WAUKEE, Iowa – Joe Biden may well be the next Democratic nominee for president and if so, that would be fine with lots of Iowans preparing for Monday night’s caucuses.

Fine, as in voters will feel confident they took their best shot at holding Donald Trump to one term, but they won’t be screaming themselves hoarse.

Fine, as in there’s electricity at a rally with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg that’s missing from a Biden event, and a lot less silver hair.

“He’s everybody’s second choice. That makes him my first choice,” said Heather Wheeler, 64, a voter from Urbandale would prefer Warren, in her heart, but doesn’t want to take the risk of letting Trump win a second term. “I feel like I’m being a realist.”

And she’s a committed Biden voter.

The former vice president has a strong shot to win the caucuses, in part because of arcane rules that allow Iowans to abandon candidates who don’t draw much support on the first try. But even the Iowans whose support Biden locked down months ago are often tepid about the choice.

They have no doubt that he has the experience needed, can unify the party, and can guide the nation’s politics back to a more normal state of affairs.

But it’s no love affair.

“I wish I felt excited about Biden, as much as I like him,” said Keri Quattlebaum, 48, an office manager from Des Moines, after hearing Biden’s pitch at a rally in Waukee that drew a couple of hundred voters. “He feels like the safe bet.”

The Democratic race is a five-way mush heading in Iowa, the opening skirmish on the road to the 2020 nomination.

Sanders and Biden are neck and neck at the top. Buttigieg and Warren are locked in battle for third. Momentum has built steadily for Klobuchar, and in the closing days she drew rave reviews and robust crowds from Iowans seeking a centrist alternative.

With such a large field, a decisive victory is unlikely for any of them and each have insisted that it’s plausible to limp out of Iowa without finishing in the top three. The fact that three of the contenders, the senators, were waylaid by an impeachment trial for two critical weeks added to the uncertainty.

“I just don't know. I mean, if there are six people and they're all bunched up within one point of each other, they might all have a legitimate case to move on to New Hampshire,” said Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party.

For Democrats, the prospect of a second Trump term is so horrifying it hardly requires elaboration, though in one way or another, all harp on electability and insist it’s an attribute that stands them apart.

For Biden, that has been the central rationale for his campaign. If rivals puncture that aura on Monday night, he’ll have some explaining to do.

“I do not believe we’re the dark, angry nation we see in Donald Trump’s tweets. I do not believe we’re a nation that rips babies out of their mothers’ arms,” he said in a long riff in Waukee that, in more artful hands, would have whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Instead, they mostly nodded in agreement.

“In Joe Biden’s America, the president’s tax returns won’t be a secret, political self-interest will not be confused with the national interest, and no one – not even the President of the United States – will be above the law.”

Solid but not inspiring

Solid, yes. Inspiring, no – and that’s the assessment of voters who support him.

“One day I’m for Biden. One day I’m for Warren. One day I’m for Klobuchar. But I always come back to Biden,” said Stacey Schempp, 53, an IT project manager from Des Moines. “Warren and Bernie—that kind of energy is coming from a younger generation” and she understands why.

But both, in her view, “would be too divisive…I’m trying to be a little less emotional.”

Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor who has been stumping with Biden, rejected the idea that he’s an uninspiring fallback.

“I'm not a hooting, hollering guy….But don't tell me I'm not as passionate as any one of those folks who's going to the Buttigieg events, or Warren events,” he said.

He recalled American Gothic, the iconic 1930 Grant Wood portrait of a Iowa farmer holding a pitchfork, a woman in a prairie dress at this side, both stoic.

“How do you know they're not passionate? Just because their expression on their faces?” Vilsack said, adding that he tried jury cases in Iowa for 25 years. “You cannot read Iowans. They're very guarded… There's commitment. These people will show up. They'll knock on doors. They'll do the grunt work. Some of these folks that are hooting and hollering probably haven't made a single phone call, and probably haven't knocked on a single door.”

It's not that Biden lacks for supporters. It’s just that it’s remarkable how many of them are better described as adamant than thrilled.

“I’m a 10. I’ve always liked Joe Biden,” said Bob Allen, 64, a retired postal worker from West Des Moines.

Energy abounds, for rivals

“We are just one day away from victory in the Iowa caucuses,” Buttigieg told a high school gym packed with 2,000 supporters on Sunday afternoon in Des Moines, expressing a rare level of cockiness – or a naïve unfamiliarity with the rituals of downplaying expectations.

Iowans of all ages were on hand, chanting “I-O-W-A/Mayor Pete, all the way!” So the optimism from the wasn’t entirely unfounded.

The former mayor of South Bend, Ind., took a simultaneous poke at Sanders and Biden, rejecting the idea that voters face a binary choice: “Either you’re for a revolution or you’re for the status quo.”

Buttigieg’s biggest challenge has been to persuade voters that experience isn’t everything – that at 38, after a stint leading the nation’s 306th biggest city, his brains, military experience and even keel are enough.

“There's no job you can have prior to being president that makes you ready to be president,” said senior campaign adviser Michael Halle, insisting that even Biden’s eight years as Barack Obama’s understudy don’t make him any more prepared for the presidency than anyone else. “It is very different to be in the decision-making chair.”

Senators who’d been stuck for most of the last two weeks on jury duty swarmed back to Iowa late Friday for a weekend blitz.

Warren drew 1,100 to a rally in Indianola on Sunday morning. Only a third could fit in the event space at Simpson College, and she got ecstatic welcomes from them and the overflow crowd outside, scenes not typically witnessed at a Biden rally.

“This is no time for small ideas,” Warren declared. “This is the time to come up with the big solutions and then get out there and fight for them.”

Sanders, with help from indie rock band Vampire Weekend, packed a Cedar Rapids arena with 3,000 fans on Saturday night after stops in Indianola and Grinnell, where he drew smaller but no less enthused crowds.

“I’ve been a huge Bernie supporter since 2016. I’m just super excited about Bernie Sanders,” said Moze Thurmgreene, 18, a Grinnell College freshman from San Francisco who registered to caucus in Iowa so he could support Sanders. “I would vote for any candidate against Trump.”

With roughly 48 hours until the caucuses, Deb Montgomery, a small business owner in Grinnell, still couldn’t say who she would support. She wasn’t undecided, she said. She was “conflicted” -- about whether to vote her conscience or vote strategically.

“I really do love Bernie. I love everything he has to say,” she said. But her Republican relatives and friends would never abandon Trump for him. “I don’t think there’s any convincing them. That is a concern.”

“I do like Biden. He’s been vice president. He’s been through it,” she said, but “I don’t love him.”

Seeking a uniter

Klobuchar packed a different school gym Saturday night in Des Moines. The hundreds of Iowans threw off so much heat that sweat dripped from foreheads, despite the snow in the parking lot.

They greeted her with chants of “Amy! Amy!” when she took the stage, waving flags and whistling. She was a bundle of energy, and the crowd responded in kind.

She called the election a “decency check” that Trump’s impeachment trial has failed to provide. She mocked Trump for his habit of making a beeline for the cameras when he boards Marine One, to vent every time something doesn’t go his way.

“We do not need a whiner in the White House,” she said. “…The heart of America is so much bigger than the heart of the guy in the White House.”

She boasted that Indianola’s mayor recently switched parties so he could to caucus for her, and that she has more endorsements from Iowa state legislators than anyone else – reflecting her ability to provide coattails for down ballot candidates.

“She’s a uniter,” said Liz Mann, 37, who works for a health care nonprofit in Des Moines.

“There’s a lot of excitement for Warren or Bernie, and they’re at my door all the time,” Mann said, but “they’re too far left. It’ll just divide the country even more.”

She sees Klobuchar as a rare Democrat who might appeal to her Republican friends in Iowa. Maybe even her own father. For him, “Pete is a no, but Amy is a yes.”

And the former vice president? He also could have crossover appeal, Mann said, but “Biden just doesn’t have that spark.”