Politcal Gastronomica

Kerry comes up to 25% in the Zogby poll – but what does that mean? With the complexity of the Iowa caucuses and the need for highly roganized coordination in Iowa – it is going to be quite a race.

Interestingly enough, listening to the pundits on the TV – you hear from CNN that “it is a four-way race” – and rarely hear about how Kerry is truly doing. At times, it seems as though FOX loves Kerry — always speaking highly of Kerry. From the DC office — the campaign is operating on all-cylinders — but the excitement is in the offices both in Iowa and New Hampshire — feeling the excitement that only a Presidential Campaign can provide. The other offices — especially the Feb 3rd States are getting teed up.

What will be interesting is what happens on Jan 20th. When it happens — watch out.

Today, as I was doing my early morning email check, I learned that Kerry broke expectations and now is one point ahead of both Gephardt and Dean in Iowa. While statistically this is still considered a dead-heat between the three (and Edwards at 17%), it brings the big “mo” to the campaign that was expected so long ago.

How does this show up? In our inbound emails which has gone overwhelmingly positive with comments like “Way to go!” and “I always knew you would be the one” and “I have always been a Kerry supporter” to the online donations which have increased incredibly in this month – compared to the month following last quarter. Site usage is up, volunteerism is going through the roof – and all because of a simple poll that is a statistically moving average of a three day polling sample.

What does this say? Kerry and our team have been working incredibly hard in the past few months – working to overcome the comments from the “washed-out front-runner” and “troublesome campaign” – which in my five months with the campaign has shown nothing but growth and improvement.

The teams are tighter, the energy is focused, the growth in measured and enthusiastic. While there are always things to improve, a campaign is not the glamour it promises from the outside. In ways, I envy the person who I was when I contemplated joining the campaign six months ago. It was a magically thing – to be part of changing the course of history and all that rot. Now, it is a race — not a sprint as it might seem, but as Marcus put it “a marathon”. And our team is definitely a bunch of marathon runners.

It is seven days away from the Iowa Caucus and I watch the pundits and pollsters speak on behalf of what they expect to happen. Just recently, they showed the fact that polls – even as close as seven days from the caucus – can not effectively determine ranking. It is obvious that all of the candidates are jockeying for position – Gephardt wants to be the Dean spoiler in Iowa, Kerry wants to be the Gephardt spoiler and Edwards wants to be the Kerry spoiler. It seems almost incestuous – which makes this whole effort sound like watching a football match – without any idea what the players are capable of doing.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a way of measuring the performance of the candidates in the election with certain metrics – similar to pass completions, touchdowns and such. I wonder if anyone has actually built such a model to help determine the impact of endorsements (personal, institutional), size of field support team and when launched, size of phone bank, etcera.

Will Gephardt spoil Dean? I think not. Will Kerry beat Gephardt – that might be the surprise that we do not expect. You might suggest that I am a bit biased, but I am curious how the Midwest sees Dean and Kerry as the “liberal, East Coasters”. And will Edwards surprise others? Not sure – but he is trying his hardest. The question will be – what happens in New Hampshire – and then onward to Feb 3rd States.