Going into the second set of presidential debates, the field in Iowa looks like this as the corn tassels and the Iowa State Fair approaches: it’s Joe Biden’s race to lose, Elizabeth Warren is on his tail with a populist screed and anything can happen before the first presidential winnowing point in the caucuses next February.

All polls show Biden with a lead beyond the margin of error, including Iowa. Most polls show Warren and Harris moving up after the first rounds of debate, and each posted prodigious fundraising totals for the most recent quarter – bested only by Pete Buttigieg.

John Hickenlooper and John Delaney last week raced across the state on bicycles during the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, where pork chops on a stick are standard fare. Beto O’Rourke is all over the state. Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar were trying to break through at a women’s forum sponsored by organized labor the same week. It’s everywhere all the time. Somebody could pop out from the crowd as people actually start to pay attention.

Warren has the biggest staff in Iowa. She is well-tuned to the populist base of the state Democratic party, which distrusts Wall Street and Washington, and has made strong pitches to forgotten rural and riverside manufacturing towns left behind by world trade.

Biden has been campaigning in Iowa since 1988. He has many long friendships, including former governor Tom Vilsack, who served as agriculture secretary in the Obama/Biden administration. Biden recently released a rural platform that has Vilsack written all over it. Biden will have the big dogs in Des Moines. But when he reaches out to old friends elsewhere he gets no answer. Late to the game, many of the best organizers already were snatched up. He hasn’t lit much among the lonely little burgs along the blacktops, while Warren launched her campaign in red western Iowa.

Harris has not made Iowa her central play as O’Rourke, Delaney (who had staff organized on the ground a year ago, before anyone) and, increasingly, Buttigieg have. Although she bids well, she has not built the sort of organization key to winning a caucus state and has shied away from places like Storm Lake far from the madding crowd. She is making her case in South Carolina, Nevada and California.

Attacks on Biden’s long record produced some bounce for Harris, who since has not expanded her stake as Cory Booker joins her chorus. Those salvos will not wear well over time among an Iowa electorate with a clear fondness for the former veep. The main concern here is Biden’s age, not his negotiations with dead segregationists.

Healthcare remains the top issue. But Des Moines and Cedar Rapids are built on the insurance industry, so single-payer is a dicey sell

And then there is Bernie Sanders, with a rock-solid base of support at about 15% – after Warren, no doubt, and others whittled it down from his share of half the caucus crowd last go-around. My brother Bill, a union man from Dubuque, will walk through fire for him and does not brook alternatives, yet.

In the backdrop is a US Senate race where Democrats do not have high hopes of defeating the incumbent Republican Joni Ernst. We hear rumblings that the Democrats might just fly over Iowa again for the general election – perhaps Ohio and Wisconsin, too – having given up on us already as lost causes. It would be a calamitous strategic blunder. But Democrats are capable of that.

Healthcare remains the top issue in Iowa. Warren and Sanders begin to sound more reasonable with plans around Medicare for All, as our group health insurance premiums just went up 24%. But Des Moines and Cedar Rapids are built on the insurance industry, so single-payer remains a dicey sell.

The other big issue among likely caucus-goers is climate change. Nearly all the Democrats have put up plans that would pay farmers to capture carbon in the soil by converting corn acres to conservation acres. Even the Farm Bureau likes the idea. The candidates are changing the conversation rapidly around agriculture and extreme weather, as the corn got planted six weeks late this year amid epic flooding. Trade wars that pummeled commodity markets have Iowans rethinking their commitment to export markets, and that perhaps we are growing too much corn, and that we can’t sustain this petrochemical model for much longer. It’s a remarkable thing to hear.

There is a top tier, no doubt, in polling and fundraising and organization, and there is a second tier trying to stay alive, and there is a third tier just trying to get a country newspaper editor to listen. The question is whether Iowa remains so fed up – as it was when it voted for Barack Obama and Donald Trump – that it wants a return to moral normalcy, or if the state wants to clear the deck. So far, the polls show Biden in the strongest position against Trump. Biden risks losing Iowa by clipping roses while Warren, et al, are making hay.