversely, Wolf, and somewhat paradoxically, Kerry is doing well here almost at the opposite end of the same continuum. I find that voters here are attracted to him less around any particular issue, than around the idea that he has experience. Both of them are sort of moving in on Gephardt and Dean, who have been ahead. And you are probably going to see a pretty close distribution of these candidates in the polls right up until the caucus.

BLITZER: Joyce, here is an e-mail from Larry in Florida. "So what if Carter endorses Dean? He was one of the worst presidents we've had. An awfully nice man, but not very influential."

We know that Jimmy Carter is not going to endorse Howard Dean. But the whole issue of endorsements, Tom Harkin has -- the popular Democratic senator in Iowa has endorsed Dean. The "Des Moines Register" has endorsed John Edwards. The whole issue of endorsements in Iowa, how is that really going to impact on voters?

RUSSELL: Well, I think the "Des Moines Register" endorsement of Edwards, I think that carries some weight. It is certainly the best known newspaper in the state. But endorsements have their downside. And I'll give you an example of that.

When Al Gore made his endorsement of Howard Dean, I talked to a lot of people who were kind of turned off by that just on the sort of the loyalty issue. And Joe Lieberman, of course, made a big deal about that, and was not shy about saying that he felt betrayed and that Gore should have either withheld his endorsement or given it to him. And that's Gore's business to make his endorsement, but some people -- that didn't win points for everyone for Howard Dean here.

BLITZER: All right. Here is an e-mail from Sean in Iowa. Let's see if you can handle this one, Ron. "What will the White House run on in 2004 if the Democrats nominate Wes Clark or John Kerry? That image of Bush in the flight suit suddenly becomes problematic for the Republicans and makes Bush look like a poser, compared to men who have actually risked their lives for this great nation."

How much concern is there among Democrats -- and you speak with these guys all the time -- that Howard Dean simply might not be electable? While he could win the Democratic nomination in a general election against George W. Bush, he's not electable?

BROWNSTEIN: Wolf, there's actually an empirical answer to that very question. A tracking poll that is being conducted for another nameless cable network today asked, "How likely is it that any Democrat could beat George Bush?" Only 12 percent said it was unlikely that any Democrat could beat George Bush.

But for Dean, when they asked specifically for Dean, it was 30 percent. So obviously that is a question and a vulnerability for him, the issue of whether he can take on Bush in the general election.

Now, they tried to address that very forcefully and head on, arguing that their ability to raise money, their ability to mobilize the Democratic base makes them formidable. But certainly Clark, as we move forward, and Kerry, here in Iowa and New Hampshire, is making the argument that they're experienced, particularly in the military, does give them a better chance in an environment where there is no doubt that commander this chief credentials will be more relevant than they've been probably in any election since 1980.

BLITZER: We're going to have to leave it right there, unfortunately. Ron Brownstein, as usual, thanks very much for your insight.

And Joyce Russell, thanks to you as well for joining us on our program.

We'll be spending more time, I'm sure, in the coming days leading up to Monday night, the big Iowa caucus. CNN of course will have live coverage throughout the night Monday night. Stay here with CNN for all of that.

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